Grief

The sun glared through the windows and into my eyes but I did not look away. I did not close my eyes. They watered and even hurt a bit and I still did not care. The spots formed and I felt nauseous and faint.

I finally closed my eyes and sat down on the pale yellow window seat, the cool painted wood under me woke me a bit from my state and I tried to form thoughts.

Nothing came.

The days' consistencies meant nothing to me. I spoke words to concerned people and did not know what I was saying or remember why I was saying them. I went to bed, got up and vomited in the toilet and got back into bed over and over again for days on end.

Or at least it felt like days, it could have very well been moments, seconds, fleeting incalculable snippets of time flying over my head like electric beams of fast moving nothingness.

When this melancholy lifted I began to see small random things in focus. The water I drank for sustenance seemed so much better when I mixed orange juice and lime juice in with it, I remembered I loved that so much.

I changed my clothes and got in the shower, used the kids coconut shampoo and scrubbed and scrubbed my body with Dove soap over and over again until the water started to turn cold. Dove soap reminded me of being in the hospital after giving birth. That first tender shower with a nurse outside your door and your mother just beyond her, making sure you were OK. The sweat and the medicinal smells of labor and delivery wash over you and are replaced with Dove soap. Your breasts ache and your asshole aches and you feel like you might just pass out. Thinking the posted nurse outside your door wasn't such a bad idea, gingerly stepping out of the thickly tiled shower without lifting one leg too high.

After the shower things were clearer. I turned on the small cream lamp on a very short table next to my bed and laid myself down. The sheets smelled of spit and greasy hair. I got up, stripped the bed and put new sheets on, took a basket of clothes to the basement and began to do laundry.

The sun outside had turned to clouds and rain in an opposite rendering of my present state of mind. The clouds in my head were clearing, but I was not sure of the weather that would present itself once they did.

I went back to my room and laid in bed once more. I smelled nothing but coconut and Dove soap. The tears came again but this time I did not vomit. I sobbed gently and fell asleep.

When I awoke the sun was again in my face, but this time I looked away. I turned my back to the window and stripped off my clothes, let the warmth play across my naked back. I took another shower, brushed my teeth and drank more orange juice with lime. The bitterness of the first few sips mixed with the remnants of tooth paste made me aware suddenly of the day and the time.

I made phone calls and plans to begin my life over again. I never felt the same again.