Somewhere Over the Sea by Halfdan Freihow Page B

our garden hose in your hand. You had pulled it loose from the tap and dragged it with you in order to help, with no definite plan of how to fill it with water, but all the more with a desire to be of assistance. I went over to you and wrapped my arms tightly around you, as though you had just been rescued from the sea of flames. I could not rid myself of the image of a little girl in there. We still did not know whether this was a hideous death by fire, or only a sad story about a house that burned down, and perhaps a dog that dieD.
    WE LOSE SO MANY THINGS , Gabriel. We lose all the time, and we grieve for what is gone. Or perhaps we grieve most for the feeling of loss, the certainty of having lost, rather than for what we have lost. Ask me, because I know grief.
    Do you want to know about grief? Shall I explain grief to you?
    It still happens, though not as often as before, in the beginning, the first years, that grief strikes. Now it happens at intervals of weeks and months, but it always happens suddenly and unexpectedly, as in an ambush, and each time it overwhelms me, overrides everything else and makes me turn away and cry
a little.
    I don’t know if I can explain grief to you, Gabriel, even though perhaps you already know it, but under other names, that hurt in other ways. My grief is adult and difficult. It isn’t your confusion when you don’t understand, when your thoughts crash, as you put it, and you can’t manage to think any of them all the way through. Nor is it the despair you might experience then, that makes you scream and weep and hit out in anger, that makes you look at me with wounded, pleading eyes, praying that I explain to you why, why, why. The despair you lie down with on the floor, pressed up against a wall or a piece of furniture, powerless and ashamed. Nor is grief the embarrassment you struggle with afterwards, once it’s over, when you compel your gaze to defy shyness, to bring it back from the remote emptiness in which it has sought refuge and, with defencelessness in your eyes ask if I love you anyway, if we can be friends again forever.
    What can I tell you about grief?
    Grief is as big as the sky and the universe, as big as infinity, which we’ve talked about and none of us understands. Grief is as big as the riddle you puzzle all of science with, just by being you. As big as inscrutability, as big as the tiny little seed life neglected to plant in you, your difference, the absence that will always follow you and fill me with grief.
    But this isn’t an answer, I know that. Forgive me.
    There’s a grief in everything, Gabriel, in the flowers and the rain, in treasures and dreams. Grief is losing, grief is not to have. Grief is certainty. Grief is life that slips, time that passes, what could have been, but was not. Grief is helplessness. There’s room for everything in the mansion of grief. It’s dark and snug in the mansion of grief, and it’s lonely. Grief is to catch the wind, grasp water in your fist. Grief is quiet. Grief is polite. It comes, and then it goes away. But grief is never gone. Only things are gone when they disappear. Grief is impossible, GabrieL.
    THE FIREMEN ARRIVED, and the police, and it was eventually established that the daughter was safe — she had spent the night at her grandparents. The other little dog, which had been stuck inside the house when the mother came over to us, had probably run out when Mom or I opened the door and tried to get in. It was found in good shape.
    Neither of these two happy endings affected you. All that interested you were the uniforms, the equipment, the jets of water and the very big and very red fire engines.
    More locals and a lot of children had turned up, and now that the fire no longer threatened tragedy and death, it became an occasion. Some popped back home to fetch a Thermos, ­others their cameras, and we stood around in groups