APRIL 20
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREIt needn’t be a child, though that always has its extra meas-
ure of grief. Whoever it is who has gone from our life—that
person’s clothes, favorite things, places of habitation, keep
reminding us of what we have lost.
And not only clothing, of course. There are the places we
used to be together. As an adult, I spent a nostalgic day re-
turning to a small island where, decades earlier, my grand-
father had had a cabin to which my mother would take us
children for magical summer weeks. For years I had avoided
going there because it was so painful. Now, though I was
wistful still for this beloved figure of my childhood, the pain
had transmuted to an increased reverence and love for what
he had been for me, a chief figure in my own “communion
of saints.”
The presence that makes me sad may one day make me glad.