if it looks like grief...

Friend E showed up at the door the other morning and her face collapsed when she saw my tear-stained face.

I told her that it was okay...that it was just the music. I'd been listening to the score from "Out of Africa" before she arrived. Another friend had made a tape for me years ago and inexplicably I'd pulled it to bring with me when I made the pilgrimage home this time. Joel died in 1994 and perhaps the music had reminded me of him just then. Maybe not.

Anyway, I told E that I'd just been listening and eating a breakfast banana as my tears fell. Then I'd begun to laugh as I realized that I was crying and eating a banana. It doesn't even sound funny now, but there was a kind of absurdity at the time. Don't look for it to make sense.

...if it feels like grief, then it's probably grief.