Flash Fiction: The Many Faces of Grief

Accepting What Is … by C.J. Heck

The Many Faces of Grief
Accepting What Is …
Flash Fiction, by C.J. Heck

The day the Army told Nora her husband was killed in action, she wanted to die, too. Her whole world had turned upside down and she felt paralyzed by grief.

Grief wasn’t just a single feeling though. Suffocating, cloying, it was so alive, so huge, and so real that she thought it should have its own first and last name.

Out of a thousand different feelings that assaulted her, switching back and forth within minutes, the worst of them all was anger.

She was angry with God. “How dare You reach down inside me and rip out my heart? That’s no way to show love!”

There were also feelings of anguish and disbelief at Dennis. Why did you lie to me? “We were so happy! You promised you would come home. Why did you leave me? Why?”

Nora went to see a therapist that morning. Ned Small. He said grief is different from one person to the next. No one experiences grief in the same way, or takes the same amount of time to heal.

She called him because she thought she was going crazy. She had so many unanswered questions, mainly WHY? Why was she so mad at God? Why would she take it out on Dennis?

Ned said she did the right thing by getting help early, because there are several different stages of grief that everyone has to go through ---they’re all normal and he could help her.

Then I must be crazy. How-Why can these things still appear so normal?

Birds still sing in the trees
Someone is mowing their lawn
Children are laughing and playing games: “Ollie-Ollie in Free!”
The window curtains sway in a gentle breeze
In the distance, a siren warns drivers “Get out of the way!”
Somewhere a dog barks, wanting back inside

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Don’t they know, nothing will ever be normal again ...

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