M: “I was widowed at a very young age. My therapist suggested I attend a grief support group to share with others in similar circumstances. When I walked into the room, I was struck by the realization that everyone was at least 25 years older. And while we shared grief in common, the concerns of these older widows were very different from mine. On many levels, we just couldn’t connect. I also read stories online of other young widows who experienced similar feelings of alienation in grief support groups filled with older women. I wanted to write about this disparity, but didn’t know how to approach it. Then about a year ago, I attended a reading by Lucille Clifton. She told an unrelated story about driving through a forest with a friend, and their joy upon catching a glimpse of a rare albino deer. The more I thought about that misfit deer, the more I realized Ms. Clifton had unknowingly offered me a perfect metaphor for my experience. I became the albino deer, and I hope that my poem will speak to other young widows who find themselves lost among the elders of the herd.”
M: “I’ve heard it said that sometimes poets must lie to get to the truth. However with this poem, I decided just to tell the truth, and hoped that would do.”
Comment from the photographer, James Bernal: “It might come from my background of reading into photographs and making up little stories about the subjects, but I loved everything about ‘Clean White Sheets.’ It was very funny but also very real and honest—I almost feel as though the author truly knew something I didn’t about the recently deceased. I feel like I know who that person was and the life he lived and that he was loved. Thanks M, I’ll never be able to look at this photo without imagining a lonely night at Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn.”
“For Those Who Never Know What to Say to Widows” by MPosted by Rattle
M
FOR THOSE WHO NEVER KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO WIDOWS
Two months after the funeral, leave your wife and two teenage sons, drive fourteen hours straight from Eagle to walk up our porch unannounced. Open the garage door the way people used to. The remote is broken. Fix it. Take four truckloads of scrap lumber, crumbling drywall, and junk appliances to the dump. Cook a chili so fine we forget our lost appetites. Open a bottle of anything that costs less than a sympathy card. Lie behind us on the futon. Touch us, because other than one 20-minute appointment with a gynecologist’s plastic speculum, we’ve gone from being touched all the time to being held as if we’d spent half a hot day cleaning Cutthroats from Gore Creek. Tell us that story. Again. The one where you and Nick drop acid and drive his flat-black Valiant with no dashboard to Wyoming to hunt jackalope. In a blizzard. About getting to milk one because the females sleep belly up. Say, No, honest. Waking up in the Casper rescue mission wearing other people’s clothes. Say, Hey, it was monomyth, babe. Sleep in the guest room. After breakfast, tie down Nick’s ’74 Suzuki in your truckbed with red ratchet straps, slap the seat once she’s secure. Say, He was an original. Kiss us like you mean something, even though you don’t know what the hell that is. Maybe it’s just three decades of Nick, and we’re the last thing that touched him. Take I-80 east. Manage to keep your shit together until Elko, at least.
M: “Many widows I’ve spoken to have told me that after their husband’s death, they felt a wall had gone up between themselves and the rest of the world. I was locked behind this wall myself, so far from everything I might consider an everyday life. This poem was born of a deep desire to tell the truth, which I believe many widows can’t or won’t do. We know people are afraid of us, afraid of saying the wrong things. This fear as well as the standard platitudes others hide behind often only add bricks to that wall. Somehow my husband’s best friend of 30-plus years knew there aren’t any right words. He simply trusted in our shared grief enough not to fear being real with me. I pray this poem will give people permission to let go of fear, reach through the wall, and have faith in their instincts.”
“To A Husband, Saved By Death At 48” by MPosted by Rattle
M
TO A HUSBAND, SAVED BY DEATH AT 48
You will not see me, now
older than you are.
You will not watch my toenails
harden into turtle shells.
You will not complain about my face
creams costing more than most people
spend on groceries in a month.
Nor see me apply them to my hands
because no matter how young a woman’s face looks,
it’s always the back of her hands
that give her away.
You will never think of me as a suitable gift
for a toddler on Christmas,
shrunken to doll size, wrapped in skin
as thin as bargain paper. You will not be the one
to drive me home wet
from the Lloyd Center Mall
where restrooms are hidden away like exclusive resorts
down remote corridors.
You will not need to remind me
to take my umbrella when it’s raining,
nor find my car keys
in the refrigerator next to the eggs I bought yesterday
and we will not laugh about it.
You will not hear me struggling with nouns.
You will never be awakened late on Friday evening
by a ringing phone, wife gone from your bed,
Detective Copeland saying she was found asking people
to help her find her husband
at a Taco Bell on Burnside
that stays open from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
every day but Sunday.
Someone else will sit with me in the ER on New Year’s Eve
listening to an alcohol poisoned teenage boy
vomit in the next room while we wait for news
about the golf ball on my temple, received for nothing more complicated
than slipping off a curb.
You will not see me without my teeth
or my gallbladder.
Never need to learn I’ve been sexually inappropriate with Paul
in The Pearl Memory Care Residence at Kruse Way
where I live apart from you for the first time in fifty years.
You will not be the one to close my eyes.
M: “So, I was at my father’s apartment changing his bed linens on Saturday, and I said, You know, Mrs. De Luca thinks we’re always mad at each other. He said, Why the hell would she think that? I said, She thinks we talk mean. He said, Tell that old biddy to go back to fussing at her damn cat. I said, Do you need me to do anything else around here? He said, No, thanks. Get the hell out of here and go have some fun. I said, You do know I love you, don’t you, you old bastard? He said, Why are you being so nice to me? Did the doctor call? Am I dying or something?”