9:43 p.m. - 2009-03-15
Gordon Suddenly Gone
Paper dolls
shuffle about the room
where one is missing.
It is the one with the life
who is suddenly dead.
Laughter and small talk
accompany not a ghost of a ghost.
Empty suits and dresses,
finger food,
it is as though he never was
in this sterile land of grotesque
smiles.
So this is how they grieve,
this family I have married into.
He is 3000 miles away,
my groom,
and yet so not the man
convulsing in my arms ...
was it yesterday?
He has transformed into them,
his father barely garnishing a nod
at this lively affair.
Picked a bad day to die, a Friday,
says sibling one
in monotone.
The crowd approves!
Yes, can't book the obit,
can't book the funeral,
picked a bad day to die, he did!
Who are these stick figures
feigning life when the one alive
is suddenly dead?
Sychophants, picking at hors d'ouvres
with greasy grins.
Walk-on parts, suddenly stars
in the lime light, freshly abandoned.
This was a life I barely knew
and yet the stark reality
bites at the hem of my skirt
like a pack of dogs,
3000 miles this side of the party.
I am alone with my silly, inappropriate
grief.
Who am I among the major players
who know only that
he picked a bad day to die.
Downright incovenient,
says sibling two.
The crowd begs more.
I listen to sibling three
through the receiver,
no longer the flesh and blood man
sobbing in the night,
was it yesterday?
He is okay, he says. Okay.
Everyone is okay.
Even the sorrowing widow
had better be okay.
Tears are not a crowd-pleaser,
not in this crowd.
How do I fit in this family
I have married?
My language gives me away.
Why am I the one who's not okay?
It feels wrong, selfish,
not okay to be not okay.
How do I fit back into the crook
of his neck,
on his return from Mars?
How do we resume
when I have somehow stolen his grief?
Where do we go,
knowing that a life can evaporate
without so much as a nod?
How do we value a love
knowing a love can abruptly end
on an inconvenient day?
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