Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers

But it was good, and she was lovely, and we sat up smoking her strong cigarettes out of the window and talking about everything we’d ever read that wasn’t by or about Sylvia or Ted.

She left and I felt nervous about feeling cheerful. I walked around the flat as if I’d only just met it, long strides and over-determined checking of surfaces. I looked in on the boys.

*

When I came down Crow was on the sofa impersonating me pumping and groaning.

We seem to take it in ten-year turns to be defined by it, sizeable chunks of cracking on, then great sink-holes of melancholy.

Same as anyone, really.

We used to think she would turn up one day and say it had all been a test.

We used to think we would both die at the same age she had.

We used to think she could see us through mirrors.

We used to think she was an undercover agent, sending Dad money, asking for updates.

We were careful to age her, never trap her. Careful to name her Granny, when Dad became Grandpa.

We hope she likes us.

Dearest boy,

One Christmas about three years after your mother died, I had put you and your brother to bed and I was sprawled on the sofa drinking red wine and reading R. S. Thomas when she walked in and said Hello. She was naked except for her socks (never a good look even when she was alive). She tripped on the rug, stumbled, and banged her knee on the coffee table. We went upstairs and I put some arnica cream on the bruise and we bickered about the mess in the medicine cupboard. Then we filled your stockings with presents and tiptoed into your rooms to lay them by your beds. I went to sleep and your mother sat up reading for a while.

That is completely true.

Are you being good? Don’t worry about doing stuff or not doing stuff, it doesn’t matter.

Love,

Dad

One brother sat quietly inside the brother bits and tried hard but felt angry. It’s me. I had a difficult few years, now I’m fine, but I’m quiet and I’m unsentimental. My brother calls out KRAAAA and talks to them. The terrible years of my life were stained crow. And here’s a little secret. I’ve never even read it. I don’t like Hughes and I don’t like poetry.

Insanity. Pretentiousness. Denial. Indulgence. Nonsense.

I took an air rifle into a field when I was a teenager to shoot crows. I shot one and wanted to keep on going. I wanted to pile up a bonfire pile of dead black birds with nasty beaks. But they are so clever, they knew what I was up to and kept just far enough away.

I went back to the one dead crow just in time to see it limping off across the flint-stubbled ground.

Dad had a few girlfriends but never married again, which seemed to be the best thing for everyone.

I’m either brother.

Moving on, as a concept, was mooted, a year or two after, by friendly men on behalf of their well-intentioned wives. Women who loved us. Women who knew me as a child.

Oh, I said, we move. WE FUCKING HURTLE THROUGH SPACE LIKE THREE MAGNIFICENT BRAKE-FAILED BANGERS, thank you, Geoffrey, and send my love to Jean.

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.

So I walked into their room in the navy blue middle of the night in summertime and listened to them breathing. Duvets smashed and tangled, little soft limbs emerging from robot and pirate print cotton and assorted soft toys. My wife and I used to come and tuck them in and marvel at how perfect they were asleep. We laughed at how beautiful they were — ‘it’s insane!’ we said. It was, insane.

And I stood and breathed their air and considered — as always — things like fragility, danger, luck, imperfection, chance, being kind, being funny, being honest, eyes, hair, bones, the impossible hectic silent epidermis rejuvenating itself, never nervous, always kissable, even when scabbed, even so salty I made it, and I felt so many nights utterly, totally yanked apart by how much I loved these children, and I asked them, loudly:

Do you want to MOVE ON?

No reply.

Should we think about MOVING ON? The swish and ruffle of air in nostrils, clacking tongues, sighs, the gentle invisible concentrated upper air of a room in the top of a flat where young people are dreaming.

No, I said, I agree, we are doing just fine.

Crow joined me as I left, shutting the door, and got me in a cosy headlock.

You’re not alone, kid.

Once upon a time I am grown up, I have a child. And a wife. And a car. I sound a bit like Dad.

We drive through the Chilterns, the Downs, the Moors, the Broads, singing British Holidays for British People . My Dad did that, he showed us Britain. Cader Idris, Shingle Street, Mallyan Spout. Now my tiny son shouts ‘cra’ when he sees a crow, because when I see a crow I shout KRAAAA.

I tell tales of our family friend, the crow. My wife shakes her head. She thinks it’s weird that I fondly remember family holidays with an imaginary crow, and I remind her that it could have been anything, could have gone any way, but something more or less healthy happened. We miss our Mum, we love our Dad, we wave at crows.

It’s not that weird.

‘Listen-to-this, too-good-to-miss, rump-pum-pa-pum-paar-rrum.’

Parp!

‘Go away Crow.’

MAN How do you know when you’ve found something worth picking at?

BIRD Well much of it has to do with a state of readiness, which is both instinctual (the hungers, the vices etc.) and pragmatic (nice-looking crisp packet, nice-looking widower). You’ll remember with some of my early work with you, that what appeared to be primal corvid vulgarity was in fact a highly articulated care programme, designed to respond to the nuances of your recovery.

MAN Did I respond as well as you’d hoped?

BIRD Better. But the credit should go to the boys, and to the deadline. I knew that by the time you sent your publisher your final draft of the Crow essay my work would be done.

MAN I would be done grieving?

BIRD No, not at all. You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing, and something you don’t need a crow for.

MAN I agree. It changes all the time.

BIRD Grief?

MAN Yes.

BIRD It is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.

MAN Like?

BIRD Where to begin. Oh, feathers. Turds? Waves? Honeycomb? String? Intestines? Bones? Feathers, said that, cat-flaps, wait, no, wait, hats, maps, traps, books, rooks, creeks, peek in my beaks in my …

MAN This is ridiculous.

I feel that if my wife’s ghost had ever haunted me, now would be the time she’d start whispering, ‘You need to ask Crow to leave.’

This is what we know of Dad. He was a quiet boy. He drifted off on family walks, he doodled and drew and his feelings were easily hurt by rough kids at school. He didn’t have a head for sums. He spent the first twenty years of his life reading books, being not-bad-but-not-skilled at football and waiting for Mum. He loved the Greek myths and Russians and Joyce. He was waiting to be our Dad.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love and they were truly dry-stone strong and durable and people speak of ease and joy and spontaneity and the fact that their two smells became one smell, our smell. Us.

Afterwards he was quieter. He was, for two or three years, by all accounts, very odd. He had the perpetual look and demeanour of someone floating, turning in the beer-gold light of evening and being surprised by the enduring warmth. A rolled-over shoulder half-squint half-smile. Caught baffled by the perplexing slow-release of sadness for ever and ever and ever. Which I suppose, looking back, was because of us. He couldn’t rage. He couldn’t want to die. He couldn’t rail against an absence when it was grinning, singing, freckling in the English summer tweedle dee tweedle dum in front of him. Perhaps if Crow taught him anything it was a constant balancing. For want of a less dirty word: faith.