Olivia Brochu: Grief Has Six Legs and a Home in the Dirt

Grief Has Six Legs and a Home in the Dirt

It started when you fell asleep on the chaise lounge on your patio after spending the night in the hospital with your dad. You were too tired to even unlock the door and get into bed. Instead, you collapsed on the first horizontal surface you found.

The ants must have crawled into your brain through your ear while you were fast asleep.

At first you don’t notice it. Just a dull headache really, but you also didn’t drink much water in those hours at the ICU. You chug several glasses straight from the faucet and stand there, hands gripping the edge of the sink, to see if the headache might disappear. It does not.

You were supposed to go to work, but you feel this wild urge to dig, and you need to do it right away. You veer off route towards your dad’s empty house — empty like he wasn’t there, not empty like there wasn’t anything in it. Because your dad has lots of stuff. Piles of discarded mail, torn open envelopes, never opened books, notepads full of his scribbles, clothes that smell like him, shirts he never wore with the tags still on. Every surface is covered. You start digging — bagging up the garbage and putting things in drawers — until you get to the bottom.

You find a picture from that time he took you camping. The edges are crumpled and you have those horrible uneven bangs your mom hand cut. But you are smiling, and so is he, with his big arm around your tiny shoulders.

You notice then that your headache still persists. You pop two ibuprofen from the bottle you find in an overflowing collection of medicines in a box near the foot of your dad’s bed. It’s expired, but you hope for the best.

You grab one of his discarded flannels, well worn and stained on the sleeves, and use it to wipe your tears. It smells like him, and that scent sends you into a frenzy. He is hurt and you must respond. Instinct takes over, and you rush to the hospital. After parking in the three-story deck, you join the rest of the hopeful and heartbroken marching one by one towards the main entrance.

You sit next to your dad, holding his hand like you did as a child. You know the end is close. Nurses and doctors come in and out to check on him every once in a while. One asks how you are doing, and you say that you’re fine, except for your headache. She takes your temperature, checks your blood pressure, and then takes a look inside your ear. She jumps back with a startled look on her face.

That’s how you find out about the ants.

She rushes out of the room to consult with a doctor and you grab your phone to start googling. You end up on a Reddit page with obscure ant facts. Ants are oddly incredible. Did you know that they carry their dead and injured back to the nest? Wounded ants release a “death pheromone” that alerts the rest of their colony to come crawling.

You can almost feel them moving inside your brain, a faint tingling sensation that’s weird and welcome all at once. You know the doctors will want to kill the ants. But you aren’t ready for that yet. You slip out of the hospital, calling your friend for advice on the way home. Her advice is deadly too. Raid, she insists, is the only solution.

When you get home, you walk outside to the patio where it all began. You and the ants and your dying dad. There’s no quick fix to this ant infestation. A magical chemical elixir or some specialized expert won’t really work. Only time will cure it.

You get down on your hands and knees and crawl out to the small patch of grass. You think about that camping trip with dad, the two of you lying on your backs in a field to count the constellations. You press your ear to the dirt. You can feel the colony in your mind shifting towards its former home. The ants will leave if you let them. But you sit up quickly, unwilling to part ways just yet. The time will come when you’re good and done with them, but for now, you’ll keep them locked inside.

Olivia Brochu's flash is forthcoming or has been featured by The Citron Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Flood Journal, and more. She lives in a formerly abandoned home in Allentown, PA with her husband and their four children. Read more at oliviabrochuwrites.com.