“Non-Omnis Moriar”

“Non-Omnis Moriar”

(Grief, Mourning, Motherhood)

By S.E. Teres

Fifteen. Fifteen steps. Fifteen steps to her room. So strange what you notice in the after. When you walk into a dimly lit, silent house knowing you only have a short time alone with your grief. The deafening quiet is almost a comfort when you break down.

Despair in guttural sobs that do not sound human and echoing throughout your childhood. Sounds you have never heard pass your lips before and originate from a place so primal, you learn firsthand where the legends of wailing Banshees and screaming wraiths have derived—a sorrow beyond the boundaries of what a human soul can hold.

To subject anyone else to this aberrant lamentation would be terrifying. Therefore, these guttural sobs are only for the moments when you’re alone. Your public face presents a strength you are desperate to conjure into truth.

It is the smells that are the most complicated part sometimes. You wouldn’t think so, but it’s true.

As you walk through rooms where crumbling carpets contain the odor of old kitchen grease, archaic cat piss, remnants of innumerable dinner parties, dank potted plants—and whatever else has aggregated there over many decades—a nostalgia infests you and rips you apart cell by cell. Like the victorious cancer that took her and brought you to your knees in a grief so deep, it will never heal.

Each smell brings with it a memory more painful than the last. Lashing you with the knowledge that life is fleeting and Momento Mori means “Don’t Forget You Will Die” as much as it does “Remember You Die.”

A concept that, thankfully, young children do not yet actually grasp. When you explain why you’re sad or tell them, they will never again see someone they love. Their innocence protects them from this terrible truth.

Grief comes in waves and often unexpectedly.

The inhuman sounds of your personal dirge become a private requiem you must conceal so as not to frighten those who don’t quite fathom you’ve shattered.

Forcing you to find the familiars who will—eventually—learn not to scare from your clamor.

Catching your skin on the brambles and thorns of blackberries that only grow in late July and are so sweet you don’t need any sugar to make a pie.

Driving you into the darkness past the immense gardens she planted—from seeds she would proudly declare—through the damp, boggy areas of the drying creek beds and toward the nocturnals who have no care for your sorrows.

Bats fly in oblique, uncoordinated twists after the insects that trill, buzz, and whizz through the sky.

Scattering rodents of varying sizes futilely attempting to escape the multitude of predators delighted with a hearty evening meal.

Small herds of deer raise their heads and carefully watch you, their tails flickering just enough to see the white hairs underneath, munching through the corn so carefully planted by the ornery farmer hated when people rode horses nearby.

Running toward the thicket of small fruit trees, which shelter the indentations of deer bodies in the high grass—tramped down by their daily slumber—surrounded by a forest of giant pines that harbor the creatures of the night who will mask your preternatural keening with their own.

Foxes, their high-pitched squeals akin to the laughter of madness, the fisher cats with their screams piercing the darkness and mimicking the final throes of a homicide victim; yowling, screaming cats both wild and slumming—and the owls.

The Great Horned is a dignified owl with a stereotypical, deep hoo-hooing. A face like an elder ombudsman from a former time. The Snowy has a higher, more staccato hoo-hooing and lighter version of the Great Horned. Their face a white confectionery decorated with black accents. The Spotted emits a fuzzy, odd bark from a perfectly “Halloween-y” appearance. The Screech—onomatopoeic.

They are only the chorus to the owl you seek truly seek.

The Barn Owl in a suit of pure white and a skull-like visage punctuated by two perfectly round onyx eyes while wearing a black, brown, and ochre cloak is the owl you want. The majesty of this owl might lose some grandeur due to its’ frightening countenance and dead-eyed stare. But what you’ve come for is the bird’s blood-curdling shrieks—the perfect camouflage for your own.

The savage sounds all around you obscure the feral noise within you, which serves to cover the clatter of your broken pieces that continue to fall, losing them in places where you will never find them.

Momento Mori. Momento Mori. Momento Mori.

There is only after now.