Kindness and Sorrow

When my husband was freshly dead, I felt as if I had been cut open for surgery and my veins and arteries cauterized so I wouldn’t bleed all over the pavement leading from my car to the store or on the carpet at the bank or on the trail through the park. As if a gaping wound in my solar plexus lay hidden beneath my clothes. 

Walking down the street, I’d think, Nobody knows. Nobody knows that my husband just died. I look like any other ordinary person going about business. They can’t see the hole. And I’d wonder how many others I would pass or stand next to who carried their own hole. I moved in a hyper-conscious awareness, as though I were a spirit who had crossed over myself, one who had the ability to see auras around bodies, feel pain and suffering between the veiled cloth of dimensions. I felt a softness, ripe and bruised as a purple plum. Yet others couldn’t see the rawness of my insides. 

Some said stupid, hurtful things. 

“You’ll marry again.” 

“He’s in a better place.” 

“It’s okay; you’ll get over it soon.” 

The opposite of kindness. 

Later, when the hole had begun to grow a layer of scarring, delicate as the lattice webbing of membrane that makes up a dragonfly’s wing, I pushed my cart up to the checkout stand at Trader Joe’s. The checker, a thin young man with short black hair, about twenty-one years old, asked me how I was doing. It’s the kind of small talk one makes to the endless stream of people passing through a checkout line. 

“All right,” I said, a bit curt, without a smile. 

“Just all right?” he said. 

“Yes, just all right.” 

“Not good? Not great?” he pushed. 

My solar plexus tensed; its fragile web of scarring threatened to rupture. I said, “Okay, because you’re pushing me for an answer, I’m going to tell you what I wouldn’t normally. My husband died last year, and it is almost the anniversary. So, no, I’m not good or great. I’m all right.” 

I expected him to react the way most people do when confronted by the awkwardness of grief. I expected him to say something basic like “I’m sorry for your loss” and turn away, avoiding eye contact. 

Instead, he stopped what he was doing and looked directly into my eyes and said, “That must be very hard for you.” 

The hustle and bustle of the store fell away. There was a low hum in my ear. My vision narrowed as if I were looking through a swirling kaleidoscope to the end of the tube. I focused on his dark eyes. Watery pools of compassion, empathy. The tightness relaxed. 

“What was his name?” he asked. 

“Steve,” I said. 

“What day is the anniversary?” 

Slow. He moved slow with his words. Careful. 

“April 5th,” I said. 

He nodded solemnly and asked, “What is your name?” When I told him, he reached out and tenderly took my hand. He said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Laurie.” He did not turn away. His gaze penetrated mine, and I felt bathed in deep, abiding kindness. 

And I wondered at the ability of this young man to do what so many in my life could not. Did he have his own hole? Had he witnessed the gaping wound and recovery of someone else’s? 

The older man who had begun bagging my groceries but disappeared during this exchange returned carrying a bouquet of flowers. He handed me the bouquet. “Can I help you to your car?” he asked. 

I never accept these offers. I am too proud, too independent. I glanced at his name tag. It read: “Steve.” 

This time, I said, “Yes.” 

Laurie Easter is the author of All the Leavings (OSU Press), finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and winner of a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award in memoir. Her work has been published in Brevity, Chautauqua, and The Rumpus, among others, and anthologized in The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms and A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays. She lives off the grid, on the edge of wilderness in southern Oregon. Find her at laurieeaster.com.    

This essay first appeared in Brevity #68 (2021).