Grapefruit Spoons

On By Anna EastlandIn Family Life, Poetry

Going to your apartment shortly after you died

I gather your important papers,

the things I’ll need to help take care of everything for you,

but I don’t want to touch anything else

or unsettle your calmly organized cupboards

covered with labels in your sweet hand:

“Tea,” Spices,” “Cups,” “Bowls.”

My sweetest scatterbrain Dad,

who worked so heroically hard this past year

—reading Marie Kondo and likely highlighting half the pages—

to make everything organized for me

because you knew you were dying

even when I couldn’t let myself believe it.

To me your home feels like a shrine

a testament to all the things you did last—

where you hung your bathrobe, your plaid shirt,

the dirty baseball cap that you’d wear doing carpentry in my garage.

I want to hug everything—

the blankets and sweaters that smell like you—

but don’t want to take anything

except the fancy grapefruit spoons with jagged little edges,

tiny teeth which I used to scoop out that half kiwi

which you allowed me to feed you slowly

your last week at home,

and that little quarter of yellow mango,

your baby bird diet

which I desperately hoped would somehow sustain you

when your body was too tired to eat

and your soul was ready to surrender.

These little grapefruit spoons

I tuck in my purse

and flee your empty apartment

where I wish you would come back

and let me feed you again.

18 thoughts on “Grapefruit Spoons”

  7. Roberta Cottam

    AMAZING!!!! Heart breaking and heart warming

    On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 12:44 AM Just East Of Crazy Land wrote:

    > Anna Eastland posted: ” Going to your apartment shortly after you died I > gather your important papers, the things I’ll need to help take care of > everything for you, but I don’t want to touch anything else or unsettle > your calmly organized cupboards covered with” >

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  8. Incredible. The littlest moments can be the richest ones we share with someone we love. I have these “little moments” with my mom-in-law; I know the depth of what you feel. Thanks for sharing this one. I will never look upon eating a kiwi the same.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much, Roberta. I was reading a beginning of a book on grief called “It’s Ok you’re not Ok,” last night, about how our society tries to diminish pain and make it disappear, rather than seeing it as a sign of deep love, and a natural response…and I felt called to bear witness to that pain which stems from love.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      2. That is true, Andrew. As I wrote once in a brief poem entitled “Deep Canyon”:

        Have you ever pondered

        that the heart carved out
        
by torrents of sorrow

        can also run deeper

        with springs of joy?


        Liked by 1 person

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