Lloyd

You know when you're home alone in the evening and you hear a knock on your front door? And it jolts you a little with panic, because you're not expecting anyone, and we live in an era where people don't really just stop by anymore. And in the few seconds you know you have before the knock will come again, you try to figure out who it might be, why it might be, and how you can get out of answering it. You imagine the worst case scenarios and how you might react. You anticipate the best case scenarios and then start noticing how neglected your living room looks. But the tap-tap shakes you again and you know you have no way to get the answers you're looking for except to turn the doorknob.

Well grief is kind of like that visitor knocking. But sometimes it can take days or weeks to notice the incessant sound at your spirit's door, which won't ever go away until you turn the lock and invite it inside.

Awhile back, I had a good friend in recovery. He was six months clean at the time and figuring out how to function without dependency. His hard work helped him get better. He'd work 12 hour days in the heat at tree farms and landscaping lots, and spent the rest of his time trying to remember who he was without heroin. I think that's what I was there for. He liked boating and fishing and crime documentaries. He drank chocolate milk for his breakfast and he talked often about his family. He was the kind of person you wouldn't hear from for awhile but then he'd be riding his bike to work and stop by for a glass of water or a smoke and a chat. Drug addiction can change people's personalities, even long after the chemicals are purged, and for those reasons, we hadn't talked in a few years. And a few weeks ago he died as a victim of his disease, and I've been a quiet but frequent host of grief since then. His cousin, a mutual friend, told me shortly after I missed the funeral that she thinks he's still listening if we had anything to say.

In my experience, grief makes you do really irrational things. Like making you live on excessive adrenaline for four days straight and then keep you from getting out of bed at all on the fifth (like....at all). Like making you curse the can opener in wild rage and toss it in the trash for how impossible it is to turn, even though you've had it for three years and it's always been that way. Like making you shake the hand of the old man who changed your oil, with tears in your eyes saying, "Thank you for taking care of me" instead of something normal like "See ya next time!" all because he told you the truth that you didn't really need a new filter and because he didn't guilt-trip you for waiting till you were 2,000 miles over or for declining the half-off car wash (I have never, and will never, pay for a car wash).

 Or making you function like a completely normal non-grieving person until a song comes on Spotify, which you've never heard in your life and you have no past connection to, but you weep in the first ten seconds anyway because something about a chord struck your soul waters in just the particular way to open the dam, the damn grief.

Or making you wonder if the stray cat visiting you for the past few days has been trying to tell you something. Otto named him Lloyd, and he's skinny with a jet black mane and green eyes. We've seen him on the complete opposite side of the neighborhood when out driving, but at the end of the day he's back on the porch. I've called out for Finn to come home a few times, and instead Lloyd will come up and toy with the idea of coming through the door. Finn has been curious but cautious about him and Otto finally told me, "I don't think he has a house and he checked out all the other ones but chose ours." This has happened to us last week too -  a big brown and white pit bull helped himself inside the house when I left the door open and ate my blueberries on the porch. It's one of the strangest things that has happened to me at this house. I found out the next day that he was hit by a car and died, left in the road a few streets away.

After three days we decided to set out some food for Lloyd and it seemed like he ate it all in one bite. But this morning, Lloyd hasn't showed up and I'm all seized up with anger. Instead of Lloyd, grief knocked on the door, tucked me back into bed for the day, and whispered,

 "There are some creatures you just can't save."

Sometimes with grief, it helps to tell yourself the fact narrative over and over. I had a friend. He died from heroin. I don't get to know why, or how it felt. I don't get to know who found him or how it could have been prevented. I do know that for awhile, he checked out all the other houses and chose ours. The problem with that method is that with death as the thing to grieve, there are more possible fictions than facts. Maybe my old friend stopped by through Lloyd for some company or through the lost dog for a blueberry snack. Maybe he's still listening. Or maybe his physical matter just returned to the Earth, never to hear us curse our kitchen appliances or call in our cats or strike the most beautiful new chords again.

He was a man who, in sobriety, couldn't go back to the old home he knew and didn't stay here long enough to find his new one. I hope we gave him enough living water during his brief passing through our world to go on with peace. I wish he hadn't eaten life all in one bite. I wish that anything was ever enough to ease his kind of hunger. I wish he chose any other kind of home than the one he went back to, in the end.

And mostly, I hope that if you ever get visited by a wandering Lloyd, a lost human, or grief itself, you turn the lock and invite it inside. I hope you listen. I hope you always give whatever overflow you have, with discernment but without condition, and say goodbye when you must. We're all just passing through someone else's front porch.