Scenes From A Grief Casino
Every game's the same. A flash memoir by Bradley David
Losses: Maternal Grandmother (91, age-related decline); Nephew (21, car accident)
Three weeks since my nephew died. Our family is trundling under the blanket of grief. But perhaps none like my mom. Losing her mother was difficult enough, though expected. Unlike my nephew. A car accident? No, our family doesn't do unexpected. You don't rip a grandson from his grandmother in our family.
Mom has a couple of friends and keeps to herself mostly. Enjoys a few trips to the small casino each week. Doesn't socialize with folks on nearby machines but considers it a social outing. To be among people, to be out. The experience infuses her with a certain zest and pauses rumination. But sometimes it seems she feels the need to justify it. To account for her time and expenditures, modest as they are, even though there are far more expensive and time-consuming hobbies. A gamer who buys the newest console, the latest game, mashes buttons for hours. The golfer's green fees, clubs and clothing, hours and hours smacking the ball.
And so, what? Every game's the same. Everything's temporary. Every experience, every enjoyment, every afterward. We have no other part to play but to be kind and equitable with one another. The antidotes to othering and besting, filling our psychological voids, snuffing out violence. The only foolish games are our wars. Over and over and over.
To be among people, to be out. The experience infuses her with a certain zest and pauses rumination. But sometimes it seems she feels the need to justify it.
Perspective: At any given moment there must be millions of people around the world hitting the tables, feeding the slots. They're anticipating a future, imagining a new horizon, holding hope, relishing the element of surprise, and enjoying their outing. We all know the downside. Let's give 'em a rest a moment.
Those people, casino people, are lumped together and labeled. Addicts, dummies, & financial fools. Impulse-driven, discipline deficient, & desperate. Some highly accomplished and famous people check those very same boxes. We give them a free pass, but not each other. Not a stranger. Our demands are high upon those with whom we haven't shared a laugh or cry. Look at her sitting there. Look at him. Look at that her-him. Such is our tendency, othering, and besting. Selecting winners and losers, popular and unpopular. The slovenly gambler and the restrained intelligentsia. Gods and monsters.
But then, imagine a delighted child sitting in front of an empty box and a spread of craft supplies. They decorate the outside of the box with abandon, cut a hole in the front, stuff it with snippets of colored construction paper, and experiment with new ways to achieve new outcomes. Nearby, a grandmother anticipates what will become of the box, knowing full well the outcome will be approximately the same as last time. A wonderful natural expression of the day's imagination, expanded, if ever so slightly since yesterday.
And so, what? Every game's the same. Everything's temporary.
Many of us can connect warmly to the childhood innocence of play, through a daughter or nephew. But what if the box were suddenly a slot machine? The child turned grandmother? What if the grandmother is one of us? Gripping the box because we can't relinquish the child's final moment, dabbing the slot screen to give us just five more minutes of silenced mind. Sadly, someday. Worse, maybe tomorrow.
As for this very moment, we might ask ourselves, are we anticipating the future? Holding hope, imagining a new horizon, relishing the element of surprise, enjoying our outings? Are we being kind to someone who is seeking those outcomes? I ask because it's what I ache for from my nauseous stomach in these moments of every-glued-together emotion. I'm coming out asking for it all to be delivered because I'm lost for it. Wanting it struck like Lucky 7s because I'm tired, but I have to work at it, and I'm willing, and I see a horizon, but I'm tired.
Perhaps a casino is a fine place to find something. I think of this now as my mom wants to be there; feeding into the organism to be nourished by its mechanical kindness of distraction. People adjacent again among those minding their own business. They already know what this is.
She'll be judged, sure she will, by passersby. Sitting there for her twenty-bucks reprieve. There's that lady, tricked by the game nobody wins. Well, I think she's winning. She's getting out there and going through some motions, any motions, just motion. Yes, distraction is fair game when the alternative is ruminating on visions of the dead.
And at the casino, of all places, we as passersby can witness within ourselves what's at risk with our addiction to othering & besting. Witnessing the purpose those behaviors are serving to protect our hurt, blanket over voids within us. The source of the fuse that ignites all sizes of war. Who knew a casino could do so much?
Yes, what if instead of the outward focus of snubbing and judging, walking the game floor turns us inward? We'll feel because we'll see ourselves at all ages of want and need. Begin feeding our voids with so much kindness they overflow like coins on a casino floor. (What, they don't do that anymore?) Kindness is suddenly a shimmering glorious mess. Piles of it! It's as easy as a child snipping paper and handing his grandma a purple dollar bill. She gushes with wonder and is hooked on him forever. Addicts, all of us!
I want to believe kindness is that easy, because I want something good to fill the space he three weeks ago occupied with goodness. Give me some spot on a new horizon. That glow of overflowing kindness could serve as something to steady on. And then I'm emerging to find all of humanity is being fed. Nourishing it over and over and over. To every plant, animal, and ocean—nourishment. We have no other part to play but to be kind and equitable with one another. Just goodness within each of us is like a button we can push over and over and over. What would you call it?
Bradley David's poetry, fiction, essays, and genre-blending works appear in Terrain.org, Allium, Rougarou, Exacting Clam, Always Crashing, Anti-Heroin Chic, and numerous other publications and anthologies. He is Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated and won Identity Theory's 2022 2022-Word Poetry Contest. Bradley is also the hybrids senior editor at JMWW. Selected work at provincejournal.com. Instagram/Threads: mystrangecamera
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