Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Strange Way to Grieve


Dear Lucy,
The novel I am writing for the Nanowrimo contest is called, A Strange Way to Grieve. I had mentioned the possiblity of doing this a month or so ago.
Here is the opening paragraphs of the novel:




A Strange Way to Grieve
November 1, 2009

Be silent, and sit down for you are drunk,
and this is the edge of the roof. --Rumi

It had been a full 10 minutes since I last felt my legs.
At lease it seemed like 10 minutes. But then, who can tell when you are stoned?
I looked down and found that yes, they were still there, attached to my body and tapping away in time to the pounding rhythms of Phil Lesh and Bob Wier, remnants of the Grateful Dead playing a concert in Oakland, California.
It was September 18, 2009, 359 days after Anne, my partner of 16 years, had died suddenly of a heart attack. I had never attended a Grateful Dead concert. Never knew much about the Grateful Dead or their music aside from Terrapin and Touch of Gray, Touch of Gray being a number one hit and the only hit the band ever had in their 30 plus years together.
Anne had bought several of their CD and I started listening to them after she died becoming a late-comer fan.
As I looked around the crowded hall of the Ford Theater in Oakland, the pot smoke wafting from every tie dye clad person in every seat around me, 50 years old, stoned, paranoid from weed stronger than I remembered from my youth, alone, widowed, unemployed and nearly homeless, I thought to myself, isn’t this a strange way to grieve?


--Kathy

2 comments:

  1. I love the raw emotion. It's truth....sometimes the hardest thing to hear...is that which is the one thing that needs to be said the most. Love yourself and speak your truth.

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  2. Ok...so reading that just now makes me sound like I'VE been smoking pot! I'm tired and have been following my wife and her best friend around all day as they get ready for the BFF to get married tomorrow...sheesh...I'm done for today! LOL!

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