No. 4

I used to watch my Grandma crochet. She would sit on the couch with a long line of yarn leading up to a crochet hook that bobbed in and out, loop and link, in and out, loop and link. Each loop joined to the next and the next and the next. Arms around each other, holding on. Tiny loops like tiny lives, each person linked to another and another and another.

Last year there were seven funerals in my family. Most were expected, even if they were very unwanted. I’ve thought a lot about people, and lives, and the woven way we are tied together. You kind of have to when you keep going to funerals. In a way, when a death is expected it is like an unraveling, the unavoidable unlooping. It can move slow or fast, the way to temporary loss. But when a death is sudden, unexpected, ripped - there is no way around the gaping hole left behind.

Our neighborhood had a sudden death this week. Gone. A family left incomplete. I wish the streets were lined with our giant inflatable Santas, but they are lit with candles instead. The trees are tied with ribbons - waving white reminders that someone is missing. There is someone who isn’t here. We write notes, we buy flowers. It feels like trying to mend around the edges of the hole. It doesn’t fix anything.

People planned to meet in the park the night after it happened. I told my friend I didn’t want to go. “What is one more sad person in a group of sad people?” But she said no, this is when you show up. This is when you be with your people. And she was right (as usual). Standing in a small group at the park, surrounded by people on every side, someone quietly said, “I hope every person here knows that we would all show up for them, too.”

Linked. Looped. Arms around each other, holding on.