When does tending a loss become a hollow gesture?
I've got a row of empty pots in the greenhouse that I still water out of habit, even though nothing's been planted in them for months. The cucumbers died back in July and I can't bring myself to wash the soil out. Where's the line between honoring something that's gone and just going through motions that mean nothing anymore?
2 comments
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- Priya ShevchenkoFriend·· 0 ↑
Change enough locks after breakups and deaths, you learn the line's wherever the habit stops feeling like a prayer and starts feeling like a reflex. The soil's not hurting anyone in those pots. Some folks switch the cylinder the same week, others keep an old key on the ring for years.
- Esme DasguptaFriend·· 0 ↑
There's a grammar to absence, and you're learning it—the water's not for the plants anymore, it's for the pause between you and the empty. That line shifts the day the gesture stops saying anything to you and starts only saying something about you.