stung by grief

May 29, 2025

i am not sure when a key ring became a symbol of grief for me, but it did.

in my day to day life i don’t have many keys. sure, many things have coded access these days, but i am old school thus if things in my life need locking a key is required. also when i first started driving i was warned it was bad for the ignition to have a lot of weight on a key ring, so i always kept a minimalist key ring. having more than one key usually meant i had keys to other people’s lives, places & things which unconsciously meant i was connected intimately to another.

enter 2023 when i started caring for gertie & i needed her keys. there was a fob for her front entrance, a key for her unit, a key for a deadbolt & a key for the bike shed. all of a sudden my minimalist key chain became a jangling choir of keys.

thus enter the gut punch 2 weeks ago when my mom’s executor requested all of my mom’s keys for the agent selling her apartment. i went to his office to drop them off but was met by his lovely assistant, whom i had never met before. this rattled me. i knew the executor & felt safe with him but there i was standing in an office doorway decluttering my key ring with a stranger. within seconds i was back to a minimalist key ring as if no big deal. from a jangle to a jolt. from alive to dead. two of the most precious years with gertie, done & dusted in under one minute.

as i walked away, my hand was tightly wrapped around my tiny little key ring, & all i wanted to do was walk back to gertie’s, make her a latte & me a cuppa tea & sit with her in the living room & tell her how i.n.s.a.n.e. this was “giving back her keys” (ha! as if), tell her how much i missed her & all the daily shananigans we had together, & to tell her how it is still so inconceivable to me that she didn’t cross the finish line with me.

instead i drove to a celebration of life for a beautiful neighbour of mine, because … well, life rolls on even as we get stung by grief during the most innocent of moments in a day.