Apr 11 | A Cup of Tea
In a crisis the English always make a cup of tea, so that was what my husband did.
I never got to drink it, though, because Mum came and got me, and that meant that we had to make a pot at her house. So we did, and I drank too much and got jittery, and we looked at photos after crying in each others’ arms.
On the morning after your father dies, you’ll eat leftover pizza and cry and think, “We were supposed to go fishing. Ah, fuck.” You’ll console your grieving stepmother and say, “We’ll get through this together,” and wonder if now she’ll finally understand that you’re not a child and then feel bad for the thought. You’ll head to Community Worship at school hoping to God no-one says, “Don’t cry; he’s with Jesus now,” because if someone does you can’t be held responsible for the consequences. You also hope to God no-one says, “Think of what this will do for your ministry. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” because you’ll croak, “I’d rather be a shitty priest with a dad.”
Pink and white and yellow tulips will come from your beloved friend overseas, and they’re beautiful but you’ll let your husband thank the florist because you’re not sure what to say.
Your denominational mentor — a jewel of a priest who agrees when you say dispassionately, “Everyone dies, big deal,” and says, “Yes,” when you say “If anyone tells me to rejoice because he’s in heaven I’m going to tell them to fuck right off,” and means it — will drive you to a liquor store so you can buy a bottle of wine for tonight ’cause why the hell not? Friends will give hugs and no-one will say all the things you are steeling yourself to hear because of course they won’t; there likely won’t be any words at all, except maybe “There are no words,” and that’s how you want it because most of the ones on offer are just shit: already consumed, partially digested, no nutritional value, and totally unrecognizable now, all original truth and light gone, and they stink anyway so who cares. You’ll thank God that no-one tries to play pastoral care superhero and try to convince you that God is in this dark time, because, hell, you know that, know it like the shade of his eyes or the feel of his hugs, tighter and longer as he got older, or the sound of his chuckle, the one that made things all better but could also be totally infuriating, or the deep silence that said, “I love you, daughter, but that kind of bone deep truth has no words: truth is these blue mountains and they sing a better song than the one in my heart. We are Morgans and our feelings are carried inside us like small grey stones at the bottom of a river. Best to let them lie, or you’ll slip and they’ll sink you.” (And you never could and that was okay: his river ran still and deep enough for the both of you.)
What happens now?
What happens now as you take notes on what to discuss about arrangements and the service and should we even have a service or just a wake and how to pass the time between now and then? What happens when you make plans to head up north to his little Brackendale house and his garden full of beans and peas and carrots, knowing full well that the sight of that house and his guitars and the stupid dollar-store clock you bought him and the Celtic dragon you drew and framed for him is going to cleave to your jaws like in Psalm 22, but it’s really those mountains that will get you, the blue mountains that will really blast a ragged hole in your heart and let his blood and her blood — your blood — pour like a river down your body and mark you, mark you for a mortal, brushed by death on the busy highways of the world, mark you for tears and platitudes and silence and flowers and cards and other peoples’ stories of death and other peoples’ anxieties and superstitions and guilt.
What do you do when night comes and you wake up from a dream of childhood, wake up with breasts and a husband and twenty years’ worth of schooling but no goddamn idea how it happened that you could wake up a grown-up when your dream of second hand plastic ponies bought at the Value Village and singing “Summertime” by the campfire and casting your line on a misty lake and “Daddy, do the Inspector Gadget voice” is still so real?
What do you do when you lie awake that night next to your husband and all the terror comes home to roost and builds twisted nests in your hair as you think, “Please God, don’t let me wake up with bloodless grey morning light coming through the window next to a body that has cooled and a heart that has flickered out”?
What do you do when the two of you get in the shower and you look at water beading on his back and realize that one day he will die and you will put him in the ground and you don’t know when, you can’t know, and you will die too and leave your own ragged hole in some other heart, maybe a heart that hasn’t even been born yet, a hole perfectly shaped only for you: nonadaptable, doomed to only ever be full or empty, with nothing in between?
What do you do?
I pray, walk along an empty sidewalk on my way to Community Worship singing at the top of my lungs, without really knowing why: only knowing that I must or else the emptiness wins.
And I drink tea.
-Clarity