A list of ways people grieve when they’re not aware that they’re grieving
A list of ways people grieve when they’re not aware that they’re grieving:
Cry, out of necessity.
Overspend, shopping bags stand next to your bed like headstones with price tags like name tags inscribed with letters and numbers.
Become too social. In funerals you hear stories praising the deceased, things you never knew, or knew they’re not true. They keep his life going on their tongues. Wet slippery tongues recycling tales of righteousness from funeral to funeral. Heaven must be a redundant place.
Seek solitude. Memories are introverted demons, beloved mind raiders, summon them with the right rituals, cense with the intense smell of his cigarette, call with the voice of his last kiss. Tame with threads that tie them into sense until they stay.
Get a plastic surgery, looking different is effective at making you feel different. Get a brand new face, maybe younger, permanent lip pigments make you look more alive.
Bury yourself in work. Workaholism is a free escape with less guilt. Harness devotion for an immortal career.
Start conflict. Channel what you feel into something you can control, conflicts with family members are encouraged since permanent love is implied, family members might be grieving too, two sisters one stone, have small wars every now and then, or a cascade of them, some wars are set by one person’s death.
Redecorate the house, remove the deceased's room. It’s no longer home you’re stuck in mourning, walls of absence and void casting shadows on you ever since he became a gleam of heavenly light.
Pray. Bring skies closer, pull them with vocal cords. You’ll hear angels laughing at your irrational prayers, are you asking them to bring him back for him to song along with you to a song you think he’d love? for him to walk you at your wedding? for him to recite a call of prayer on your newborn’s right ear?
Lose faith. Unanswered calls eventually die off.
Leave home, for somewhere less haunting. Fresh cities streets faces can offer a you a new life, out of loss might be a ticket away.
Let home leave you. Even if it’s woven into your skin, let it leave cell by cell let it be removed the way thorns are pulled out of wet wool*
Have an affair, fresh flesh is reviving.
Write, vomit on paper, splendid ridding, never complete or enough — words have sharp edges, crowded inside you all things you fail to say.
Start a revolution. Chant louder than your cries, they told you funerals are banned in Syria because they turn into processions, people hold secret funerals in backyards until they’re raided by the police, how lucky are you to have the right to a funeral?
Get married. You need a party. “consecutive funerals in this house, we need to break the curse” your mom said as she arranged your sister’s wedding. She hanged threads of Globe Lights on the house for the engagement party. They dangled from the roof, it looked like the house was crying in glowing tears.
Lose words.
Speak about heavens “O, you serene soul. Come back to your Lord well-pleased. So enter among My servants. And enter into My Garden”**
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* Quote from a Hadeeth describing how souls leave bodies.
** Quote from Quran, (Break of Dawn) No.89 (Verses 27-30). This quote is of significance because in the islamic tradition these verses are used to deliver news about someone’s departure or to commence funerals.