novella
Active Member
Mourning is a funny thing. Like a pulse throbbing in your wrist, there beneath the skin, but you’re only really conscious of it occasionally, when a particular unexpected memory rises up, even just the memory of loss, and you feel that empty place, cold and warm at the same time. People, even you, might think that you're done with it, and then you feel it again, alone and private, like a cool spot in the ocean when you’re swimming, and maybe you wonder for just a second whether it will stay there or move on in the current.
Years ago, people mourning moved through life wrapped in death, yards and yards of black, dull cotton and rustling taffeta, veils and gloves and jet beads, locks of hair in secret lockets, to gaze at blankly, remembering something once flashing in the sun. Black for a year or more, so that everyone knew it was happening, a private ritual made public. A wreath on the door. A silent piano.
It isn’t like that anymore. People expect you to shut up about it, get over it, move on. They say it's good for you. Lose the visible traces, erase the empty spaces. Which is why Lane felt guilty whenever it happened, whenever the loss rose up in her throat and filled her chest, always a new surprise, as if she had forgotten for a moment. It had become a secret, without her wanting it to, like the closetful of her mother’s clothes she couldn’t give away. Chinese dresses, a velvet cape, a sequined jacket, tiny Gucci boots. Someone would see those things, still carefully arranged by season, and think, oh, so that’s how it is. She’s gotten stuck.
Which wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t even opened the closet for months. Except once in the summer, remembering a brown and cream cotton shirt her mother had brought from Hawaii that would have looked so nice. She carefully took it out, off the padded hanger, and slipped it on. But it seemed that her mother’s perfume still clung to the fabric, that something too intimate still inhabited the soft collar, the carved wooden buttons. Whether that was true or not, Lane decided not to wear the shirt, returned it to the hanger, and shut the door. But not before running her hand, just for a second, across the sealskin coat, forever unwearable, but so soft she could have buried her head in it right there and sobbed, as if the fur, so deep and dark, could muffle anything. Another thing to regret.
Years ago, people mourning moved through life wrapped in death, yards and yards of black, dull cotton and rustling taffeta, veils and gloves and jet beads, locks of hair in secret lockets, to gaze at blankly, remembering something once flashing in the sun. Black for a year or more, so that everyone knew it was happening, a private ritual made public. A wreath on the door. A silent piano.
It isn’t like that anymore. People expect you to shut up about it, get over it, move on. They say it's good for you. Lose the visible traces, erase the empty spaces. Which is why Lane felt guilty whenever it happened, whenever the loss rose up in her throat and filled her chest, always a new surprise, as if she had forgotten for a moment. It had become a secret, without her wanting it to, like the closetful of her mother’s clothes she couldn’t give away. Chinese dresses, a velvet cape, a sequined jacket, tiny Gucci boots. Someone would see those things, still carefully arranged by season, and think, oh, so that’s how it is. She’s gotten stuck.
Which wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t even opened the closet for months. Except once in the summer, remembering a brown and cream cotton shirt her mother had brought from Hawaii that would have looked so nice. She carefully took it out, off the padded hanger, and slipped it on. But it seemed that her mother’s perfume still clung to the fabric, that something too intimate still inhabited the soft collar, the carved wooden buttons. Whether that was true or not, Lane decided not to wear the shirt, returned it to the hanger, and shut the door. But not before running her hand, just for a second, across the sealskin coat, forever unwearable, but so soft she could have buried her head in it right there and sobbed, as if the fur, so deep and dark, could muffle anything. Another thing to regret.
