My Grief Ages With Me

Time heals all wounds. Except grief.

I’m in my childhood kitchen. It’s a mess, to Mom’s dismay. Rejected pieces of frozen pizza dry out on the stove, dishes overflow from the sink onto indigo tiles. Junk coagulates in the grouted crevices of our countertops and coffee circles dot the scene like the freckles on her skin. She doesn’t drink coffee in the morning, just Pepsi, but she cleans her boyfriend’s stains, anyway. This kitchen is a battle she can win. She scrubs at the tiles, packs the dishwasher with impossible precision, reorganizes the glass canisters against the wall, descending by height, tall to small. She is the Tazmanian Devil in reverse. Equally short in stature and temper, she whirls around the kitchen and leaves sparkles in her wake.

After her deep clean, she runs a Clorox wipe over the scene. Every night by bedtime, her kitchen gleams, even as her life crumbles into pieces inside of it. The next day brings another undoing, just one of the visible clues of ongoing destruction. Another is the graying and drooping of her skin. Abusive boyfriends — and cancer — will do that to you.

Mom makes salsa in a handheld vegetable dicer. Round and round her freckled arm goes. The harder you try, the better it tastes, apparently. She tires and hands it off to me, age thirteen. I don’t appreciate tomatoes and onions mingling in such proximity.