The Grieving

A sad story about a man and his sock and pen.

The Grieving

After fate intervened on my old friend, my favorite apparel, a fabric worn down to its used up functionality in the last throws of threads existence; losing my best friend, my dearest friend in life, my sock, to the wicked punishment of washing machine madness, then having it thrown to the jaws of death, the dryer, without mercy, a place of endless pain, suffering for untold sins within the shoes of justice, now tossed in agony and relentless tumbling into the depths of a mystical machine, a magical vortex of no return, where all hope is gone for lost socks and their unseemly cohorts, never to be seen or loved again. I could hardly go on but go on I must, for the sake of the common good, fellowship of man and memory of my warm and cuddly sock worn on all occasions for the betterment of all mankind.

Grief knows no boundaries once you’ve lost a sock, soulless or not it was my sock but this nightmare was only just beginning.

It was a cold evening in the dead of winter or was it June with dancing feathers of the swans on Swan Lake bathed in moonlight? The only other close thing to me, equally as precious to me other than my dearest deceased sock, was Mr. Bic, a pen like no other pen or friend, a writing utensil worth having in any season.

Suddenly it ran out of ink. The tiny ball at the end of the plastic cylindrical device froze up right in the middle of the night, right in the middle of a sentence I was writing to a well known pickle company to complain about their filling one of their pickle jars with too many stems. I happen to be the person in possession of this jar filled with the stems in question. I explained to the administrators of the pickle company, “I do not eat stems.” “I eat pickles.” “Please remit a refund to me immediately before I am forced to take legal action against you and your company!”

I was just telling them point blank how sad, how disappointed, how frustrated I was with them for their lack of product quality control when the catastrophic event occurred.

Right in the middle of my jotting down the words, “Please be advised.…” Mr. Bic stopped. It froze. It could not write another word. That is when I noticed. It was easy and clear to see through the transparent cylindrical chamber, which held the ink in place, that it was no longer filled with the black fluid writing substance. In fact it was completely empty. Mr. Bic was in fact no more.

It was at this point that I fell into a deep depression. The pickle incident became inconsequential, instantly insignificant to the matter at hand. How is this possible!? How can I go on?! My only two devoted friends, Sock and Mr. Bic were dead or worse, both gone without warning in the blinking of an eye, gone forever in the same year. Why!?

Keening on the river of my own design, filled with my own tears overflowing in liquid disguise, filling up the banks on both sides with sadness. Growing on the mile, I float down stream on the dark madness, grief of my own making and for awhile, only to think about sock and pen and their demise, never to return again. I continue on, where there are many more miles to attend to up ahead, more ground to cover with sorrow and tears, to cry on endlessly and to that end as best I can.