“I want him to come back and tell me he loves me one last time”

TUESDAY

I have an irrational fear that I will now cry everywhere. I fear that I’ll be choosing which brand of salad dressing to buy in the grocery store, cart full of snacks and bread and yogurts, so many yogurts, and suddenly I will burst, a broken pipe flooding the store.

“Clean up in aisle four,” they’ll announce. There will be so much water damage their insurance will have to reimburse them.

I fear I’ll lose all direction. I’ll forget I put up a pot of water to boil so I can cook pasta, and when Bracha comes home singing, she’ll ask what’s for supper, and the pot will be filled with boiling water but no pasta.

Stop thinking, Henny. Stop imagining worst-case scenarios.

This is the worst-case scenario.

This is it.

I am living it, and I am still here.

Grief is spilling all over the floor and sticking like juice.  I want to feel him beside me and hold his hand again. I want to see him for one more second. I want to talk to him and tell him about my day.

I sit and listen to the family and friends who come by our home for recollections and dreams. They carry him in their hearts. A memory and a story. They knew him, and they are sharing him, and we are holding those memories.

The house doesn’t smell of my father anymore.

I leave the living room and go to the kitchen.

“Leah,” I say in a strangled voice. “It doesn’t smell of him anymore. It’s like he’s already fading.”

Leah is propped on a bar stool, eating a sandwich. She’d left the living room earlier, pleading a headache.

“Grief is a strange thing,” she says. She is so very calm.

“Let’s go outside, shall we.” It isn’t a real question; she’s already headed outdoors. I follow her. She balances her plate on the railing.

“All the vulnerable conversations happen on the porch,” I remark.

She smiles. “They do. Now let’s talk about grief.”

“Let’s not. I’m not your client, Leah.”

“You asked for help,” she points out.

“I don’t know why.”

She stops to take a bite. “You lost your father.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

“Can you not interrupt?”

I nod, and she starts again. “I’m telling you this as your sister-in-law, not as a therapist. You lost your father, and it’s horrible, all the feelings you’re experiencing are completely reasonable, including the swinging from feeling everything at once to numbing it all away. You get to experience all of it. You get to take your time.”

I chew on my bottom lip. “You do, too,” I say.

“Huh?”

“He was yours, too, and you get to miss him and grieve him as well.”

She smiles. “We had the greatest gift, loving him and having him in our life. I think he taught us well. The people he helped us become will be fine, Henny.”