Don’t ask, don’t tell
An interesting development in this journey has come to pass, one that is not really that big a deal, and was inevitable, but nonetheless kind of sneaked up on me. That is, I’ve met a new acquaintance who is becoming a friend. We met because of my inlay work, and it’s really nice to have another person to talk to about the work, especially another woman. We’ve been exchanging e-mails daily, sharing our stories of tools and shop tragedies, the websites and vendors we use, the books we’ve read. It’s really nice.
And I’ll let it be very nice because it’s always cool to find someone who is as enthusiastic about your hobby as you are. But it has given me pause, in my own mind.
I should back up a little.
My inlay project was inspired by a memorial I wanted to do for A, that is, to have a hummingbird inlaid into my guitar fingerboard. As I mentioned yesterday, the fact that I play at all is directly attributable to him, so putting a tribute on my guitar was the most fitting thing I could think of. I even went so far as to get an estimate from an inlay artist for the work, and once I had it in hand, it occurred to me that I might be able to do it myself, eventually. And so here I am, 10 months after that idea formed in my head, teaching myself to do inlay, with the goal being to do that hummingbird.
In addition to the guitar connection, everything I do in my shop, right down to sweeping up, is a remembrance of A, because he had a shop, and he made beautiful cabinets. I was in awe of his skill, the way his mind worked to create, and the more I learn about woodworking, the more impressed I become. I was always curious about his work, and asked about it often, so a lot of the knowledge I have, I got from him. Throughout this process and our conversations about wood and tools, he naturally comes up, and I’ve shared how I got into the inlay thing in the first place, and what I learned from him.
When he has come up in our e-mails, I have referred to him as “my friend who passed away.” Which feels like a lie, so incomplete a description is it. And yet it hardly seems appropriate or necessary to explain the whole situation to someone who wasn’t in my life when he was, or when he passed, and who is not, and may never be, an intimate friend. However, it’s something that affects me every single hour of my life. There’s the rub: By not telling them, I am choosing not to be defined (at least by others) by my loss, which is probably healthy; but in my heart right now, I am still very much defined by that loss. I am “the girl who is doing pretty well, considering her horrific loss, which she’s still healing from…slowly.” But I don’t advertise that; no one wants to hear it.
It’s curious to me, to say the least. I stand outside myself and find it strange that I now have to decide what and with whom I will share this when it comes to new people in my life. And I imagine that, for many, of not most, of them, they’ll get the “my friend who passed away” bit.
It’s not that I didn’t think I would meet new people in my life. I just didn’t really think about it. I’ve met new people through the grief group, but of course I would tell them about my loss. That’s the point. And there are plenty of people in my life that were here before and after but don’t really know the extent of what the loss meant to me, because I chose not to make them privy to that. There are a handful who know everything, and are supportive in their ways, but certainly don’t think about it all the time as I do, because it wasn’t their loss. So, like all grievers, I carry the loss largely alone. It is no longer for public consumption or compassion, if it ever was. And yet when I give the minimum information about him, I always feel this pressure behind it to spill all, despite knowing that it’s not the right thing to do, and that I’d regret it if I did. I feel the internal conflict, though. It’s not a huge one, but it’s there. The fact that the conflict is something I can observe instead of being overwhelmed by it may be a sign of growing strength. One can hope.
I guess the issue is one of strength and perhaps the illusion thereof, in that I carry an emotional wound that makes some things difficult for me, but no one can see it, and therefore they do not know to take care with me; but to warn them of it out of he blue would seem weird. If I’d lost a leg, even if a new acquaintance didn’t know the how of it, they would recognize the what, and wouldn’t ask me why I gave up jogging. But when my new friend asked me if I was going to the Healdsburg Guitar Festival next weekend, I said, “No, he and I were supposed to go, and I just couldn’t without him.” I suppose I could’ve just said “no,” but I didn’t. I’m not much of a liar, and I’m still learning to be okay with the idea that exercising my right to privacy does not equal a lie of omission. I keep having to remind myself.
I guess that this will become like my eye injury, in time. When I was a year old, I got glass in my eye. It was a fairly catastrophic injury, and I’m lucky I didn’t lose it, and further lucky I didn’t lose the sight in the other eye, too. There were several surgeries over the years, and a lifetime of caution trying to protect my good eye. The injury means that I’m legally blind in that eye, and while I have spent 34 years adapting to it, (and have done pretty well), it does affect my life every day. But most people don’t notice the scar unless I have my glasses off, and I don’t feel the need to explain it to everyone I meet. And when I do explain it, it’s in a very matter-of-fact way. It doesn’t bother me to explain, like it did when I was a kid.
But there is definitely a scar. And while it has healed as much as it could, it’s not what it was before the accident. My eye was damaged beyond the most basic repair.
I think this wound will be much the same.