Portals

on grief and change *TW: death

I feel more amazement for the world. Not some type of sleeping giddiness but an awake, open portal in which I’ve stepped into. Amazement of life and the mere chance of being here. I took a lot of things with me into this new world: the seasons in which I know them as four distinct measures, good dogs, berries. This morning, while reentering into the garden which I’ve left for a good hard week, I found hundreds of marionberries on the vine. I ate them and they are perfect. They are different than when I saw them last. 

I’m not sure when you’re supposed to speak or write about grief. I can’t think about anything else, so I guess now is the time. I wish I could tell the friend I lost about everything in this new portal, the one that she did not get to jump into. There is the creek in which we let some of her blow into, scattering across whatever happens next. There is her bathing suit in my drawer, a lingering artifact of what it means to go through the world without her. There are sloppy pen marks on my upper thigh, imagining what we would look like as ink pals for as long as my body is here. And there was a dead cicada this morning, latched onto one of the marionberries. I couldn’t help but think of her—a body on the wall of what it loves. I’m proud of her for that last brave breath. 

I don’t know what portal she is in. Every morning in Veneta, a mama duck waddles past my glass door, admiring herself. This morning she came to look in the mirror with a duckling by her side. I told the woman who owns the farm and she went out to look for her. The duck was sitting in a patch of grass, motherless. We think my brain made it up. I am calling it the seventh stage of grieving. (Though, as I have learned for myself, all the stages hit and bounce and sprawl upon each other.) 

The worst part about coming home, of getting better, of feeling so uncomfortable every single moment, is that there is still goodness. I don’t want it to be like that. I miss the rain, the mess of things, the unanswered call. I wish she could’ve known how beautiful this day would be. I’m hoping her portal is even better than mine.