catapult magazine

Sorrow in 17 Syllables

Working Backward Through a Year of Grieving

by Neil E. Das

Oops. We seem to be missing that image file.

November 7, 2011
A house of mourning
Or of mirth? Enter both. It
Will be the same door.

---

August 29
the dream, the sort you
claw to stay asleep — you, sick;
me, your care to keep

June 21
at Aldi i feel
you amidst the aisles, amazed
at all the bargains

at home i shift some
cans you bought, and smile to reap
this happy harvest

June 9
you in your boxers
and banyan*, eating melons;
rinds curved like your smile

in summers, eating
melons with you; cool like an
evening in eden

* a Punjabi word for an a-shirt

June 6
into illinois,
traveling old roads; driving
past into present

April 25
we always had two
minds on rain; its lovely greys,
its melancholy

in the chair asleep;
the afghan nestling legs that
always found the breeze

we take lunch and tea,
the rain still falling; your smile
to me like sunshine

April 2
landscape collapsing;
a mine subsiding; the face
of someone weeping

March 18
oh, come the day that
backward cheers all our weathers;
eternal sunshine

March 18
my gas bills lower;
patching through winter, doing
without you to warm

March 13
now the sod is like
patchwork from grandma’s quilts; you
sleeping till the Day

February 12
in this hard steel town
black and white and brown; smelted,
at the dmv

at the dmv,
waiting, waiting, waiting, for
the freedom to move

we have science now
for grief to travel; hearing
his cell phone ringer

February 9
when at dusk the day
collapses, i feel the weight;
light pressed into dark

escaping the crush
of dusk, the light emerges,
settling into stars

January 28
medicine boxes
no longer measuring days
sit still on the sill

December 16
upon tickling
he’d laugh and smile; silliness
serious as death

December 1
I miss you. Eager.
Hello Kitty, horses, cars.
Target dollar aisle.

November 9
coming home at dusk,
leaves sunk into dimness; my
father’s weary voice

coming home at dusk,
incandescent greeting; my
father’s cheery voice

---

November 7, 2010
After a lovely indolent Sunday in which we rest and eat and watch television together, in which he talks to each of his grandchildren and sons, my father calls me back from visiting with friends in the evening with a fear-filled voice. An ambulance comes and within two hours a doctor finishes her hushed visit with me and my brother with the words, “And then he did die.”

The picture at the head of this piece is the second to last picture I ever took of my father, taken on that day. He is standing in his beloved patch of kitchen sunlight. He is feeling a whole lot more of that now.