Sarai Austin, 1946-2016

You don’t forget. You go on but you don’t forget. Everyone’s grief is different, but that’s how mine is. Those of you who’ve been in my life lately know I’m walking around like a (mostly) functioning human being, with occasional descents into foolishness, but at odd times, or when the calendar rolls into a 16th of the month, or a Sunday afternoon, nothing makes more sense to me than this poem Sarai wrote 17 years before she died:

Grief empties you,
your flesh scarcely
noticeable.
As though you’ve
lost weight,
pound per pound
to whatever
the loss.

A frail aging
parent, you lose
half of yourself,
a lover
yourself plus half.

Sarai Austin
3/26/99