The Anticipation of Grief

The anticipation of grief
Lingers and catches
On the softly slurred murmurs
And the mostly-whispered conversations
Of remembrance
and shared sorrow,
Laced together with
Quiet conversations of daily life--
Of forgotten milk and
Late for work
And love.

Or maybe grief
Trickles through them,
A rhythmic--
No:
Arrhythmic
And messy.
A back and forth circling surge
That licks and tickles and laps
Against your heart
And catches your breath.

We wait.
We linger in doorways and
Along narrow aisles
To remember
To witness, at last,
The last gift
This last gift:
A processional of grief
Of Death
and Life
That stumbles
In remembered rhythms
And flows still
In broadening ripples
Tangled with the frayed edges of
This sorrow.

We wait,
In growing expectancy,
In quiet, murmuring patches of
Soft-voiced sadness,
To begin
This ending.
Until the murmuring,
And shuffling
And settling
Stills.

A final anticipation
In that first benediction:
Expectant and holy
and filled.
We witness.
We remember.

And together, we grieve.


In honor
In love
In remembrance of my friend, Larry Kaufman (z"l)