Grief Haibun |
Issue 16
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The thing about grief, they tell me, they say, is not to let it linger, not to wallow in it: purge it. With a therapist, with song, with poetry (write it!), and get on with your life. But how shall I purge my grief for the mother who suckled me, who struggled her whole life with depression, with migraines (shut away in bed in a pitch-black room for days), with shock treatments in the primitive 1940s when it was brutal, when it destroyed her memory, leaving her a half-self, living on the crevice between today and yesterday. Or grief for my father, who knew only sports and the jewelry business, who didn’t know how to express love but whose love I knew well, who overate with abandon, smoked three packs a day, and died too young. How shall I purge the grief for my little brother, erased at seven --- polio --- off to camp one bright summer, a smile on his face, in the grave three days later. How can I purge my grief for a wife, belle of my life, eternal blossom, suddenly dead at 49, no warning, just gone, while here I am writing poetry at 88. So, the thing about grief is: you can never purge it. Hold it, embrace it, it’s holy pain: ease away from it slowly. The wound heals, the scar remains forever.
Leaves cling to the tree no matter how hard the storm some fall far too soon |
David Blumenfeld is a former philosophy professor and associate dean who resumed writing stories and poems after a break of more than forty years. Since 2022, he has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. One of his pieces received a “notable essay” mention in The Best American Essays 2023, another was featured in The Best American Haiku 2023, and 10 of his works were finalists or received other high praise in literary magazines. Blumenfeld also writes children’s stories and poems under the pseudonym, Dean Flowerfield.
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