by: Laura Browne-Lambert
Kirsten threw another plate at the wall and watched as white ceramic and blue filigree shattered. She really should have put on shoes before doing this, but -- oh well. Another wave of anger and grief tore up from her core with alien ferocity. Three more plates and a teacup joined their compatriots in a heap on the hardwood floor. Kirsten had managed loss before. She knew grief -- had stayed present for all ten years of her father's slow, arduous decline. But the funny thing about that kind of grief -- it did not come all at once. Slow drips weighed her down, day by day, month by month, year by year until all she felt was heavy.
When he finally died, more than a few of her tears were tears of relief. You can do anything if you know that it's finite, her mother had said many times over the course of those ten years. At the time, Kirsten had thought, An end date sure would help though. Each time the thought passed her mind, she felt a little heavier. The day he died, she grieved quietly, pensively. The next day, she went through the motions -- set up the wake, the funeral, the mercy meal. She sent out the obituary and made phone call after phone call, listening to everyone else as they mourned him for the first time. When the time came to lay him to rest, she did the same thing, this time in-person -- held hands, patted shoulders, and offered tissues as the people around her grieved. But her grieving -- at least the worst of it -- was done. She remembered feeling tired, wistful, but the heaviness had been lifted.
CW: grief, loss, mourning
Image Description: A watercolor painting. At the center is a simple flower with buds branching off the stem, reminiscent of older-style porcelain dishware. A sepia-colored circle surrounds the flower.
Credit: Laura Browne-Lambert
This time was different. Her mother's death had been sudden. Kirsten had found her at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by shattered Christmas ornaments. The plastic tree upstairs stood sentinel in the dark room and the cat had curled herself under the dead woman's arm. The animal had waited until the coroner came before darting across the mess of broken glass and disappearing under the sofa. It had taken Kirsten hours to coax the aging feline out from her hiding place and clean the cuts on her toe beans.
This time, Kirsten could not make the phone calls without generating fresh tears. Eventually, a friend of hers had taken the list of numbers, settled herself on the back porch, and called people who were near strangers to her so that Kirsten would not have to speak to one more family member who wanted to hear each heartbreaking detail. Kirsten had almost bailed on the funeral ceremony six times on the way to the church. This grief was different. It came without warning, and it held on, crushing her chest and squeezing her throat.
A growl tore out of Kirsten's throat as she knocked the teapot and serving dish onto the pile and reached back into the hutch to find it empty. She yelled as the tears of frustration blinded her. Glad that her mother was not present to watch her daughter wreck the kitchen she had grown up in, Kirsten shuffled behind the hutch and rocked it until the piece of furniture unbalanced and came crashing down. Most of it remained disappointingly intact, but a few of the more delicate pieces splintered.
Kirsten needed something heavy, like a baseball bat, but her mother had gotten rid of the little league equipment a long time ago. The crowbar would do, but she was not ready to go back to the basement. To welcome the mental images that the creaky, old staircase would draw out of her. She slid her feet through the ceramic chips until she reached the portable toolbox kept under the kitchen sink and pulled out the hammer. Smaller than a bat or a crowbar, but it would do.
Wood splintered and glass shattered under the weight of the tool. Fresh shards skittered across the floor and flung into the air, catching in Kirsten's hair and sweater. She rained her grief down on the piece of furniture until her arms were too tired to continue and her eyes had dried. Kirsten settled cross-legged in the center of her destruction and let the emptiness seep into her bones. She could not call the feeling peaceful, but she preferred it to the wrath. Eventually, she worked her dyed-blond hair back into a ponytail and pulled her sweater off to shake the splinters out. The moving sun had changed the lighting in the room since her rampage had begun.
Mechanically, Kirsten swept the remnants into a couple of large cardboard boxes and taped them up so that the sanitation workers would not end up with a fistful of glass the next time they came by. As she dumped the second box into the bin, she noticed the neat little cuts on her arms for the first time. Sitting under the bathroom light, she discovered a few more on the pads of her feet, each of which she drenched in hydrogen peroxide and taped up robotically.
The doorbell finally pulled her back to the present, even if it did not chase away the emptiness in her chest. Kirsten's feet brought her to the door. She found the superficially cheerful face of the realtor on the other side. Kirsten plastered a smile onto her own cheeks, though it seemed impossible for such a small gesture to conceal the truth and stepped aside.
"You're just in time," Kirsten said. "I only finished cleaning the kitchen a moment ago."
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