The Grief Meal by Joan McMillan

The Grief Meal

by Joan McMillan

After you left, I stopped eating.

My body refused everything.

I knew it wouldn't be long before I thinned out,

dried up, became hollow, a bleached bone.

Grief entered me,

a meal of splintered glass

I had no choice but to consume,

to let it consume.

Days later, how many people like me

picked up a pan, poured in water,

the sound of it too harsh on flat metal.

How many whose hands wanted nothing more

than to touch the hands of a lost beloved

measured out salt instead,

then poured in a cup of Cream of Wheat

from the yellow cardboard box.

It's a good task, simple, like all the tasks

we do when absence becomes a houseguest.

I watched Cream of Wheat come to a boil

thick as white lava, scooped it into a bowl,

added sugar and milk haphazardly,

raised the spoon to my mouth and ate,

like sorrow's antidote,

one small bite, then another.

Whether the loss is death or the ending of a relationship, the result can be the same. "My body refused everything," states the speaker in McMillan's poem. However overwhelming the grief is, eventually we must eat.

But first, we are told that we eat the grief, and it is "a meal of splintered glass." This sums up the feeling of grief, doesn't it? This horrifying pain is forced into us and we are unable to do anything with it but to both "consume/to let it consume." This idea of eating grief while it is in the process of eating the grieving is very powerful and rings true to my expoerience. Grief, especially initially, seems to be inside us and also surrounded us.

In the poem, we move to a few days later. The speaker wonders how many in her position also rallied enough to make instant oatmeal (I love that she specifies Cream of Wheat), a meal that requires a minimal amount of preparation.

"It's a good task, simple," says the speaker. Something that even a person in the depths of grief can handle. The 18th line is my favorite in this poem; the speaker is referring to the things we do after the loss of someone--"when absence becomes a houseguest." I like the metaphor and I like that we are given the choice of the kind of loss being discussed. Is the absence due to death or divorce?

After this the poet describes this simple task. Then, finally, the speaker eats, just a little at a time, "like sorrow's antidote."

Will eating make the pain disappear? No, of course not. But the act helps grieving people to focus on the now (most cultures involve food/meals in their rituals after someone has died, and the act of eating an entire gallon of ice cream after a break-up is a common trope), and also provides--literally--sustenance to keep going, to keep oneself from becoming "a bleached bone."

This poem was published in a literary journal--an actual, physical journal. Unfortunately, it is one I cut out from the journal years ago, thinking carrying little slips of paper with poems is easier than moving entire journals around. (We used to move a lot.) So I cut out poems I particularly liked. Because my brain was able to record and remember things much better back then, I did not write down on the poem which journal it was in because back then I remembered things like that. Looking online did not help. If you know where Joan McMillan's poem was first published, please let me know so that I can include that information here.