How to Pick Up After Yourself After the Man who Gave you a Slice of his Life, Dies by Yi Jun Phung
C/W grief
First, find pockets of time to cry, ideally in situations where no one can ask you what’s wrong. Slice a bunch of onions. Run the water faucet (if your husband bangs on the door, and asks what in god’s name is taking so long, tell him you have the stomach bug so that he’d leave you alone for awhile; he’ll leave you alone for more than awhile). Pick the sad movie at your next girls’ night in. You want to tell your friends about him, but you don’t; people say they’ll love you no matter what, but that isn’t true. Love is almost always conditional.
Then, try to find evidence. You won’t find any, but it’s worth a try. You did such a good job at scrubbing the traces you left behind, that you now have no memories of him. Your secret email accounts, your text messages, your calls, gone, gone, gone. It’s like he hadn’t existed in your life. Like you hadn’t met him in a support group, where he put his hand over yours when you brought up your dead, almost son. Like he didn’t tell you about his own dead, forever fifteen daughter, his hand still in yours. Like you didn’t say yes when he asked you if you’d like a cup of tea in his secret apartment. You tell your husband you’re meeting a new gal pal, and he believes you, just like how you believed him when he said he needed to do extra night shifts at a daytime store. What’s one more lie if it stopped hurting?
After, secretly attend his funeral. When you sign the book, you almost write lover, but settled on friend instead. Friend. What a vile word. Hear the speeches his family gives. Do your best not to stare at his other not-dead children. Force yourself not to scream when his wife takes the stand. She says he is the love of my life and if i could do life all over again, i would still choose him and all you can think about is how he whispered those words to you, too. You want to feel gleeful. You are the real winner, not her! But all you feel is depths of despair because the world was not allowed to know. You are (were) his secret apartment.
This last step is important, so listen carefully. Remember how he told you he wished he had met you earlier, and that in better circumstances, it would have been you? Of course you do, because you remembered wanting to ask: how about this life? But you didn’t, because the both of you never talked about the future. No. Now is more important, and that is how you have lived.
That is how you will live.
Author's Note:
There's something about making things with your hands that feels therapeutic to me, whether I'm kneading dough or brushing broad strokes on a blank canvas... it brings me back to my breath. It's why I've been on this journey of making art with my hands. I've tried watercolour painting, wheel pottery, embroidery, sewing a tank top from scratch, baking sweet potato chocolate fudge and skinny flatbreads. Most of what I've made are, quite honestly, not very good. But I remind myself that that was never the goal.
Most of Yi Jun Phung's past work revolves around retail & entrepreneurship, having contributed to Inside Retail Australia & Asia. Now, she's having a (mostly) splendid time diving into the world of fiction. You can find her work in Gown Lawn, NFFD and Does It Have Pockets? at https://yijunphung.blog/.
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