Is there a synonym for visceral? When I lost her in the surf, the lacerations of panic tore all the way through. I wanted desperately to make sense of it. My head and my heart were at odds. The past month was a knockdown, drag out, fight. What I need is some sort of tie breaker. If this was grief, how do I cross the abyss? This too was a mystery.  

            “Looks like you’re stewing, which reminds me to get the stew off the stove. Would you like that beer now? It’s a micro-brew called Dead Man Walking. I fancy the hippity hoppity stuff.”

            “I’ll pass. I’m driving back.”

            “Understood. Come. Sit.”

            There were only two chairs. One end of the table had a worn edge as big as a palm print. I sat opposite his spot. The stew carried a garlicky, sweet, gamey smell. My stomach moaned, a reminder of zero sustenance since last night.

            “Well, hello there.” Norm nodded at my belly. “Here’s my infamous critter corral stew.”

            The steam hovered just above the rim of the cast iron kettle. Critter corral?

            “Let’s be thankful, then you can shush your belly aches.”

            I silently prayed for protection after what happened with street tacos in Mexico.

            “Good Lord, thank you for giving our tastebuds something to do. Oh, and thank you for another human with which to experience this pot of gold. Amen.”

            “Amen.”

            Norm dipped a ladle into the stew, raised it up with a smile and waited for me to put a bowl under it.

            “Ah, Mark, take heart. Your forehead looks like an Etch-A-Sketch with fear all over it. If there’s something here you’ve never swallowed, trust me, it’s cooked clean through.”

            He slopped some into his own bowl, peppered and salted it, and brought a large spoonful to his pursed lips. With his nose over the edge, he drew a double-barreled sniff, then opened his cave of a mouth, and clamped it shut. The sides of his mustache flinched, and his eyelids drew down. With the spoon raised like a scepter I heard the gulp.

            “Ahhhh…Good, Lord.” Norm announced. “Okay fella, are you eating with me, or just here to watch?”

            “Here’s to a day of firsts.” I took a whiff and gulped fast. He leaned forward, his eyes– affixed dead-even with mine– brown and beading. A halfhearted smile spread across my face. “I don’t know what to say. Never tasted…”

            “Perfection?”

            I rested my forearms on the table. “Okay. What’s in this?”

            “All-natural fare. A dash of rabbit, slow cooked turtle (only way to cook one), and gopher thigh.”

            “What?!”

            “Steady there. It’s only a meat chicken that grew fatter than an opera singer, plump breasts and all. I thought I’d try to get your goad.”

            “It worked.”

With a twinkle, Norm shoved another spoonful in. “So now, care to tell me what you’re stewing over?”

            I delivered a second bite into my mouth and chewed slowly. Meat chicken. I didn’t know that’s a thing. Mr. Norman kept juggling the beer, bread, and stew, dipping chunks in the broth and sucking in past his filter-like mustache. “You got a bead on me yet, Norm?”

            “Somewhat.”

            “Any elucidations before I bare more of my soul?”

            Norm paused and looked at the upper corner of the room. “I see hope in you, it’s way back there but it’ll catch up. Always does if you handle the pain rightly. I’m seventy-two, and it took me a good while to learn how to finagle grief.”

            I leaned back, interlocked my hands behind my head. “Grief can be finagled, eh?”

 “Yes, you get through it somehow. Yeah. Finagle is the best word I can deploy. If you have another one, let me know.”

I scraped the bowl and found another scoop of critter corral. “I lost my mom about eight years ago. Some guy decided not to obey a stop sign. I haven’t got that one resolved but the grief settled a bit.”

            “Lord, have mercy.” Norm grabbed a biscuit and wagged it at me as he continued. “Listen, the pattern’s been set. Anyone who has eyes to see catches on eventually, one way or the other. I think of it as a tug of war. Give and take. The way I see it is like what Lieutenant Spiers said in the Band of Brothers. ‘The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead.’”

            “Great. Is the period at the end of every sentence ‘death’?”

            Norm stroked his mustache with thumb and fore finger.

            “It’s not a death sentence. Death isn’t the end, but a holding-on-to-your-breath sort of thing. Think about it. Sleep is a kind of death, and every morning we’re resurrected, you might say. Seasons die to shove the next one forward. Seeds are buried only to push back up a new life.”

            Who is this old codger? Did I fall into a hobbit hole? It’s like listening to Wisdom for Dummies in real time. I didn’t want him to stop ruminating, but he did. The slurping of the stew under his whiskbroom of a stache made me crack a smile.

            “Norm, those piled up losses you’ve experienced, how’d you move beyond them?”

            “I didn’t. I moved the pile.”

            “What?”

            He grabbed the can of ‘Dead Man Walking’ and took a swig. “I misspoke. I learned how to keep them from piling up.”

            I set my spoon into the bowl without letting go.

“Hear me now. You don’t move beyond. You don’t keep going as if you leave the hurt and pain behind like a mound of trash.”

             “What? I hope you’re going to spell this out, Norm. When you separate items from a pile, it is no longer a pile.”

            “Sorry, I didn’t mean to lead you down that trail. The losses are like bricks. They are masoned one on top the other to add strength to your soul. You got to use the pain. Don’t leave it behind. At the same time don’t let the hurt rule the roost. Grief is like mortar. We wet the cement and fine sand with our tears.”

            “Tears seem like a small part of the process.”

            Norm tipped a nod. “’Jesus wept.’ Shortest verse in the Book.”