Picking Raspberries in My Backyard While Someone Explains Brahms and Someone Explains Raspberries

It’s not exactly going well, the berries so overripe 
they collapse into a jammy mess whenever I even 
touch them, and weeks ago the canes in this
5 × 8 patch grew into a cramped scattershot
tangle I can barely push my way through. Once again 
I tried. Once again last spring I envisioned tied-back 
tidy rows, which inevitably gave way to this actual 
overgrown mess that lures my neighbor over each fall 
to remind me nothing can flourish without space.
He’s wrong, though—the berries are going bonkers 
just now, with every lifted-back cane revealing clumps
of raspberries I’m trying not to crush while half listening 
to a podcast with a wide-net theme about all things 
invisible. On this episode, a pianist is explaining 
something about music, using as an example a Brahms 
intermezzo, a piece the composer described as
a cradle song for sorrows before worrying in a letter 
that its dissonance goes too far. It requires whole 
acres of space between the notes, and the chords
need to sound, the pianist said, as if they’re falling apart, 
none of which is the soundtrack I need just now, and 
I’d turn it off were it not for my berry-smeared hands. 
Back in the house, my teenage son and his friends are 
watching a movie, all piled together under one blanket, 
wanting to be as close as possible as often as possible
ever since, just over a year ago, one of their friends died, 
about which right now, to be honest, I don’t want to say 
much more. I’ve been trying my best not to intrude,
trying to remember that it’s often best to hard-stop
the dad jokes and, whether or not I’m craving any berries, 
step outside to this ramshackle patch and give the teens 
some space. There’s a short story by Raymond Carver
my wife and I have brought up over the years when 
we’ve needed to forge a path through grief. At its heart 
is a baker who’s filled with rage after making a cake 
that a woman ordered but never picked up. He keeps 
calling her, tormenting her, oblivious to the fact that—
and this is why it seems as if we’re a long way from
any grace—her son had been killed on his birthday. 
Even if the plot seems a bit too convoluted to be 
believed, there’s a moment at the end that’s beautiful 
when the baker learns about her son’s death and asks her 
to sit, offering her a roll fresh from the oven, explaining 
bread can be—and this is his phrase—a small, good thing 
in a time like this. Is there ever a time that’s not a time 
like this? It’s impossible for my neighbor to believe
my raspberry patch bears fruit so deep into fall, but 
here they are nonetheless, the canes so top-heavy 
with their bounty that they’re drooping into the grass. 
That shouldn’t be happening, he shouts from his yard, 
gesturing at me standing with my Tupperware among 
the berries and thorns. I don’t know what to tell you,
I shout back, and I don’t, given that I know nothing 
about raspberries or chords that were made in the hope 
they’d collapse or why beautiful is a word often found 
in proximity to loss. Once, Brahms was asked at a party
which of his own compositions he loved most of all, 
and he replied that he thought his posthumous work 
was the most exquisite. I can’t tell if that’s a good story
or just a guy snarling at the world. It’s the same with that 
moment with the baker—I’ve put off rereading it for years 
because I’m worried it won’t hold up. It’s hard to know 
what suffices as a thing both small and good, and once 
again, rather than weed anything out, I’ve allowed
all of it to pile up in knotty clusters. Not long ago,
at a memorial service, my wife sat packed into a pew 
and listened to someone say, after a long silence, 
they hadn’t expected to find solace in the fact that
their friend had died just before their planned last meal, 
meaning that there would never be a final moment
of breaking bread that would forever be the last time. 
This is something, I’ve decided, I can almost understand. 
I’ve decided too that my Tupperware is teeming with 
more than enough of these raspberries that are
barely intact, and which no one ever asked for and 
which I’ve been told more than once shouldn’t exist. 
It seems well past time to step out of this tangled 
space and put the berries on the counter inside
for someone to find and eat.

Read more from Issue 23.1.