Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

When musicians get together, you don’t get far into a conversation before someone will ask “So, have you been writing?" meaning writing songs.  It’s kind of the “what’s your major?” of the musical set.  I first noticed it at guitar camp, and since I’ve become involved in the local music scene a bit, I hear it pretty much every time I talk to someone I haven’t talked to in awhile.  A friend asked at open mic Friday night, since we hadn’t seen each other since early June.

The first time the question was asked of me, it took me aback for a moment, because I’m always writing.  I’m not always writing songs, but I write pretty much every day.  Lots and lots of words pour from my fingertips on a regular basis because that’s me.  It makes me think of Spanish class…there are two verbs that mean “to be” in Spanish, ser and estar, and there are rules for when you use one versus the other.  “Estoy escribiendo” is “I’m writing…right now.”  And generally, that’s the one you’d use for most activities.  To use the other one, “Soy escribiendo,” is to make a point:  I’m always doing it.  That’s me.

Yeah, I’m writing.  I can’t seem to stop.

I’m not writing songs, though.  I’m not even playing my existing songs much.  I feel more comfortable doing covers right now, as A makes appearances, however subtle, in many of my own songs.  I run across songs on my iPod that people have obviously written as a result of their grief, and I can’t imagine doing that right now.  Lines come to me, and then I imagine trying to sing them, and I choke up, then change my mental subject.  I wanted to write love songs, not musical eulogies.  A and I were writing a song together; the lyrics have been done, and he was to do the music.  He didn’t.  I don’t even want to look at that one yet.  I’ll finish it.  Some day.  

Nonetheless, I’ve been writing more than usual.  After a spotty couple of weeks of blogging, right after A died, I’m pretty much back to my previous level of production, if not beyond it, mostly for my own precarious sanity.  You guys, for better and worse, are my support group, and I appreciate you sticking with me through this.  I’ve also been journaling most every night, on top of the blogging.  And then there’s the poetry and the e-mails.

I have long felt like if I could just expend enough ink, or in this case, bytes, I could figure out any problem I was up against, and it’s usually been true.  Words=therapy. If I can articulate it, I figure I’ve got a better-than-average chance of solving it.  In the last 5 weeks, I have filled 126 journal pages.  Just for comparison, it took me 2 1/4 years to fill the same number of previous pages.  I write and I write until I’m written out and exhausted, but the only thing I’ve figured out is that all my mental faculties are no use against a conundrum like this.  The problem with Death, if I may be so ridiculous as to oversimplify it as a single problem, is that there is no looking beyond the veil.  It’s like a bank vault door is slammed shut between before and after, and you stand there, staring at it, looking for a knob, a handle, a dial to twiddle because all the answers are on the other side of it, and you can’t find anything but smooth, cold steel.  It’s like you’re in this ongoing conversation with someone, and not only did they hang up on you, they immediately had the number disconnected, and you have no idea what the hell happened.  Your only options are to accept what is unacceptable as fact, without understanding, or go crazy; perhaps both.  

I feel schizophrenic.  I’m functioning for the most part, and at a reasonably high level that I find hard to fathom sometimes.  There’s the me that’s at work, playing guitar, and making jokes, making dinner, and making love, and to all outward appearances getting on with her life.  Other times, I’m the me that is sad beyond words, empty, lost, bewildered, lonely, and feeling cheated out of one of my best friends in the world.  Nothing I have in the way of strengths or abilities is any match for this.  I can’t think my way through it.  I can’t do anything about it.  It is unthinkable and irretrievable.  I can be either me, or both, simultaneously.  On the plane north last week, near the end of a very long Friday, I was laughing at an Eddie Izzard bit that E reminded me of, and I kept remembering it and laughing again until I was shaking with laughter, and then, without any apparent trigger, that laughter turned into sobs of deep sadness in a single breath.  It seems I’ll just have to live a double life until I can reintegrate.

I could get all metaphysical and practical and say “This is life.  Life includes death.  And this lesson has been brought to me so that I truly understand that, and appreciate the life I have.”  While that’s probably true, I have to say, I’m not much for life’s teaching methods.  They’re brutal.  And understanding that does absolutely nothing for me right now in terms of filling the hole, easing the pain when it wells up again and again.  While I can intellectually understand that there was a history of heart disease, and that people die every day unexpectedly, and that many of them are 55 or even younger, and that at least I have the solace of knowing what we had was good while we had it, all of that does absolutely nothing for the fact that I miss him terribly.  Understanding is not always comforting.  

Yeah, I’m writing.  And I’ll keep writing until I run out of ink.  Or time.  One way or another, I’ll get to the answers.  Or it won’t matter anymore.