knock knock joke

Knock Knock Joke

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Boo.

Boo who?

Hey, don’t cry, honey. It’s not so bad. Really, everything will work out for the best. You’ll see. Is she batshit crazy? I’m dying here, drowning in grief, weeping right in front of her and she’s telling me it’s not so bad?

I’m sad, I’m sorrowing, I’m grieving.

 I miss my father, I finally say.

Really? When did he die?

 Er….when I was twelve years old.

Wait. You’re telling me he died like a million years ago and that’s why you’re crying?

Haven’t you cried enough? Aren’t you just a little bit ashamed of yourself, carrying grief around like a baby blanket, curled up in the corner boo-hooing? Get a grip, darling. It’s over. Buck up. Man up. Balls up. Grow up.

Get over it. Move on.

Just kidding, I want to say, fast, to swat away the heavy fog of shame that’s settling over me.

Honestly, I say, I barely remember him. So how are you?

Listen. Here’s the thing about grief. It does not go quietly into the land of the gray havens, retire, catch the next flight to a tropical island, open a beach chair, order mai tais and say We have wept enough, gnashed our teeth, pulled our hair, fallen weak on the floor begging for relief, for death. Now, now it’s over.         

I wish I could say that’s how it goes. That one day grief will be gone, tied up with a blue satin ribbon like a bundle of old letters stored in a shoe box in the back of your closet, because Listen. One day a stranger wearing the perfume your mother wore will rip a hole straight through your heart. Or you’ll see a man in the produce aisle of the grocery store who looks like your husband, dead five years, and the foundation will rock, the shelves will tilt, porcelain teacups will shatter, mirrors crack and that pack of letters? That neat pile of grief you tucked away will come tumbling down, spilling over your freshly swept floors, moaning the way something that has been kept too long in captivity moans. 

There is nowhere to tuck sorrow where she doesn’t start crying so loud you have to stop what you’re doing and go investigate.

And then when I am still enough, I feel the presence of the ancestors – the ones who carried their grief over mountains and across frozen rivers to reach me. The old ones who watched armies torch their homes and floods wash away all they had cultivated. The ancient ones who sent children to safety over oceans before the Cossacks arrived. Who hid in barns and in basements, who forged false papers, faced the rapist, the barrel of the gun.

This is the story of our grief as we perished, they say. But it is also the story of the life we cherished. 

Your tears will fill the dry river beds and your weeping will shake the ripe fruit from the trees. 

If grief did not stretch your heart to welcome your own sorrow, how could you bear witness to the beautiful and terrible fellowship that comes with suffering? 

How could you hold the news of floods and drought, of punishing wind and fire, of slaughters and mass extinctions if you could not extend mercy to your own earthquakes of despair and loss?

Now, they say, open your heart and let the songs of mercy and forgiveness harmonize. Welcome the blackbird and the coyote who sit at your feet while you chant the holy names of life passed down on the lips of the peacekeepers.

Blessed are the wounded for when our wounds cease to be a source of shame, we become the wounded healers we have been calling for.

Where else but in the chambers of our broken hearts will we find the guidance to move safely through this time of the rising of the shadow.

Who else but the grieving are wise enough to cloak themselves in light and feast at the table of love.

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Read more stories like this in my book The Ripening: Essays on Love, Loss, Marriage and Aging available on Amazon.