I’ve discovered a secret: how to save one-half of an avocado.
There is no fancy way to wrap it, although I’ve tried excluding all air contact by wrapping with saran wrap, sealing it in a sandwich bag, and popping it into the fridge. I’ve slathered lime or lemon juice all over it and put it in an airtight container. I’ve also been known to eat the whole avocado and relieve myself of the problem in the first place.
The easiest solution, however, is to leave it alone. The silly thing grows a scab all of its own by letting the open edge of the avocado meat dehydrate. Whala! It’s sealed, and, if one doesn’t leave it for a month, nothing rots. In fact, the thickened covering doesn’t age either and the inside gets even riper.
Reminds me of a scab.
Reminds me of my moving through grief.
Every time I try to wrap my sorrow in a covering to isolate it from the rest of my life, it gets pushed to the back of my proverbial shelf of ‘stuff’. Then everything in front of it takes on more emotional responses. I can rant about the government, the wars, health insurance, DMV, and on and on. I take one topic onto my soapbox until I’ve exhausted it and can tell by listener’s rolling eyes, I’ve battered their ear drums past listening.
Then I take out another one until I grab, without looking, to find myself staring at the main irritant that’s turning black. Those are the moments when I realize I’m damn mad at Y for dying and leaving me with piles and piles of collected building parts and photos and etceteras to deal with. Ironically, like the rotting avocado, I’ll probably throw away all the preciously amassed bits and pieces he always thought might some day become useful.
If I don’t want to isolate my grief, I can keep picking at it every moment of every day, like pouring salt on a wound, and I make myself miserable. I might be going through a necessary process but bringing up the fact I’m only one half of a whole, doesn’t let me find my own unique flavor. It leaves me wanting. “What?” I wonder.
I wish somehow I could take on the whole grieving process and get it over in one ‘fell swoop’. I know, it would be too much. I can get overwhelmed as it is with the smaller sections of sorrow as they drop in my lap, so why choke on the whole thing?
So, like the half of an avocado, if I just let myself be, I experience a short-term, thickened skin of protection which lets the inside of myself begin to heal and ripen. The crust will come off eventually.
Isn’t that a great secret?
