Granny Frick
It is curious, how death can articulate a distance that life, in its fragile hope, can only intimate. For the living, there is tomorrow, next year, the expectation, however tenuously constructed, of continuum. & now there is only a stark rupture, an irrevocable goodbye. My grandmother is simply gone. & from this distance, it is not the finality of the funeral that would compel me there, or saying goodbye to her corporeal form. Her absence is absolute, & no formality of parting would do anything to contradict that passing. Instead, it is the draw of those surrounding her now, those in whom there is still the opportunity for communion, my family, their hearts & their love & their enduring life. The death of a loved one reminds us of the basic irreversible fact that loved ones die, without exception. & from this distance, it is the longing for family’s presence that I feel keenly. Longing, because desire is drawn over distances we sometimes can’t traverse.