Time telescopes when you’re encased in grief. After a grievous loss, days blur into days, moments prolong into agonizing hours, and the only way to endure the pain is to suspend time, to simply exist moment to moment and wait for the pain to ease.
Mrs. Bartolozzi lost her husband. Either he killed himself in the house or possibly he drowned. But the thing that stands out most starkly in her memory of that day is the mud tracked through the house by the police and medics. All she could do was stand to the side and watch them tromp mud through the house. All she could focus on was putting things back to rights. Numb in her grief after they left, in the empty house, she focused on what was in front of her: cleaning up the mess. She scrubbed the mud out of the hall carpet, she gathered up the dirty laundry and stuck it in the washing machine and maybe for a few moments she stared into the water and watched it wash the mud out of a pair of jeans or the blood from a shirt. She’s grateful that in this one case, something can be repaired, something can be put back to rights. The washing machine makes everything clean again. She wishes the rest of life’s messes were that easy.
Later she’s outside walking down by the water – it might be hours later, it might be days or even weeks later. For a moment she has forgotten the pain of loss, then turns and sees one of his shirts on the clothesline, the wind whipping up an arm – and for a horrible moment she thinks it’s him waving at her. She feels the agonizing loss again as she realizes it’s just the shirt. She walks out into the water and watches the waves coming in and out around her legs, the little fish swimming there, in and out, just like the water in the washing machine – she wishes she could put her grief into the washing machine and wash it away. She remembers the little sons she sang when her children helped her with her chores, was it so many years ago? Or maybe just yesterday. She might stride out into the surf now herself, seeking to wash away her grief. Or she may turn and go back to her house.
Time telescopes when you’re encased in grief. After a grievous loss, days blur into days, moments prolong into agonizing hours, and the only way to endure the pain is to suspend time, to simply exist moment to moment and wait for the pain to ease. Mrs. Bartolozzi lost her husband. Either he killed himself in the house or possibly he drowned. But the thing that stands out most starkly in her memory of that day is the mud tracked through the house by the police and medics. All she could do was stand to the side and watch them tromp mud through the house. All she could focus on was putting things back to rights. Numb in her grief after they left, in the empty house, she focused on what was in front of her: cleaning up the mess. She scrubbed the mud out of the hall carpet, she gathered up the dirty laundry and stuck it in the washing machine and maybe for a few moments she stared into the water and watched it wash the mud out of a pair of jeans or the blood from a shirt. She’s grateful that in this one case, something can be repaired, something can be put back to rights. The washing machine makes everything clean again. She wishes the rest of life’s messes were that easy. Later she’s outside walking down by the water – it might be hours later, it might be days or even weeks later. For a moment she has forgotten the pain of loss, then turns and sees one of his shirts on the clothesline, the wind whipping up an arm – and for a horrible moment she thinks it’s him waving at her. She feels the agonizing loss again as she realizes it’s just the shirt. She walks out into the water and watches the waves coming in and out around her legs, the little fish swimming there, in and out, just like the water in the washing machine – she wishes she could put her grief into the washing machine and wash it away. She remembers the little sons she sang when her children helped her with her chores, was it so many years ago? Or maybe just yesterday. She might stride out into the surf now herself, seeking to wash away her grief. Or she may turn and go back to her house.