Observables #44
on grief and farm sounds and more grief
Last week I asked you readers to weigh in on the places you’ve been showing your courage. My friend sent me a message about how she’s being brave running a shuttle service for the spiders in her home, depositing them on the grass outside her door. Then she sent me this poem. Francisco is responding to an earlier poem—Allowables—by Nikki Giovanni. Both poems are, as she says, also about white people murdering Black people. I am filled with grief after reading the poems, but also amazed at how a poet can find an image so apt to encapsulate hope.
Mercy by Rudy Francisco
She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
…
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
…
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
…
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
And then more violence happened even as I was writing this post.
Farm sounds: the two tone ‘hoo’ of the mourning dove; small batch fireworks by my favourite friends down the road; my sister aptly concluding about me that I am “grief forward” in my living—just like a wine might be fruit forward; Violet in the Wellington Tim Hortons bathroom: “I don’t think they used their space rightly. Only one sink?” - making her truly our daughter and layout obsessed; the spring of the trampoline, the sound of the trowel digging into dirt; the crack of the plastic container being broken apart to pull out a seedling; the cat meowing as she rolls in a pile of hay.
Because life carries on during grief. I remember how strange it was that while Violet was having heart surgery (seven years ago now), people were still outside walking, driving in cars with places go. My world, on the other hand, had completely stalled.
These years later what a privilege it is to get to make a list of mundane things.
Body suits and crop tops for the summer of 2022
On the other hand, who cares what we are wearing. What should we wear to collectively grieve?
Today’s podcast is all about grief and how we process it. Let us know if it’s a useful conversation for you too. Are you on our newsletter list? Sign up for a weekly recipe!