A man of little words

sorry, can't talk, i'm eating fruit

Anna’s death has felt like two worlds. In one world I am nearly wrecked and in the other, the world goes on—which wrecks me, too. They’re the same world, but I wouldn’t know that. When someone dies, on one hand, it is easy. There is nothing to do about someone being gone forever except to think about them. A flaming wick is celebration; eating food is celebration; mourning is celebration. 

After her death, talking was my way of celebration. (I also had just gone through a “personality change” in which I had been sick for three months straight and was surviving off several different allergy medicines or methods to stay somewhat healthy. In other words, zyrtec made me wild.) I said every thought that ran through my mind. I thought that if I kept talking about her, we might just keep her alive. I still think that. I just couldn’t stop talking, and I don’t mean to judge myself, I think humans have to cling onto something. We don’t know what else to do about death. We rarely know what to do about being alive. 

Maybe it is because I’m off the zyrtec, or maybe it is because I’m in a different world of grieving, but I talk less now. Recently I had to tell someone that one of my best friends died, someone who didn’t know her, and I had to hide my face contorting into expressions, mimicking what somebody might believe to be laughter. My face half open, the head pleading with the jaw to shut. It’s not real laughter, not joy. It’s the body’s way of defending anxiety, confusion, stress, the discomfort of living in the world without someone you love. 

…

Words are few these day. I live on an orchard and there is a man of little words, or so I’ve been told. He’s been here for over twenty years and he knows the trees like one would know their children. He’s been a good dad, he has never left. But he is a man of little words. I like him; I am also a man of little words these days. 

I like to think I iron my brain by farming and writing. In one world I talk and in the other my hands work fast or slow. And one does not fit one container, they can be intertwined. I iron my brain out with long, hot strokes until it’s finally tired at the end of the day and goes to sleep.

…

At the moment I am car-less and lease-less which makes me chuckle because last year I listed on a sticky note everything that was my responsibility and it was a big plate, as some people say. All up until July I had two cars and two leases. I focus on less now. I focus on my worlds. My days are: write, plant, sheet mulch, harvest, sheet mulch, harvest, write. If I begin my day by making sentences, then I write all day long.

When I sit on the front porch there is a hummingbird that flutters so close it makes a breeze past my face. At night, before the sun sets, I take a long walk around the apple trees, through the pears, and finally to the peaches where I sit underneath. Last night I ate a peach that looked so much like the sun at 8:15pm, I could’ve pretended I was eating the sun. 

I pretended I ate the sun, I was god, and I made everybody alive and good. Just for a few minutes.