“During deep mourning, Baubo
appears.” James
Hillman
We fold grief back into the
land with our dead. We let the wind take their ashes into the curl of a wave.
She found just the right wave for her brother’s ashes, a rider. The wind
trilled our dill before it came into the soup. This land feeds us. The dill was
first deeply inhaled then touched her many times and places. It almost seemed a
misnomer to call it chicken soup. Dill was the main ingredient and soaked Mrs.
Scattergood’s bones every Friday night when she was growing. Her soul is steeped in dill.
~
The world is light and dark. Memories
recede into the background the way melting snow pulls back from the grass, the
way sleep pulls away from us till we wake.
Do we awake or do we just not sleep so deeply? Mrs. Scattergood woke up that morning with a
sweet sense of connection for the path she was on but couldn’t remember why.
It’s the first time in a long time she remembered not remembering. In the past,
when she felt a brain fog was upon her, it meant that her period was coming up
from the place it slept. Sort of like Grendel’s mother, she used to think.
Quiet but powerful and after something. Though she had it often enough she
should have been prepared. She never was. And that is how the hall emptied of
its great warriors; so she used to think.
Her fog was more about her emotional state this time. It carried her the way descending layers of
hoops supported old fashioned gowns; holding her a distance away from her own
body. Another way grief wraps cotton around your head and separates you from
the world. Coupled with your period, you are far away from what is visceral and
moved into realities that have no maps.
Even so, there always is a knowing within. Whether we understand it, recognize it or can
call upon it at will is another matter. But it resides within. Your friends
will recognize what you’re talking about if you can garner the will to talk
about it, and they’ll nod. At least the women will. A person has to follow her
feelings when sense cannot make sense out of the directions on a compass.
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