The Little Black Moirologist

When it’s the end of the world but you can’t cry

Penned April 19, 2026 by Penny Sue Denim

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When the person you love dies, you want the whole world to stop with them. And stand still for you.

I planned the funeral, spending an inordinate chunk of life insurance credit on catering to celebrate Robben’s South African heritage.

I had a grand stack of memorial cards printed. I wanted the whole world to attend his funeral, to miss him and feel the void of his absence like we did, to witness our devastation—a relatively young widow and her two young, fatherless children. I wanted everyone in attendance to raise and shake a collective fist at God, there in that church where several years of my devotion to Him had been expressed.

I stopped short of hiring a moirologist, however, though overall I think he deserved a public spectacle.

Photo by Maxence Pira on Unsplash

The girls and I, as I recall, were dry-eyed, sitting dutifully in the front pew—or was it the second? I don’t quite remember. Dutifully, not in any sense to the people in the sanctuary—I wasn’t overly concerned with us meeting their expectations, whatever those might have been. But rather, we were fulfilling a duty to the universe, to our omnipotent God, who had decided that this was how we would be spending that Saturday morning in September.

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Why am I writing this piece tonight? Well, in my thus-far failed commitment to experiment with prayer through grief,—and lying here aimlessly, suddenly wide awake thanks to the jarring and haunting yowls of our kitten in her first heat cycle—I feel the drag of a thousand temptations against that commitment to bring my grief to God in prayer.

Photo by Bogdan Cotos on Unsplash

I yearn to click into social media and interact with people there. I want to go back to sleep. I’ve got a hankering to hop out of bed and prepare a five-course meal—even though I hate cooking. Anything to distract from what I’m “supposed” to be doing: identifying what to pray for through a heartfelt inventory of all the pains the world is inflicting on me—and those I love—right now.

The resistance to metabolizing actual grief is powerful. I think I’ll do what I do best: intellectualize and projectivize it.

I become curious about those people on the far side of the pendulum. If I am one who desires to reject domestic grief, then I wonder what it is like to have foreign grief routinely inhabit one’s body. If I crave disassociation from my legitimate grief, what is it like to associate with grief that is not one’s own?

I google “life of a professional mourner”.

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So. I’ve avoided feeling my feelings and calling out to God like a psalmist. Instead, I’m busy writing for my audience.

But it’s okay; I’ve delegated the role of moirologist to the little black kitten since she’s doing such a great job of midnight wailing anyways.

Photo by Asim Z Kodappana on Unsplash

Now, I’ll allow myself to hop on social media and review my audience growth.

Oh, but I better finish praying first:

Dear God,

You’re great. I’ve sinned. Thanks for being great. I need a lot of stuff, and I want even more.

Amen.

In some aeon of time and timelessness, I bet God’s heard that generic prayer a time or two. But I don’t care. I’m not willing to expose myself to Him in heartbreak. So, at least—out of boredom—one of us is nodding off tonight.

~ ps denim

With accompaniment from My Unapologetic Playlist:

Love cats? Check out my short story The Cat Portraits

Don’t love cats? That’s okay. It’s not really about cats.