The Mathematics of Grief

Margaret stood in the bulk foods aisle, staring at the organic spinach. Five dollars a bag. David would have laughed—would have bought the wilted stuff from the discount bin and said, 'We're all dying anyway, might as well save three dollars.'

That was before the accident. Before she became this thing that moved through rooms, ate meals, responded to emails. A zombie in a beige cardigan, hollowed out by grief.

Her phone buzzed. Another message from her sister about that nutrition supplement scheme she'd gotten involved with. 'It's not a pyramid scheme, Mags, it's about wellness community.' Margaret deleted it. Her sister had been so desperate after her divorce, latching onto anything that promised structure, meaning, a way up.

The grocery list crumpled in her hand. Spinach. She needed to buy spinach because the therapist said establishing routines would help. 'Act normally until you feel normally,' the brochure suggested, as if grief were a behavior to be outgrown rather than a landscape to be navigated.

A woman next to her dropped a glass jar of pasta sauce. It shattered everywhere. The sound was so wrong, so jarringly loud in the quiet aisle. Margaret felt something crack open in her chest—not healing, just breaking wider.

She abandoned the cart. Walked out without the spinach, without anything.

Their apartment still smelled like him. Like old books and that cheap cedar cologne he'd worn since college. She sat at his desk, where the diagram he'd drawn for her sister still lay pinned to the corkboard—a pyramid showing how the 'wellness community' actually worked. He'd been trying to talk sense into her, analytical even about exploitation.

Margaret traced the lines with her finger. David had understood systems. Had understood that some things were built on nothing but belief and loss.

She opened his laptop, scrolled through the document folder. Found the file: 'For Mags—If Something Happens.' Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

She closed the laptop. Some truths were pyramids too—built layer by layer on the lives of those left behind. The spinach could wait. The zombie could keep walking, for now. Some things were larger than grief, and some griefs were larger than living.