Though she refused to believe Grandad was gone, she announced she needed a new hat. Black had never been her shade although, she looked very widow-ish in her long Persian lamb coat. Most of her hats were grey or blue. We took her shopping, and she found a black feathered Queen Mary fitted with a black mesh veil.
”A person needs to dress for grief,” Gran said.
She said she needed new glasses. We guessed she wanted people to see the sadness on her face, so she settled on a pair of crow-like frames. But her eyesight didn’t improve.
At dinner one night, we knew something was wrong. She ate only half her plate, and when she wasn’t looking, we turned it around, and she finished the other side.
Neighbors saw her sitting and rocking on her front porch at three in the morning. She told them she was waiting for her husband to come home. He always had.
The woman next door rang to tell us Gran had fallen down the steps. It was winter. We should have seen that coming. When we got there, Gran explained she had mistaken her shadow for her husband and wanted to hold him before he flittered away again. Did we know him?
When the ambulance arrived she insisted she would not leave without her hat.
Boxes of black hats tumbled from her wardrobe. We asked which one she wanted.
“The black-feathered one!”
And each was ready to fly away.
The Author
Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, and non-fiction. He was winner of the 2019 Anton Chekhov Prize for Fiction and has been shortlisted recently for the Bath Short Story Award (UK), the Tom Gallon Trust Fiction Prize (UK), the Thomas Morton Prize for Fiction (Canada), and the Carter V. Cooper Prize for Fiction (Canada). He lives in Barrie, Ontario.
Bruce Meyer, Barrie, Ontario
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