Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I am still moved to tears frequently and without warning, and I never know quite what will set it off. I expect this will continue, to varying degrees, for some time, if not the rest of my life. I’ll hear a song that I think might make me cry, and it doesn’t. And then I see something that I never would’ve guessed would set me off, and am in tears. The other day it was the empty coffee carafe at the office. A had broken his awhile back, and then replaced the whole coffee-maker. He made and drank coffee every night while we chatted. I don’t even drink coffee, but it caught my eye as I filled my water glass at the fridge. Yesterday it was going through the stuff on my PDA and finding a memo to myself about the hiking shoes he liked, make, model, and size. Big 5 put them on sale from time to time, and he didn’t get the Sunday paper with the ads, so I’d keep an eye out for them and let him know. But I’m feeling a bit more emotionally stable than I was, regardless. It’s amazing, in a frightening way, what you can get used to. You get used to walking with the extra weight of the sadness, I guess. It is ironic how heavy loss can be, how painfully and insistently present absence is. I still shake my head at how this happens, “this” being the untimely and unexpected death of someone important to me, the stopping of a life with no warning, no appeal. I guess I accept that he’s gone; what choice do I have? Every day is a reminder of that reality; he just isn’t available to me in the way he was. I have to accept even when I don’t understand, when I’ll never understand. I accept that I’ll never understand; that seems to be the trick. It doesn’t make it any better; it just brings me and reality into slightly closer alignment than we’ve been in the past month or so. But it is what it is. I cannot change it, even though I’d love nothing better. I feel myself slowly picking myself up and dusting myself off, my mind’s eye occasionally glancing ahead even as my attention is focused on the past.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the loss of innocence. There are so many innocences we lose, more than I ever imagined when I was 18 years old and knew everything. Life will break your heart, over and over again, in ways you never dreamed of. I really believe losing someone you loved deeply to death is the second-to-last innocence to be lost, because you feel betrayed by no less than the entire cosmos. The only one remaining after that, I think, is to get to the point where you don’t care if you yourself live or die, either through acceptance or despair. I thought I was a grown-up. I thought I had it together and knew what was what, and I was cocky about that. But now I have knowing I never asked for, never wanted, never imagined. Will that make me deep? Will it make me compassionate? Will it make me bitter? Better? I have no idea. I’m all in flux right now. My friend P often tells me I’m an old soul, but I feel immeasurably older in my soul for having had to look at Death’s back as it walked away, taking my love with it, and not having been able to do a damn thing about it. You cannot duck a punch you don’t know is coming. All you can do is wheeze and wait for your eyes to refocus, if it didn’t kill you outright. I’ll see for myself, in time, how smart Nietzsche was.

I have a confirmed date, flight, and hotel for September 16th to visit his family and friends. I don’t know yet if his daughter is going to be there, but everyone else is. I’ll fly in that afternoon, spend the afternoon/evening, and then I’ll leave the next morning. I also intend to go by his shop and his place, and say what goodbyes I am able to while I’m there. That’s another story I tell myself: that if I go out there, say goodbye to our places, and meet his family, I can come home and bring that piece of my heart back from California. A good chunk of me has been in California for the last couple years, and it remains there as long as there’s stuff up in the air regarding the funeral and this visit to meet his tribe. I can’t have pieces of me all over the damn place and find my way to whole, right? I have hopes, but no expectations. At least, that’s what I tell myself. I’ve been known to spout bullshit before.

In other news, I have been mulling an e-mail I received a few weeks ago, an invitation for local acoustic musicians to play at mealtimes at the local VA hospital. As I ponder what’s important to me, music comes in right after those I love, and if I know nothing else, I know that is something I will want to (re)dedicate myself to for what remains of this short life. It feeds my soul; it connects me to A, as it always did. It’s something I love to do, and something I must do. I knew I couldn’t rush right over to the VA and perform, because I expect there will be sadness there, too, and I just couldn’t take any more on top of my own. But it also occurs to me that it might be therapeutic to help others, even if it’s just through dinner music, lightening my pain by helping others lighten theirs, just a little. So I’m wondering if that’s something I want to do.

And yesterday I got an e-mail from B’s that open mic was starting up again tomorrow night. I’m thinking of going. I’ve been working on a new Paul Simon song, and had a really good music night Tuesday night. It was a comfort to me, playing, as I hoped it would be in time. It might be good for me, not only on a musical level, but to reconnect with that community and strengthen the bonds already made with those in it that I consider friends. I have to start somewhere, recreating this life of mine, and I have this image in my head of rebuilding a brick at a time, starting with those people and activities that mean the most to me, for they are strongest, and then I’ll see what I have room for after that. I’m going to live, at least for awhile. So I guess it’s up to me if I live well or waste it.

I may not manage to do either of these things anytime soon, but I think the fact that I’m even considering them is a good sign. It has been hard to move beyond the feeling that it’s all futile, that everything could end at any moment, so what’s the point of even trying? One of the things I read in my grief book that brought comfort to me, and did to the author when she expressed the same hopelessness to her pastor friend, was this: “Because nothing matters, everything matters.” This is Life, in all its trivial and tremendous and terrifying glory. And if I opt out due to nihilism and fear, I am dead while I’m still breathing, which is, in my view, an insult to all those who weren’t given the option, like my A. And it’s contrary to my life philosophy, anyway. I want to live for myself; I’ve got stuff I wanted to do while I’m on this planet. I want to live for those who love, and loved, me, and those whom I love. I want to live because he didn’t, and because I know he’d want me to be happy. He always did. If I’m here, I damn well better make the most of it. Because nothing matters, everything matters. Everything counts in large amounts. There is pleasure, or learning, or both, to be had in every moment we breathe, even if it hurts like a bitch every other time I inhale. I am no stranger to chronic physical pain, and yet I live my life in spite of it. This is the same, only the pain is emotional. Even if I walk bloodied and with a limp, I’m still walking.