When grief comes knocking, I invite it right on inside.

Of course, you can ignore it for a little while, maybe pretend it isn’t there. After all, no one has time for grief, unwelcome guest that it is. We’d much rather continue with our usual business, so we dash around the corner and lightly tiptoe down the hallway, playing like we’re not at home, thinking it didn’t see us, and hoping it will go away. 

You can also hide away inside your bedroom, with your head under the covers, as if the bogeyman is lurking outside your door. You don’t want to face grief for fear that it will overwhelm you or carry you away. You’d just as soon stay squirreled away from the rest of the world and keep grief safely locked outside the door of your heart. 

But you have to go to the bathroom, or get something to eat, or deal with some other necessary part of living, and you catch a glimpse of it sitting outside your window, like a child’s ball of slime that threatens to ooze into every crack of your being.

You must deal with it, or it will deal with you, as my father likes to say.

Grief and I have found a way to get along. We were once about like seventh grade girls, rolling our eyes while we passed each other at our lockers. I’d do all I could to avoid being seen with grief, for no one wanted to hang around something that drab and grody.

But that’s no way to treat a person, and it’s no way to treat grief, for grief will always find a way to take you down unless you figure out how to work with it. 

So when grief comes knocking, I say, “Come on in. Sit down, and I’ll fix you supper.”

And just like that, grief transforms, becoming not a burden, but a strange and wonderful kind of  gift. It demands to be used, and while it might flavor every part of life for a while, it must fulfill its purpose.

So it lets me add a good handful of itself to my mixing bowl of buttermilk cornbread batter, which I will bake in a large cast-iron skillet at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. It will be crusty on the outside, tender and slightly sweet on the inside. 

I also add a healthy dose to the purple-hull peas, which I soon hear boiling away inside the pressure cooker, but I’m about to take it to the next level. I just placed the pressure regulator, or the petcock, as the women in my family have always called it, on top of the pressure cooker’s steam vent. I had let the steam exhaust for several minutes as the heat rose inside the pot. 

Every step of pressure cooking is vitally important, or else the pot would blow its lid right off, splattering the ceiling and cabinets with mealy pea remnants and boiling hot pea juice.

I’ve got some fresh corn to cook, so I place the four nubby ears in a small dish to steam inside the microwave. When it finishes, I slather on a little butter, along with . . . you guessed it . . . a sprinkling of grief.

The real treat of the meal is some okra that I’ve chipped up to fry. I add a dash of salt and a spicy seasoning blend, a little buttermilk, and a blend of cornmeal and flour. When the oil is hot enough, I spread the okra in the skillet, listening to it sizzle and pop. I let it cook long enough to have a good crust before turning it. 

The last of the season’s red potatoes round out the meal, so I boil them in a small pot. When I look at the cooking water, I see brown specks of dirt in the bottom, like the sorrow you thought you could hide.

Might as well bring it out into the open and call it what it is.

Dinner is served. There is no meat. Grief can eat vegetables, just like I do. 

All the better for a household shrouded in mourning. It’s almost like a fast, this meal with no meat, except we were made to eat vegetables.

Just as we were also made to grieve.

So we sit in silence, grief and I, and we eat in peace.

And oh, while it is a crusty thing, like the blackened and bitter exterior of burnt cornbread, it is necessary.

It is necessary to let off steam. It is necessary to endure the fire and let those hot tears stream down your cheeks. It is necessary to remember the reason for your grief and not ignore it.

For it means that you loved, that you were loved, and that you are the better for it.

No need to hide it, shy away from it, or pretend it isn’t there.

Welcome, old foe and new friend. I know you never meant any harm. You can stay a while. We’ll have sleepover parties, paint each other’s fingernails, and tell stories into the night, especially of the one we both loved.

We might get so close for a while that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins, like twins, but eventually, the time will come when you’ll leave. I won’t be too sad to see you go, for in your place, only the best memories will remain.

Until the next time.