Grief is the Thing with Feathers

There’s a feather on my pillow.

Pillows are made of feathers, go to sleep.

It’s a big, black feather.

Come and sleep in my bed.

There’s a feather on your pillow too.

Let’s leave the feathers where they are and sleep on the floor.

Four or five days after she died, I sat alone in the living room wondering what to do. Shuffling around, waiting for shock to give way, waiting for any kind of structured feeling to emerge from the organisational fakery of my days. I felt hung-empty. The children were asleep. I drank. I smoked roll-ups out of the window. I felt that perhaps the main result of her being gone would be that I would permanently become this organiser, this list-making trader in clichés of gratitude, machine-like architect of routines for small children with no Mum.

I won’t leave until you don’t need me any more.

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.

Every time I sit down and look at my notes Crow appears in my office.

‘You two boys’, he said, ‘must each build – here on the floor – a model of your Mother. Just as you remember her! And whichever of you builds the best model will win. Not the most realistic, but the best, the truest. The prize is this …’ said the Crow, stroking their shampooed hair … ‘the best model I will bring to life, a living mother to tuck you up in bed.’ […]

‘Crow, which one of these fake mums has won us a real one?’ And Crow was quiet, laughing no more. ‘Crow, don’t be funny, let’s have our real Mummy.’ And Crow started crying. And the boys cooked Crow in a very hot oven until he was nothing but cells.

This is Crow’s bad dream.

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.

Dad and Crow were fighting in the living room. Door closed. There was a low droning cawera skraa, caw, cawera skraa and Dad saying Stop it, Stop it, caw, craw, and hocking, retching, spitting, bad language, cronks, barks, sobs, a weird gamelan jam of broken father sounds and violent bird calls, thumps and shrieks and twinging rips.

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.

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.

Once upon a time there was a demon who fed on grief. The delicious aroma of raw shock and unexpected loss came wafting from the doors and windows of a widower’s sad home. Therefore the demon set about finding his way in.

He was young and good and sometimes
funny. He was silent then he was livid
then he was spiteful and unfamiliar, then
he became obsessed and had visions and
wrote and wrote and wrote.

Come and look at this, Crow said. Your
Dad seems to be dead!

We crept in and the room smelt of rotting
mouse and there were ashtrays in the
duvet and bottles on the floor. Dad was
spread-eagled like a broken toy and his
mouth was slack grey and collapsed like a
failed Yorkshire pudding.

Dad told us stories and the stories changed
when Dad changed.

[…]

I remember a story about an Irish warrior
who killed his son by mistake but when he
realised he didn’t mind that much because
it served the son right.

Once upon a time there was a king who
had two sons. The queen had fallen from
the attic door and bashed her skull and
because the servants in the kingdom were
busy polishing sculptures for the king,
she bled to death. The king was often
busy with futile curse-lifting and the
prevention of small wars. And so it was
that the little princes would fight.

They slapped.
[…]
Then they bit. Then they tried to drown each
other. Then they tried to burn each other’s
hair. They tied each other up, they twisted
wrists, they wedgied, they spat.

Then they found a poison book and took
turns to make each other sick. Then they
hanged each other. Then they flayed each
other. Then they crucified each other. Then
they drove rusty nails into each other’s skulls.

We used to think she would turn up one
day and say it had all been a test.

We used to think we would both die at the
same age she had.

We used to think she could see us through
mirrors.

We used to think she was an undercover
agent, sending Dad money, asking for
updates.

We were careful to age her, never trap her.
Careful to name her Granny, when Dad
became Grandpa.

Dearest boy,

One Christmas about three years after your mother died, I had put you and your brother to bed and I was sprawled on the sofa drinking red wine and reading R. S. Thomas when she walked in and said Hello. She was naked except for her socks (never a good look even when she was alive). She tripped on the rug, stumbled, and banged her knee on the coffee table. We went upstairs and I put some arnica cream on the bruise and we bickered about the mess in the medicine cupboard. Then we filled your stockings with presents and tiptoed into your rooms to lay them by your beds. I went to sleep and your mother sat up reading for a while.

That is completely true.

I took an air rifle into a field when I was
a teenager to shoot crows. I shot one and
wanted to keep on going. I wanted to pile
up a bonfire pile of dead black birds with
nasty beaks. But they are so clever, they
knew what I was up to and kept just far
enough away.

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.

BIRD You’ll remember with some of my early work with you, that what appeared to be primal corvid vulgarity was in fact a highly articulated care programme, designed to respond to the nuances of your recovery.

MAN Did I respond as well as you’d hoped?

BIRD Better. But the credit should go to the boys, and to the deadline. I knew that by the time you sent your publisher your final draft of the Crow essay my work would be done.

MAN I would be done grieving?

BIRD No, not at all. You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing, and something you don’t need a crow for.

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

A howling sorry which is
yes which is thank you which is onwards.