On the Microcosm of Language, on Parallel Universes, but Not About Grief, Not About Grief At All

For D.B.C.

I won’t be writing about grief, I’m not doing it well, the grieving, I’m not doing it well at all. This grief is an elephant one should eat a bite at a time, only this elephant is a highly alive, grumpy looking, full grown African bull elephant, and here I am standing with knife and fork, not even a hunting knife — not that it’d make any difference — just with my standard everyday Villeroy & Boch cutlery. I’m looking at him, I’m looking down at my feeble eating utensils, I’m overwhelmed, I’m helpless.

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” Desmond Tutu (Picture by Tsavo Trust)

So, this story is not about grief, this story is about microscopic labyrints of language, causing macrocosmic changes in reality, about parallel universes bursting into existence, and collapsing out of it, about time stopping, time speeding, time and space twisting into something new.

The Second One calls me, on a Tuesday, that’s unusual. I say The Second One, that’d make me The First One, or The Third One, the order is of no consequence, we have always been three, exactly as distant from each other, exactly as close to each other, an equilateral triangle, we had been an equilateral triangle for thirty years, nine months, and four days.

The Second One calls me on that unassuming Tuesday morning, we talk a bit about nothing much important, it feels weird. Died has, she starts. Now, that’s grammatically correct in our language, we have a free word order, which we have bought dearly, with way too much morphology, but we don’t mess with it, we take it seriously: You don’t start a sentence with new information, unless it’s something important, something as large, as momentous, as died has. The gender is baked into the verb, died has is female.

She starts saying the name of our First One, or The Third One. I think The First One, I think it is going to be The First One, from now on, and forever.

The time slows, the space becomes irrelevant. In stead of the vastness of space, the microscopic labyrinth of language, of uttered sounds opening and closing different realities.

All three of us have long, three-syllable names, low, open vocals. All three’s names end with an a, as do most female names in our language. Not very exciting names, to be frank.

So she starts with Died has, and starts saying The First One’s name. The time slows, the time splits into distinct slots, fractally numberless. I can take a slot of time and stretch it at will, I can thus make all the time I want, all the time I need, while she pronounces those syllables. We’re at an age when our parents start dying of old age, or of being old. Died has The First One’s mother. The universe where it is true splits from this one, comes into existence. In that universe too, the time is fractal and malleable. I have time to think of The First One’s grief, her father died a long time ago, now she’s no one’s child.

But there is something in The Second One’s voice, I’ve known her for so long, I know her voice well, I feel a faint trembling, it’s not her mother, it’s something much worse. The thought of her daughters, a universe where The First One has lost a child flickers in and out of reality, but never becomes, we have known the girls since they were born, she wouldn’t use a possessive, she’d use their names. We’re still somewhere on the second syllable, the time slots are still distinct, but this one stretches against my will, into endlessness. Most of the memories of that Tuesday are vague, or gone, but I remember well the interminable time it took to pronounce those sounds, or perhaps it was the unnatural speed of my thoughts, I don’t know. The tremor in her voice makes the universe in which The First One’s mother died go back to un-existing. It gets instantly replaced with a new one, identical in every atom, in every quark, only in this one Died has The First One’s sister. I now understand the horror in The Second One’s voice, and the same horror grips me, she was close to her sister, as I am to mine. My sister went through several major surgeries the recent years, I remember my anguish, my fears, The First One, and The Second One by my side through each of them, holding me, comforting me, loving me.

Now a possessive, a possessive of her name should have four syllables, the third one marking a possession, the fourth the gender of the possessed, the pronunciation rolls on, the low, open syllables of her name, the possessive vocal is high and closed, I listen to the sounds of her name, I have all these discrete slots of time, and each of them I could slow down, and even stop, an ocean of time to think, to analyse, to predict, time enough for the universes to emerge, and collapse.

I was the master of time that once, I wish I wasn’t.

I expect the high, closed vocal of the possessive, in stead a low open vocal of the end of her name, my mind stumbles, it steps into nothingness, the time stops. It could still be a missing stair, not an abyss, there’s another one of the same name in our shared circle of friends, close to The Second One, but not to me, a misstep, not an abyss! The time speeds up, I try to refind its discrete slots, I’m feeling feverishly after the hidden seams, to slow it, to stop it, to force that universe into existence, Died has The Other One, but why would she call me about her, it makes no sense! The time after she utters The First One’s name is compressed, non-existent, she says her last name, I’m in free fall.

The time and space are now recombined, pressed together hastily, imprecisely, coexisting uneasily in this new, unstable constellation. They twist, distort, trying to force this new universe into existence.

In this time of transition, the connection with here and now is a weak, unsubstantial thread: Holding onto it, I call my sister, I ask her to tell my daughters and our mother, so they don’t find out through social media, they knew her too, of course they knew her. I sob into the phone, I wail, that is the only time I remember crying.

The weave of time and space restructures, stabilizes, the new universe clicks into existence. I get up from the floor, I straighten my back, I step into it.

Entering this new universe, my thoughts and senses are sharper, my feet not quite touching the ground.

In the coming weeks I walk. The thoughts are clear, distinct, detached, the feet still not touching the ground. With my new, keen, senses I look, I listen. I observe the world without, and my feelings within. The lines of the outer world are sharper, the sounds more piercing. Within my mind, a part is walled off, that’s where I keep the grief.

The soles of my feet feel tender, unused, un-walked on. I keep on walking. I walk the streets of Belgrade, of Belgrade hers and mine, I look at the people, I crane my head, I look up at the buildings. I walk the northern plains of my childhood summers. It’s hot, the air is shimmering with heat. When we drive, the fatamorgana of the water on the roads keeps my mind occupied. Later in the summer, I walk the mountains of my ancestral homeland. There, on a high mountain plateau, my feet touch the porous white rocks.

With these newfound feet, with this newfound hold, I walk on through the summer. Still I stumble, still I fall. My fiftieth birthday, and hers, our daughters’ 18th birthdays, they are all crammed within four weeks of losing her. Each of these days trips me, I fall, I fall hard. I don’t cry, in stead I’m tensed, short-tempered, irritable. My family sees me, my family surrounds me, they form a protective wall against the outer world. I pick fights with them, I yell at my children. I’m hard to be around. Still, they’re staunchly by my side, protecting me, tolerating me, loving me.

I walk on towards the autumn. My family’s now far away, but my feet are touching the ground.

Time has passed. Eight weeks since that Tuesday, to the day. I can do some things now, some I still can’t.

I can’t think of the time back, before. I can’t revisit our conversations, I can’t look at her pictures. I can’t read congratulations I got on my fiftieth birthday, in my mind it’s merged together with hers, that never came to be.

I can now approach the memory of the moment the universe shifted, touch it cautiously. I can find some of my words, this story is the first time I found any of them.

I have found my voice too, now I can say it aloud. For the longest time, I could just write it, I had to message people, even when in the same room, when I had to explain my faltering social skills. I can now say it, that I have lost her, I can say it with my own voice, though it still rings strange to my ears.

I still haven’t found my tears. From the corner of the eye I look at the elephant, the grief I have to face, to process, he’s just minding his elephant business, still looking as large, as ill-tempered, as alive as when I first faced him. I know that in time, the elephant will die, he’ll diminish, he has to. Then I will eat him, a bite at a time, then I will find my tears.

I can think about love though, I have not lost that, since the moment she died, I could think about our unfaltering friendship with a kind of tenderness, but without sorrow. She loved me fiercely, unconditionally, as sisters do, for thirty years, nine months, and four days, and I have loved her as fiercely, as unconditionally, for thirty years, eleven months, and twelve days, and I will love her as long as I live, as long as I breathe.

I lean on The Second One, my loss, my grief, mirrored in hers. I find my foothold in the certainty that the love remains, the love that fierce stays with us, that our equilateral triangle never lost the third angle.

I raise my head, I look at the elephant, I clutch my little Villeroy and Bosh knife, he’s looking at me, I’m looking at him. I can wait.