Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

by Max Porter

Grief felt fourth-dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar.

But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief. There are very few in health, disaster, famine, atrocity, splendour or normality that interest me (interest ME!) but the motherless children do. Motherless children are pure crow. For a sentimental bird it is ripe, rich and delicious to raid such a nest.

She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

We were smack bang in the middle, years from the finish, taking nothing for granted.

I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.

They offer me a space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.

Various other things slipped. We pissed on the seat. We never shut drawers. We did these things to miss her, to keep wanting her.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.

We miss our Mum, we love our Dad, we wave at crows. It’s not that weird.

You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing,

It is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.

Perhaps if Crow taught him anything it was a constant balancing. For want of a less dirty word: faith.

and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.