Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I have been listening to James Taylor’s Hourglass quite a bit lately, probably once every other day.  I’ve mentioned before its significance to me as a reminder of A, but the more I listen to it, I find a lot of insight that speaks to me at this time in my life.  JT’s an insightful guy; I guess advancing years and kicking your coke habit will do that.

There is no song on the album called “Hourglass,” which I always appreciate.  Naming the album after one of the songs on it has always been a lame practice, in my opinion.  There’s a bit of mystery when the name is obviously meaningful, but the meaning is not obvious.  I like to chew on those mysteries, myself.  Subtext is, to me, as important and interesting as the text itself, and often more so.

The songs on the album speak of losses of love, of life, of faith, of hope, and then again, they speak unabashedly of love, life, faith, and hope as givens, sometimes even within the same song.  I suppose that is as it should be; there are no absolutes in life, and the duality of all things is more often simultaneous rather than serial.

There are songs that speak directly to the spiritual crisis (in the more neutral “turning point” definition of the word) I have found myself in as a result of A’s passing:  my considering very seriously and with cautious yet growing hope the intimation of there being something more to start after the many lives we start and end in this life, the quiet promise and premise that evolution is inevitable and unstoppable, despite the appearance of death.  Not everyone believes that, and I understand that.  I didn’t believe it either, but I do now.

I considered the “Hourglass” in terms of these songs, and what it might mean.  The imagery of the hourglass in reference to life itself is not a new one, but usually is offered in the sense of finity:  like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.  Once the sand has run out, it’s run out.  That’s it.  I would agree that there’s some truth in that simile, but the more I think about it, the more I think it doesn’t go far enough.

For the fact remains that despite the sand having “run out,” it is clearly still all there.  Every single grain of it.  And I never hear anyone talk about that.  The moments of our lives are all together in the top of the hourglass the day we are born, and one by one they slip away, through a passage so narrow that you can barely see through it, and even then only if you are directly on top of it.  And yet on the other side is a space as expansive as the one the grain of sand just left.  If you happen to be a moment, a grain, in the middle of the pile, you cannot possibly fathom that, beyond that gateway that seems to pull us inexorably ever closer to it, another space exists.  But occasionally, the movement of your life will put you on the edge, pressed up against the glass, and you catch a glimpse of another world you previously didn’t know, or denied, existed.  And while you may be pulled away again by the vortex, you cannot forget what you have seen.

And at the “end,” when all the sand has run out, does the hourglass get thrown away?  No.  You flip it over, and you start again.  Over and over.  Nothing is lost.  Time does not end; we just start counting it differently.  Life doesn’t end.  You start over and over while you’re here, and perhaps once you’re gone as well.  Many sages have said that every ending is a beginning, every beginning an end in the making; perhaps it is infinitely truer than we know.  Or perhaps others have known, and I am late arriving at the conclusion.  But I have met many people who talk about an afterlife as a given tenet of their so-called faith, but when tragedy strikes, the fear in their eyes tells me that they have doubts they don’t want to have.  Maybe that’s the difference; they have faith, whereas I feel I’ve been given reason to believe.

I find it difficult to conclude this post, feeling called to put some kind of disclaimer on these words to ease the unease I expect from readers that may actually belong to nobody but me.  We don’t talk about this in our practical, concrete world, and even those who say they believe in an afterlife tend to leave it at “they’re in a better place” and don’t really delve publicly into what that means.  I have found only a couple people willing to talk to me about such things, when, as a grieving person, they are forefront in my mind.  There is as much mysticism in religion as any other tradition, but that mystery still seems taboo.  Even a very faithful friend with whom I’ve been sharing these evolving thoughts seems willing to go no further than some version of “Well, of course.”  This does me no good as I try to make sense of the inexplicable yet undeniable.  I don’t know if it’s because it’s too personal, or too uncertain.  I suspect it might be a combination of both.

If it is the truth, you’d think people would talk about it as freely and unselfconciously as they do the truth of rising gas prices.  If it is false, you’d think people would debunk it freely and vociferously as they do the B.S. that comes out of Washington, D.C.  Instead, it is relegated to the province of the New Age freaks and the Jesus freaks, and the professional debunkers and disbelievers; there seems to be no one willing to rationally discuss the irrational.  But just because something’s irrational doesn’t mean it’s wrong; the numinous may just require another means of understanding.  Reason and mystery do not seem to me incompatible; rather, I would argue that to truly understand our experiences requires a healthy respect and critical consideration of both.

It’s a rainy October day in the desert, really rather unusual weather here for this time of year, and it doesn’t help my mood any.  I feel as gray and heavy as the clouds outside my window.  I found the Sunday paper treacherous, as I do most weeks now.  And it’s not just the page after page of other people’s tragedies, and so much death, which is bad enough. 

I read the Accent section, and get to the NY Times crossword that I would cut out every week and send to A.  He was a crossword fan in general, but his paper had stopped carrying the NY Times Sunday puzzle, so I was happy to hook him up.  There were 2 in the last package I was going to mail to him but never got to.  I bought him a whole book of them for Christmas last year.  Any little thing I could do for him, anything I could do to brighten his day, make him smile, I delighted in doing.  It seemed especially important, given the long-distance aspect, because as much as I wanted to be, I wasn’t there on the crappy days to give him a hug, rub his back, or just hold him in silence if that’s what he needed.  So I made sure he got something in the mail at least once a week, always accompanied by a “smell-good card,” as he called them, the scent of my perfume greeting him as he opened the envelope.

Then I try to hurry past the Big 5 ad, the one I checked every week to see if his favorite hiking boots were on sale.  That one is easy enough to pick out and set aside, although I confess, I looked at it the first couple of weeks after he passed, out of habit maybe, and maybe some masochistic desire to stab myself in the heart.  I decided that hurt, and I was going to stop doing it.

The Target ad was lying in wait, though, and I wasn’t expecting that.  The Corningware casseroles I bought him as a housewarming present when he first moved into his new apartment were on sale, and seeing them there, and thinking about that just brought tears to my eyes.  I’m crying even as I write this.  So much history in a white dish, in the cupboard of the apartment we spent such happy hours in together, in the kitchen that he cooked for me in, and that somehow we always ended up removing clothes in. 

Corningware doesn’t seem like it’ll kill you, but when you’ve lost someone, everything you ever shared, did, talked about, takes on new significance because it is a talisman of something that you had together.  Even mundane things become holy.

It was cold when I got up this morning, and I thought about grabbing my slippers, and then I remembered that A and I got them in Chinatown, together.  I’d forgotten that, not permanently, but it hadn’t been a part of the parade of memories that have flashed across my mind in the last 3 months.  And I am grateful that all through my house I have small things that will remind me of things I may have forgotten, small caches of memory I can count on when I cannot count on myself. 

I was not asked if I wanted any of his things.  I would’ve loved to have his favorite Henley shirts that he looked so good in, and so I have bought 3 myself, to wear on sad, cold October days like today.  Today’s is blue-green.  I figure that the things of his I would’ve wanted are just symbols of the man I can no longer have except in spirit, and there is no reason I cannot recreate my own symbols.  So I have done so.

In a transparent attempt to buy happiness (grief makes it easy to be self-indulgent), I bought a new guitar Saturday afternoon.  It’s a beaut, and I spent the morning in eager anticipation of a guitar I hadn’t bought yet, but I knew I was unlikely the leave the guitar store empty-handed.  And once I had found her and taken her home, I was giddy with the joy of a new mother bringing her baby home from the hospital.  But as the day wore on, I felt the now-familiar weight of sadness in my chest.  Because A and I could discuss guitars endlessly, and so we would’ve as I proudly announced my newest acquisition and he proclaimed his jealousy and how he couldn’t wait to play her himself.  He’ll never play her.  I told him about her, but he was silent on the subject, as he has been silent on all subjects since he left.  And yet he, and guitars, and music in general, are so inextricably tied together that I cannot hear or play a single note without him being here, present in my mind and heart.  And I want him here, but it’s always bittersweet.

God, I miss him.  The cruelest irony of bereavement is that your beloved is everywhere…except where he’s supposed to be.

Based on a recommendation of a sister in grief, I ordered the book Healing After Loss:  Daily Meditations for Working through Grief, by Martha Whitmore Hickman.  I ordered it from one of the Amazon Marketplace sellers, used, to save a few bucks, and I knew the copy I was getting was used, and that it had an inscription in front.  And when it arrived Thursday, sure enough, the inscription was there:

Caroline,

I’m so sorry about your mother.  Hope this gives comfort.

Love,

Laurie

It didn’t bother me that it was inscribed; but I wasn’t prepared for the effect it did have on me, which was that I rather liked that it was.  This book was given in love, not to me, but the love was still there.  

I wasn’t going to read the book through just yet, and it’s set up with dates so you could read one a day through a calendar year.  So I turned to July 15, the day A passed away, to see what it said, and what was there was a quotation from the C.S. Lewis book I’ve mentioned, and thoughts about not having answers and how hard that is.  It was perfect.  And I felt like in just a single page of the book, I’d been given a gift, a hug in black and white, a moment of understanding.  I look forward to reading the rest.

The other thing I noticed is that I was the first person to open that book.  The pages were tight together, the paperback’s spine unlined, uncracked.  Caroline never opened it, and then she sold it.  And I thought it was sad that I received comfort on the first page I read, and that there may have been comfort in it for Caroline, but she didn’t have the heart to open it.

I understand not having the heart; there have been many things in the last 15 weeks that I’ve had to work up to, and some I’m still not ready for.  Wherever Caroline is, I hope she got rid of this book because she was feeling better…not because she couldn’t imagine ever feeling better again, but somehow I doubt that was the case.  She may well have held medicine for her pain in her hand, but never opened the bottle, and I think that’s really a shame.  But I understand.

It’s such a dark place, grief, and hope so hard to find.  Such pain.  Lord, such pain.  I have been so grateful for every tiny bit of kindness and comfort that has come my way from places familiar and unexpected.  I am not proud; I’ll take what help I can get.  Anything that’ll help me keep standing, keep going another minute, another hour, another day, is a blessing.

Lately, I have had an image recurring in my head, an image of the way my adjustment to my loss of A has progressed, and it is that of being a grief sponge.  Not a brand-new sponge, fresh from the plastic wrapper, pliable, and supple, but one that’s been used before, and then thrown under the sink until it’s completely desiccated and hard.  Throw a sponge like that into the bucket of its life, sloshing and spilling over with grief, and it cannot immediately soak up anything.  It floats on top, twisting and turning with each passing wavelet.  There is no control, no reason, no understanding; it can’t even do what sponges are supposed to do.  It is at the mercy of the grief, just trying to stay afloat.

Given time, the sponge starts getting damp around the edges, and in time it has soaked up the contents of that bucket o’ grief, absorbing it instead of drowning in it, swelling to encompass it instead of being emptied by it.  The grief hasn’t gone away; it’s just become a part of me, which is both bad and good.  It’s bad because, well, I’m full of grief.  I’ve lost someone I loved, and that’s always going to be true.  But bit by bit, I have absorbed that truth and it doesn’t completely flatten me every minute of the day anymore.

Sometimes, though, it’s too much, and I have to wring myself out, twisting and twisting until every last tear and all the grief are back in the bucket again and I am empty for the moment.  But I’m still in the bucket because the bucket is my life, and I absorb the grief again as I am able.  I carry the grief with me, but somehow it’s now integrated.  That sounds like it should be bad news, but it doesn’t feel like bad news.  It feels like progress. 

You can slowly learn to get used to carrying an extra 20 pounds around your middle gained over the long holiday season, but if someone handed you two bowling balls right now and said, “Now go about your day,” you’d have a hard time doing it without struggling.  I know I’m mixing my metaphors, but I was done with the sponge thing.  (I’m a professional; please don’t try to mix metaphors at home.)  I’m getting used to the extra weight, and my life has had to buy bigger pants to accommodate it, but I notice it’s a little easier to move about despite it.  I guess that’s what they call “acceptance.”  But it’s not just accepting the death; that’s just one piece of it, (albeit the biggest part).  It’s accepting the sadness that will inevitably resurface.  It’s accepting the tears that will come unbidden and unexpectedly.  It’s accepting that the future will not look like you thought it would, like you wanted it to.  It’s accepting the weirdness of your friends in the face of your grief.  It’s accepting yourself as one grieving, and accepting that it’s okay to feel this way, and accepting that you’re going to, on and off, for the rest of your life.  You don’t have to like any of it, but you have to accept it all.

I thought that I had surrendered to my grief, and in many ways I have.  I cry when I need to; I feel no compulsion to be stoic at the cost of my own frazzled nerves and fractured heart.  I stay home when I can’t face the world.  I say a mental “fuck you” to people who can’t find it in themselves to be sympathetic, and don’t let it change what I need to do; I merely exclude them from further participation in my life.  I take it easy.  But I think deep down, I thought I could, and would, eventually outrun grief.  It was only when I accepted that that wasn’t going to happen, that this loss and the aftermath was going to be a part of me forever after, was going to inform how I approached the world from here on out, and how I related to others, that this whole horrible thing was part of my story now, that I felt I turned a small corner, absorbing the reality instead of raging against it.  I’m wary of assuming much is a trend when it comes to my emotional state lately, because it is much like weather in the Midwest—wait five minutes; it’ll change.  However, I have felt a shift in the last few days, one ever so subtle:  I have grief; grief doesn’t have me.

A funny thing happened the other night.  I was talking to E about how I’d been going through CDs A had sent me, because A and I had recently been discussing the lack of Van Morrison in my music collection when A was certain he’d sent me a bunch.  I told him I’d look for it. 

What was odd was the “recently.”  A moment after it passed my lips, I wondered to aloud, “How recently could it have been?”  I haven’t spoken to A in over 3 months.  (Well, spoken to him and had him respond.  I talk to him all the time.)  I realized that the “recently” was in reference to our last conversation; it had been recent prior to that.  And I saw how time had stopped for me that day, and all time prior and after is measured from the day he died.

The measurement of time from that day is not a new phenomenon to me.  He has been gone 14 weeks; it’ll be 15 on Saturday.  Usually only infants’ ages are measured in weeks, but I measure time that way now, too.  I wonder if I always will.

This weekend, I got confused, and thought he’d been gone a little over 2 months.  The next day I realized it had been 3 months on October 15^th.  I had known that on October 15^th, but somehow spaced it.  3 months.  Damn.

I know time has passed; I can feel it whooshing past my ears as the world turns.  The sensation is not unlike what I imagine it would be liked to be involuntarily tied to the front of a speeding bus, everyone in a hurry to get where they’re going and paying no heed to the fact that you’re not able or desirous of keeping up with them, and that you are terrified to boot.

Because, to my heart, he may as well have died yesterday.  And my trouble with keeping track of time only testifies to that.  Three months is no time at all in the grand scheme of things, and indeed, it passed quickly.  At the same it has been an eternity without him.  We spoke every day, multiple times a day, for hours at a time every night.  How is it even in the realm of possibility that we haven’t conversed in 3 months?  It’s all so wrong.

I wonder how time passes for him now, if he feels it.  My understanding is that one of our lifetimes is a small amount of time for those on the other side, and I hope that means he won’t forget me, and will be there to welcome me when my time comes.

And I think about the time that stretches ahead of me, and what it will bring in terms of this grief.  I think about the day it’ll be 2 years since he died, and I’ll have been without him as long as I was with him.  The thought of that makes me sick to my stomach, to tell you the truth.  But regardless of how much time we had together, we loved each other with an eternal love.  I cling to that, as I try not to dwell on the decades I will be without him, and secretly hope there won’t be too many; I’d hate to be the first person in my family to live to 100.  3 months has been too long without him; I don’t think I can do 65 years.