The Anatomy of Grief: An Analogy Through Poetry on Día de los Muertos
A poetic meditation on loss, language and the passage between worlds
By: Meara Simone
In a world where millennials have written dozens of terms for every type of romantic, intimate or changing relationship, we lack the language to process when a relationship Ends.
Capital E ends, whether that is because of a friendship breakup, divorce or, inevitably - death.
When the loss happens to you, it can be a cataclysmic blow, so someone trying to empathize can feel more alienating.
When it happens to someone you love, you can feel as though you are on the other side of a forcefield, able to see how it acutely hurts someone you love, and completely unable to get to them, to take that pain from them. One of my favourite authors, Antoine de St. Exupéry, said it best in many ways when he said “c’est tellement mystérieux le pays des larmes”. Or, in English, “it is such a mysterious place, the land of tears”.
In an effort to create landmarks on such a desolate wasteland, I’ve begun an anthology exploring connections between various types of loss, and places that I felt them.
As Día de los Muertos embraces death as a natural part of life, I am sharing a poem from this analogy that is about Death.
Tendons, which should be pronounced as a French word, is a bilingual poem for my best friend who passed away at the age of 29 from brain cancer. It remains the most wrenching loss of my life. As she was a French teacher, like me, the poem is written in both languages. The French isn’t intended to be hard to understand, though the references to verb tenses may require a dictionary! Being “surplussed” (in this case) refers to when a newer teacher loses their place at a school they are at, because the school board has employed too many teachers for the school.
Tendons
Je suis,
Tu es,
Elle est.
Nous sommes.
We are.
We are sitting on a couch
We are taking notes on First Aid
- Our First conversation -
I am
I am making a joke
You are
You are open mouth laughing
Nous allions (we will)
Nous sommes (we are)
We are becoming best friends.
Nous sommes (we are)
We are sitting on your couch
Green apple sting
Eyes watering
Jack Skellington warbling
You start confiding
No effort connecting
We are best friends -
Nous étions les meilleures amies
English is imperfect
It has no tense
For something that no longer is
But always was
And somehow remains timeless:
L’imparfait is imperfect.
Your hand is twitching
Tendons itching
Neck straining
To hide what’s occurring
Your physio said
It would help - turn your head
I do the same
To help your tendons
You must relax your wrist.
Mais ce n’est pas changé.
The infinitive tense
With infinite change -
Finite consequence.
Metastasized is not the same as change.
I flashback -
Imperfect again -
We are first-year teachers
Planning across oceans
Armed with verb tools:
You must use the subjunctive -
A weapon to incorrection!
You could use the conditional
If the future were to allow it.
Our future - simple, close, real -
Teaching in the same city,
Same couch, Same place.
Here - we are 25 and 27.
You are surplussed,
I am nonplussed,
We are both in Toronto - a plus
We are becoming, changing.
You go to Scotland,
Connect with a thistle
For the nape of your neck,
Representing what is behind you -
No need to look back.
Now all I can do is look back.
It’s all the same tense,
Behind me, with me.
Your hand - clutching the blanket
We try to pry your fingers
But you wince, cry out
I bite my cheeks.
I can’t cry, can’t cry out.
I have to be the strong one.
We were at the curb
Unimportant pavement not close
To our homes - still we sit.
And you ask me about
My friend who died
You are strong for me -
I don’t have to be okay.
My grandfather has a stroke
So I hide under a desk at work
You climb down with me
So I can be - not alone.
But here and now,
I’m 30 and you are 29.
And there is nowhere to hide
You’re here, but I’m already alone.
You are speaking with me,
Eyes fixed on the ceiling
In a conversation I can’t join.
We are here in this moment
This awful, tragic moment
And it is the last moment we have
So I have to stay - should not flashback
Make this time matter,
Make it everything it is, was, could be.
Make it front porches, kids, pets,
Promotions - you would have been
The best guidance counsellor
Would be - nothing conditional about it.
I am sitting bedside,
So much inside
Trying to be present,
This time was a present
Don’t mourn what will be,
Stay present.
A coward would flee,
But the mind doesn’t always listen.
Amidst the waves of anticipatory grief,
I hear the waves in Montpellier.
Nous étions in the south of France,
We drink cheap wine, laugh and dance -
Our whole lives ahead of us.
Parlant français like locals
You know me - I love mixing languages
All portmanteaux, repartee and double entendres:
Tu es ma meilleure amie -
Tuée, ma meilleure amie.
We’re holding hands
At your wedding.
You wear my pearl bracelet -
Something borrowed -
Your hand, cradled and soft in mine.
Your hand now,
Pale, pained, tendons
Gripping, gnarling,
Grasping for life,
As I hold this moment:
Cradled, soft, borrowed time.
We’re at your bachelorette,
White robes and cucumber water,
You’re telling me you might die.
Might, could.
It’s conditional, I say.
And the imperative
Is that you must stay, I say.
My tense trumps yours.
And you laugh and roll your eyes.
My tense breaks the tension.
Correct at the time -
Imperfect now.
I wish I had said -
I should have said -
I wish I could still say -
But that’s not the memory.
So, I hold on to what I have:
Gripping, gnarling, grasping
My own tendons around
Every imperfect moment I have:
Now, the perfect past.
Vicki Harrison says that, "Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim." May the strokes of my pen help calm your own waters, or indeed offer a map to navigating whatever estuaries you are traversing today.
Meara Simone is a teacher, writer and photographer that seeks to find the soul of the matter. Her work is rooted in curiosity, creativity, compassion and authenticity.
As the daughter of a poet and a secondhand bookstore owner, Meara describes herself as a linguistic florist: plucking curated, cataclysmic, conscientious words, she takes ample joy in arranging them until they bloom - hoping you might have a minute to stop and smell the flowers.
