My eyelids drift apart from each other and I find myself awake--an accident, I assure you. The ceiling fan keeps spinning lazy circles above my head. I could lie here and watch it for another few minutes of the rest of my life, but I suppose I should get up...Here we go, then.
I eat something for breakfast, and I am fairly sure it doesn't taste bad, though I am not sure if it does taste at all. I brush my teeth and pull a shirt and a pair of pants from the closet, maneuver them onto my body, and step outside the front door of my apartment building.
Subcontiously knowing it to be the cliche yet correct thing to do, I take a deep breath. It fades into a sigh as I take in my surroundings: the fuzzy gray hue of the sky seemed to be dripping into the dull haze of the rooftops above me, giving the corridors of concrete about me a dark, monotous look about them.
The world started losing its color about a year ago. Those memories are so vague, though I feel this empty pang in my gut, so I can only know that it marked the largest torrent of pain to ever tear through my life, taking with it what meant the most in this world to me. Now, life is only to be seen in blacks and whites.
I catch glance of a pub just up the road and reluctantly decide to venture over there. As I walk in, my nose is filled with the pungent stench of stagnet sorrow. This is how identify it as my world. I sit down at the bar beside a glum looking fellow and signal for the bartender.
"What will it be today?"
"Surprise me," I remark, somewhat perturbed that he decided to bother me with such a trivial detail.
"So what's wrong with you?" I turn to the gentleman next to me and ask.
"Anymore? What is it that isn't wrong with me?"
I give him a second to wallow in his pity before continuing.
"Anything in particular, today?" I offer, quickly losing my patience for another person's problems.
He turned to me, now with tears in his eyes, and whispered the words, "I woke up today, just like any other day, and began to think about her. Only...I couldn't remember what she looked like!" And then he let it out.
I turned to the window of the pub and looked out: people walking by, not really sure where they are or caring where there going. So this is life, lived in grief anyways.
I had already gotten used to it.
"I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief...At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not...Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers."
-A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, pages 10-11
No comments:
Post a Comment