Four Ways of Looking at Healing, in No Particular Order

Purple tulips in the window

A photograph of purple tulips in the window

A woman whose daughter has died, sixteen years ago, and, still, the grief, it catches her unaware—that raw fresh ache.  This is more frequent in January.  How do you do it? I ask her.  I really want to know, how does she do it.  I picture her getting up every morning, making breakfast, walking the dog—it’s wet some days and cold—and then there’s all that has to be done next.  How do you do it?  She says she knows that she will see her again.  When she dies she will see her daughter again.  She tells me this as if it is the most obvious thing.

Remembering to refill the bird feeders on a winter afternoon and then looking out the kitchen window—finches—swooping in to the feeder as if to some busy midtown diner, where inside it’s warm, there’s a waitress inside refilling coffee, and voices, that sound of forks against plates.