Grief and snow blowers

it’s sad weather today, overcast, and the rain makes it feel like the sky is crying. “Chickenshit weather,” I think to myself dodging a singing guy wheeling a trash can around Herald Square. Suddenly I hear Kate S’ laugh, she found Dad’s pronouncements of chickenshit weather hilarious and even after he was gone she would still say it. “Stop!” I tell my mind, it’s bad enough there’s rain on my glasses, I don’t need tears too. It’s already hard because we are scheduling things in March and every time I hear the word, I think of her birthday, March 9th. I get to the office and find Misty very focused. H. has messaged her, asking how she got through her mother’s death, if it ever gets better. Misty doesn’t like H. because once in an out of control rage, she said some mean things to me. It was years ago, and even at the time I knew she was projecting, her anger at other people directed at a safe target, but Misty has never forgiven her. “This is different,” she tells me, explaining why she responded when she normally doesn’t speak to her. “I thought about what to say, and I decided to tell her the truth. It doesn’t get better. You get to the point where you’re not crying all the time and you can go about your life, but it’s always going to hurt and sometimes things will remind you.” Misty was only ten when she lost her mother, and it was the end of the world as she knew it because her grandparents decided they couldn’t manage and put her in foster care. The day goes by, CPR refresher for the whole staff, meetings, calls with two different clients’ mothers, which is unusual because usually by the time people get to us they have nobody left. 15 minutes after closing, I find Robin and Kevin in the vestibule, still discussing an issue from earlier in the day. I like to hear the staff perspective on things, so I lean on a banister and join in. Kevin’s phone goes off and he looks at the incoming message. “K’s mother died,” he says, holding out the phone so we can see what K has written. K. is a sweet client, eager to please, and always coming to us to tell us about drama among his peers so we know who to keep an eye on to prevent potential fights. “Was she sick?” I ask. “She had dementia and stuff,” says Robin. Just then Robin’s phone goes off, K. messaging him, too. I leave them responding to him and go back upstairs. By the time I get there, I have a message too. “I heard,” I write back. “We’re here if you need us.” After work, I stop at the supermarket. “Are you ready for the storm?” an older Indian guy asks me, clearly thinking that my vegetarian bacon and red bull are inadequate for the situation. “I’m not looking forward to it,” I tell him. “Do you do your own shoveling?” “Yes, and I have a corner house with two sides to shovel.” “You should get a snow blower,” he declares. I think of the big gas eating contraption my friend recently bought for his house upstate. “It’s not that much space,” I tell him. “They have portable ones, they’re handheld and you charge them in the house, no gas.” I tell him I will look into it since it seems like this appliance proselytizing is likely to go on and on. “Look on amazon,” he says, “look at the top ten.” I don’t bother to explain about the amazon boycott or the fact that their ratings and reviews are usually bullshit. “If your body is with you, you can make money, but if your body is not with you, you can’t,” he says, which is definitely true. “I had a bad cough. I used to smoke and drink so my doctor sent me to a lung specialist,” he says, and we’re off in a whole new direction. “ They did a CT scan and they saw something in my lung, but they weren’t sure so they did a PET scan and the lung was fine but there was something in my kidney. So I had an MRI and the kidney specialist said there was a 30% chance it was something bad. Luckily, I was able to have surgery in a week because of a cancellation. She asked me, ‘are you ready? And I said, hell yeah!’ After the robotic surgery, there was an 80 % chance it was bad, so they removed the whole kidney. Somebody up there looked over me. That’s why I tell people to take it easy, you only have one life to live.” Message delivered, he goes on about his day.