STANDING ROOM ONLY

Monday, April 25, 2005

GOOD GRIEF

K. is one of the waitresses at breakfast. One of “my girls”. She’s very pretty, a Glamazon red head from Bahston. In The Girl’s Club, she’s not Thinnest Hips or Most Expensive clothes - but what she lacks in LA Ideals she makes up for in Spunk. From what I’ve heard, she’s a Wicked Drunk. She calls me “Hughie”.

“Hughie, I’m so frazzled” she says this morning. Usually this statement at that hour = hangover. Her eyes then tear and she tells me one of her friends Back Home, back in the small Massachusetts town where all her friends from High School still live, was killed last week in a car crash. The whole thing was drug related and sounded pretty gruesome. It’s all very Irish and Middle Class and boozy and Good Will Hunting, so naturally I’m a little fascinated. She feels terrible and upset she couldn’t fly back for the funeral. She called and heard her friends in the background laughing and talking. “They’re all able to grieve” she tells me.

Ah, finally. This is a story about her introduction as a 22 year-old woman to Grief.

Gosh, Doll, let me tell you about Grief. Grief is fucking awesome! You better start buying drinks for Grief, cause as you get older, you and Grief are gonna be good pals. BFF. More things will pass and more people will die and sometimes Grief will be all you have left. It will be the greasy spot on the paper bag after you’ve eaten all the chicken. It proves there was chicken. It reminds you something was there. Stick the paper bag in your mouth and suck it dry.

Easy for me to say.

However this story isn’t about me and how I’ve become accustomed to Grief (in a good way). No, the best I can advise K. is Grief never looks a certain way. It doesn’t always happen at a memorial service, it’s not in a cold body. Sometimes Grief will tap you on the shoulder when you’re in the middle of the mundane, maybe stuffing dirty clothes in a hamper. You’ll pause, remembering when you bought that shirt and who you were with. You’ll grieve for who they were and who you were. You’ll hold your own Memorial Service and “let go”, an unavoidable cliché. “You just have to move on.”

“Hughie, it just gets harder and harder, huh? Life?”

I wonder. We are cushioned by experience and time and the downy pillow of grief when we lay on the rock. “Nah, it’s always hard. How you react is what changes.”

12:59:35 PM

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