The Jar - Amber Karasik

The night you died I stood up in my kitchen, walked over to the cabinet got a mason jar and poured my grief inside.

Just like homemade pickles, a batch of egg drop soup, or some leftover simple syrup. I screwed the lid on tight, dropped it in my pocket because I needed to survive.

When I got the call, “we didn’t know”, but I knew. My pain crawled up out of me like a wounded animal- loud, scratching, desperate. I can still hear my own voice echoing in my ears shouting “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING TO ME RIGHT NOW?!?” into the receiver. The moment loops on a screen in my head, the worst scene from the movie of my life, ready for on-demand viewing at any time in perpetuity.

The pain ripped through my body like I stepped on a bomb filled with shrapnel. But I didn’t have time to be gutted. So after those few vantablack moments, I scooped it all up and put it in the jar. And so I kept myself mostly stitched together and kept my hand steady enough to help stitch up others too.

I packed up your things. Clothes, journals, books, letters, love, memories, pain all reduced to those few worn cardboard boxes. All the while I kept that jar beside me and make sure the lid was on tight.

Yet I was haunted by your ghost. I laid down on the floor where you collapsed. My fingers white, hands pressed hard into the linoleum desperate to be with you. While I was distracted, the lid slipped off. I was suddenly stranded, swept out in the sea of grief. Through the din, I hear my sister’s voice. A life raft calling out to me in the other room. I stopped floundering and grasped on to it knowing you weren’t there anymore, but she is. And I made you a promise after all. I dried my tears, secured the lid, and pressed forward.

Hanukkah, Christmas, the New Year came and went without you. Work. Meetings. Laundry. Dishes. Every day life. I did it all. Without you. Habit cruelly reminds me to call you every day but Lord knows I can’t do that now. So I just keep moving and keep that lid on tight.

Sometimes the jar gets too full. The dam doesn’t hold, the levees break, the lid flies off and the tsunami comes roaring. Furious that it’s been impeded and ignored for too long. Without the lid, all bets are off. The storm is hard to weather. The pain is palpable, a black hole sucking me in. I feel it everywhere. I am surrounded. I lose myself to the darkness. It’s pitch black cloudy night in the country, no moon, no lights, no end in sight. But I am still your daughter after all. I was forged by fire and you made me strong. So I smash the hurt down like an overflowing trash can, wrestle the jar closed, and pray that it holds.

One day I hope that I can open the jar and set free what’s inside. Until that day, I will carry it around to help me survive.