Aftermath Part 3: Metaphors

I was driving home from the Mall a couple of days ago. As I passed the place the Jonathan’s butcher used to be, tears began rolling down my face and the great emptiness welled up inside. The butcher’s place is no longer there, they went out of business before Jonathan died. But the memory was just enough to trigger the grief all over again.

I never know what’s going to do that. It can be the sight of a photograph of Jonathan, even one that’s always in sight. A song. A place we went together. Sometimes the pain just strikes out of nowhere, with no obvious trigger. Even sleep is no refuge; I woke up crying Monday morning.

Trying to explain to someone else how this feels is difficult. There are no words to describe these feelings. Even if there were, they would be horrible words, unpronounceable words. Sometimes I feel that the only thing that could give voice to these feelings would be an inarticulate howl of pain and anguish and fear and anger. So I find myself relying on similes and metaphors.

We all know about the 800-pound gorilla. The knowledge of Jonathan’s death is an 800-pound gorilla crammed into my head with me. If I just sit quietly and stare out the window I can ignore the fact that it’s pressed up against me in here, and it might choose to ignore me. If I move at all, I bump into it. That might trigger an attack. And sometimes it simply chooses to savage me.

It is like trudging through a desert. Walking through loose and shifting sand is exhausting. Walking through the heat is exhausting. The desert extends as far as the eye can see (possibly to infinity) in all directions. There are occasional oases – time with Benjamin, lunch with a good friend – but life is just trudging on through the desert…

From the closing of The Little Prince:

Now my sorrow is comforted a little. That is to say – not entirely. But I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak. It was not such a heavy body… And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells…

But there is one extraordinary thing… When I drew the muzzle for the little prince, I forgot to add the leather strap to it. He will never have been able to fasten it on his sheep. So now I keep wondering: what is happening on his planet? Perhaps the sheep has eaten the flower…

At one time I say to myself: “Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully…” Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars.

But at another time I say to myself: “At some moment or other one is absent-minded, and that is enough! On some evening he forgot the glass globe, or the sheep got out, without making any noise, in the night…” And then the little bells are changed to tears…

Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has – yes or no? – eaten a rose…

Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: Is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes…

The rose is gone, the desert has no well. For me, the stars weep…