Good Grief

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song,"Going the Distance," #9 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

This is how I grieve:

I grieve while observing myself.

In my mind, I am fascinating to watch.

I imagine I am a character in a novel, a woman at a train station with a hat box in one hand, a blue velvet ribbon in the other, which I keep rubbing between my thumb and forefinger. ("what is she doing with that ribbon?" No one can figure it out. It's the great mystery of the novel.)

When they make the film version of this novel, a Beatles song plays in the background: "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay, oh I believe in yesterday..." while I look wistfully off down the train tracks. And then at some point, a slow tear drips down my cheek, and then the next thing you know I am sobbing, shaking silently from the core of my soul, so overcome with grief that I don't even notice I have lost my balance until I have fallen off of the platform onto the gravel beside the train track. The song playing now would be "Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly."

Well, howhowhow does anyone fly when she has broken wings, did they ever think about that before they wrote the song, hmm? all you can do with a broken wing is sit there and wait.

And chirp.

I know, I have seen birds before.

What I noticed most is that I am not a bird, and I do not have any wings.

I am a person with arms that are not broken, and in this novel which is so well beloved by the reading masses that the film rights are quickly bid on by Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino and all of those guys; (the public love to watch an emotion to which they can relate, especially if they had never been able to put it into their own words, especially if they had never been able to form it into their own film adaptations of their own internal novels.) in this part of the film, she uses her arms to push herself to standing up and she picks the gravel out of her bleeding knees, says "is there a doctor in the house" then thinks oh whatever and walks away anyway, bloody knees and all, and oh yeah, there is also a new little scar right above her left eyebrow, just a little cut that will not even be visible in oh say two weeks give it three tops and she walks to wherever that place is she was waiting on the train to take her. Or maybe she was waiting for someone to arrive from the train, it's never been quite clear; all you know is that she was watching and waiting; all you know is that she is now no longer watching and waiting, but is instead taking matters into her own (sightly cut up from catching her own fall onto the gravel) hands.

In grief, I am the most hilarious person I know.

And then I win both a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award and probably a Nobel Peace Prize also.

And then I no longer feel sad, I am laughing and bowing and blowing kisses all the way to the bank.

-XOXO,