Harlequin the Cat wasn’t even out of the crematory before I had to start my journey back to Kansas City to prepare for a pop-up dinner I’d scheduled for two days’ hence. I was exhausted, but canceling it wasn’t an option. I needed to keep busy.
Tasks and movement, mundane or no, keep grief at bay. Stay busy, keep going, focus on the six inches in front of your face. It keeps The Dark from getting too close. Chances are you’re familiar with this coping mechanism, and if not, you will be someday. It’s a very human response.
But I wasn’t just doing things to do things. This dinner, where we’d sell Sonoran-style tacos at a tortilleria owned by a friend, was important to me before Harlequin died, and her death made it even moreso. Creating something good and pure that makes people happy salves my soul when I am in the depths. And I was in the depths.
After a mercifully long sleep, I started prep the day before. It took me a while to be able to focus. Visions of Harlequin in life and in death flooded me, and I had to stop to cry quietly, more than once.
To get a grip, I told myself over and over to focus on the details of the food. In detail lies absolution, or, at the very least, the sweet taste of oblivion. Were the onions charred enough? Did the tomatoes get a proper sear? Did you remove their skins? Use the good Mexican oregano for this salsa. Strain the chile puree. Details.
By degrees, I melted into my work. Skimming froth from a burbling pot of beef shanks. Waiting until that task was done before adding the herbs and onions and chiles to the broth, else they become caked with the meat scum floating on the surface.
This flow state extended even to shopping. I was preparing carne asada, and in Sonora, that usually means a variety of different beef cuts, not just skirt or flank. So I was sure to buy arrachera (skirt), because it’s my favorite, but also more esoteric cuts I’d had in Sonora such as aguayon (sirloin) and diezmillo (chuck), all sliced thin for the grill. For charcoal, only lump mesquite would do. Details.
Harlequin returned only during my breaks, and this time, I welcomed the sadness. Looking at her pictures, thinking about her life, I cried softly on the back porch. Allowing myself to grieve for a while, here and there, prevented me from collapsing into a puddle, which might have happened if everything had flooded back to me all at once.
I finished prep day calmer, a bit more at peace. The day of the dinner dawned, and that feeling carried through. As go time neared, I thought to myself: “Do this for Harlequin,” then laughed immediately because, well, she was a cat, and like most cats, was singularly unmotivated by human exhortations.
Once service started, there was no room for thought. Guests started lining up before we opened, and once we started, it was a hurricane of motion: Heat tortillas, dish out the guisados, chop the carne asada, garnish, garnish, garnish. Set the tacos on a plate, pass it to the front, repeat, repeat, repeat.
We were smooth, fast and efficient.
I knew what was happening, and you might too, either from personal experience or if you’re a sports fan. Every year, a few professional athletes lose someone close to them, a mother, father, child. And yet they must play on, sometimes even that day. More often than not they play with wild abandon, with a ferocity and focus that appears otherwordly, perhaps because it is. Maybe their loved one is helping from the Other Side, or maybe it’s just that human response to keep moving in the face of crushing grief. This was that feeling.
Adrenaline fueled me. In the end, we made 269 tacos in 2 hours, and sold out of basically everything we’d made. We had a line the whole night. It was exhausting, gratifying, and exactly what I needed.
Doing my job, and doing it well, despite the grief, my sore knees, my exhaustion, buoys my soul. I know that Harlequin, wherever she is, doesn’t particularly care. She was a queenly cat, after all, uninterested in the affairs of men.
But I do know that even if I’d returned home late, smelling like smoke and sweat, beer and tacos, she still would have tucked under my arm as I drifted off to sleep. I miss that, and will for a long time.
Each day it gets a little better, a little more manageable. Keeping myself in motion has allowed me to process grief in chewable bites, to the point where now, a couple weeks later, what remains is a low-level hum of lingering sadness. That, too, will fade in time. For now, I’ll keep moving.
I feel ya, dude. I lost my first chicken this weekend, and it’s not the same, of course, as chickens aren’t pets, but Fudge Pie was the runt, and I’d saved her once when she flipped out of the brooder and went comatose, reviving in my warm touch and insistence that she drink the garlic/honey/vinegar water I dunked her beak into as medicinal. This time she slipped out of the safety of her enclosure and was taken down by a hawk. I deep-cleaned the whole house this weekend, in between bouts of crying and chiding myself for mourning a chicken... who would rush up when I visited and liked to roost in my palm.
Relatable.
When I've lost dogs, I put myself fully and immediately into digging the grave... which is not a minor prospect considering that most of my dogs have weighed in upwards of 80 lbs. I make it deep and square with great care to ensure that it's large enough and that the final "bed" is nice and flat.
I guess it's a last act of love kind of thing... I don't know... but it's physically hard work that, after a bit, takes over my body and my mind and dulls everything else. Just the shovel grating through the dirt. Kick it down deeper. Sling load after load into a neat pile, ready for redistribution when the remains are settled. I think it exorcises that first rush of loss, self-pity, and despair. The grief is still there when I'm done, but it seems more manageable.
I hope your event did the same for you.