You know that cry you get when the love of your life dies? The one that sounds like your dead lover is pulling you down into the grave with them, or as least tearing at your tethered souls, to perhaps; apologize? There should be a word for that cry. There should be a word that’s saved just for that specific moment. Maybe it’s the first morning after it happens; after the death, when you wake up and for a second you don’t recall. Then out of some part of you, that cry comes through remembering, stabbing you with a pickaxe to your heart.
You know that day you stand in the grocery store, and stare at a bag of beans, or touch potatoes a certain way, or find yourself taking a breath to turn around to share a joke? Then suddenly it hits you halfway, because they aren’t there with you, so you just freeze. You stare off. Remembering the birthday when he made a bean salad that was cold that your mother-in-law hated, or the potatoes you asked him to wash, but he misheard you and stood there ‘watching’ them instead. That joke is gone now. The inside special, look to each other, eye to eye is lost. There should be a word for that loss.
On those days after it happens; maybe you go and buy a black dress you’ll wear once, but they don’t have in your size, so you choose the far too expensive one knowing you couldn’t care how you look, but you buy it anyway. The shop assistant tells you what a beautiful day it is, and asks if the dress is for a special occasion. She says you’ll look elegant and suggests you get a lovely cardigan; still, you are breathless and tired and fucking angry all at once at her fucking stupid little smiling face that didn’t know him. Why didn’t everyone know him? There should be a word for that day.
Or when you call the florist, and the florist tells you what stunning blooms are in season and gushes on the phone to you when you tell her your preferences. Then she lists off all the species of lilies she has, because you say you want lilies, and maybe some peonies too, because you think about how they were in your bouquet when you got married, and she rambles on and on, interrupting you and talking about shape and design. Eventually, she’ll write down the details with the phone crushed against her chin and mumble and hum a little, repeating the date and time and when she asks “what’s the occasion?” you finally say it’s for a fucking “coffin spray,” thinking there should be a word for that conversation.
Or when you listen to the sullen music in the casket showroom and think about how the song would be enough to kill anyone, and whisper to yourself, “Are they trying to make me cry?” You shiver a little and think it must be the refrigeration at the back, and you wonder how cold everything must be; all those bodies. His body too. Then the assistant talks to you as a caricature of a mortician, and he looks precisely as you’d expect him to look. His sullenness is almost a routine, and he’s overly gloomy which somehow makes him seem overly gangly. Why is he so tall and thin? You watch him speak and ponder if he’d started out as a car salesman, and if this job is a step up or a step down for him? You wonder if he ever sees the people he sold cars to come through there, after an accident, now needing a casket for themselves—a different form of transportation.
It annoys you that they can make to feel guilty in your grief because you don’t want the Star Legacy or whatever the fuck its called because you know he wouldn’t have wanted you to buy something so lavish, but you feel cheap and useless and get an expensive one anyway. You buy the one for ground burial, so it looks fancy for the viewing, but you worry it’ll be a problem, thinking you should have bought one for cremation, but you do it anyway. You pay from the account you were both saving money to have your wedding anniversary trip, and you hate yourself for it; momentarily thinking you should go yourself anyway. Still, you wouldn’t, so you hand over the card and say ‘Savings’ and you think that portion of the money would have been spent on that day trip to the island you had spoken about and you feel shame again. There should be a word for that feeling.
But don’t forget about the stories; the ones you find you tell people with the word ‘we’ in it; or the ones where you refer back to ‘him,’ or say how funny something is because “one time we…” You realize all your stories are ‘us’ stories. All your history is ‘us’ history, and there is this stark realization that you have to start making new things to add to conversations; so you don’t talk about ‘him’ all the time, because it’s so hard for you, and so very awkward for them. But fuck them by the way. Because they didn’t lose him. But it’s more than the past stories; what about the future now? What about the ‘going to be’s’ and the plans, and the ‘growing old’ part? Or the ‘sickness and health’ part; what about those years? Why didn’t you get those? Why did you have to skip to the ‘death do us part’ bit instead? There should be a word for those years.
The silences are hard now because he always filled a part of it. There was a safety in knowing that in your aloneness, in the quiet of the house, you could whistle or call his nickname, or hum the tune he hated and he’d answer with a reply at some point. Then he’d offer you tea, which he made just right, which you now spill because you trip on the fucking floorboard he said he’d replace but put off. You realize it’s still not fixed and think, “who’s going to do it now?” Then you go to the garage to get a ladder to reach the toolbox in the cupboard that only he could reach, and there are spiders there which he is supposed to kill; but he can’t do it now because death got him first. You fucking want to hit his face, because he let you down; you never thought he’d let you down. You don’t know how to use the drill, or the step ladder, or fix the electricity when it trips and the spiders are so much bigger now, and you fucking hate him for it. There should be a word for that hate.
And when all the dates and firsts happen. Either the birthday, or the Christmas, or the day you married or the death day. When they come around for the first time, you start thinking of all the ‘first times.’ The first kiss, or the date, or the first fuck with the hurry of your bodies that lay with each other late into the morning and you think about it like it’s a ‘first no more’ and he’s just ‘another lover’ now. And the fucking death day. That god dammed day when it happened that they call anniversary? Why do they call it by that word like it’s a fucking celebration? You think to yourself why you didn’t fall apart the same way you did last year; when he left you, when it happened, when you had that scream in the morning, that cry without a name.
Then you think of the first year to the day and the exact moment you got the call, when they found him, or when you asked the person to repeat the story, or laughed in denial for some reason, and said, “wait let me wake up a bit so I can understand you,” even though you understood. You didn’t accept it then, and you don’t now, and somehow the bargaining doesn’t work.
Then you look at your children and their fucking faces. Those fucking faces that keep looking like his face, and sound like his laugh and carry his smile. And you wish they got the brown eyes and not the blue eyes because you just want to get lost in them, but it isn’t ‘him’ looking back at your face holding it together on that ‘anniversary’ day like that ‘cry’ without a name.
Just like the time when you were at the grocery store when you had to forget that joke, where there wasn’t a word for that loss, or the day when you bought that dress and you wondered why everyone else wasn’t in mourning with you and there wasn’t a word for that feeling. Or the conversation you had with the florist and how you had resentment for her joy and there wasn’t a word for that realization in that conversation. Or the time when you felt you managed to get the coffin wrong and there wasn’t a phrase for the feeling and the thoughts you had about his cold body or the weight of his ashes.
You know that guilt you got thinking about the holiday you couldn’t take and the fact that you felt shame in your grief? You didn’t think you’d ever feel happy again, and there wasn’t a word to explain it, or a word to describe the years that you lost, and the years that were due to you. You know that part of you that felt hate too; when there wasn’t a word for that hate inside you because he was gone and because he failed you. You never thought a word ‘disappoint’ could feel so unless because it didn’t describe how big it felt in his absence. There wasn’t a word for the firsts, there wasn’t a name for the fact that you had to forget them, there wasn’t something to describe or mark the aloneness either.
You know that occasion when you stood with your children, on that date, that fucking anniversary by the second, when you got fucking balloons. The ones you planned to release with the kids, because the pigeons or doves or whatever the fuck, were sick or had flu, so you got them instead to replace them. Like trying to replace him. You pretended it didn’t look rushed or unplanned, when all you’d been thinking about for months were counting the seconds coming up to that date. You try to ignore that fact that all they had at the store with those fucking balloons, the last ones at the last minute, the last moments you had to prove to him that he mattered, and it screams inside you as loud as the cry without a name and the wail without a word. The only letters you see are those printed words on those fucking balloons. Of all the words, all the words without names, all the words that don’t exist you’re faced with those words on those balloons and it pulls at you like that cry forcing that feeling of complete emptiness. You know that feeling when all you have is nothing, all you think is ‘let go’, and all you hold are balloons saying ‘congratulations?’
There should be a word for that too.
by 
Amy-Jean Muller
Latest posts by Amy-Jean Muller (see all)
- There should be a word - February 26, 2021
Yes!
Raw and oh so real.
A beautiful blast of anguish.