Random weekend bits and pieces, Part 2 of 2
I have slowly been trying to get back to my walking, which has been largely nonexistent for the last month due to my plantar fasciitis and a host of other physical problems that make me just want to be a lump at home. The bad news is that I’m starting to look more and more like a lump, and knew that I’d best get back on track when I had to order new pants in a bigger size. I often wonder if the exponential increase in physical problems I’ve had, all at once, is the result of psychic stress, namely grief and the stress that comes with putting yourself and your life back together one shard at a time. And then there’s the comfort eating, which doesn’t help but in the short term.
I took a spin around the neighborhood, my usual route. There was a nice breeze blowing, tickling all the wind chimes and bells throughout the neighborhood and rustling the palm trees. A few minutes from home, I passed a yard I’ve passed countless times, but something caught my eye. They were little terra cotta bells in the yard; I could see them over the fence. I don’t know why they called my attention; I’d never seen them before to my recollection, and they weren’t ringing like the others in the neighborhood. But for some reason, I stood transfixed, attending to these bells more than they warranted.
It was then that the memory came to me. A had bought bells, two of them, when he’d visited here in October of 2005. It was the only trip he’d ever make here, though we planned others. It was just easier for me to visit him in California, for a lot of reasons. But for some reason, he wanted bells, and he hung them from a beam in his apartment. I had forgotten about them. I added to his collection a copper bell I’d picked up as a part of his Christmas gift that year. As I worked to mount my prayer wheel in the doorway, bonking my head into 2 copper bells I’d strung there, I realized that I’d bought them the same time I’d bought his. This, too, I’d forgotten. Neither can I remember if I put them there before or after he died. I think it was after.
At this point in my journey with grief, memories like this do not generally devastate me like they used to, but they are bittersweet and weigh heavily on me for awhile. I’m grateful that the universe, and maybe even he himself, jog my memory. It is comforting to know that though I may forget that I’ve forgotten, it is all still there, just waiting for the trigger to be mine again. But even in regaining those memories, I realize again how much I have lost, and I long for the return of my life to what it was, knowing it is impossible.
I have a trip coming up this weekend, to visit a friend of mine from guitar camp. She’s in Wisconsin. I last saw her in March or April, I think, because she was visiting here and she stopped at Walgreen’s to pick up a stethoscope so she could drop by give my Shih Tzu’s heart a listen. My friend is a vet. When she got home, she sent me an e-mail, and invited me out there to visit. I said sure.
I decided I could use a credit I had for a flight I missed last year, and started making plans at the end of May. When I called the airline to use my credit, they told me it had expired. I was irritated, sent off a couple pissed letters, and let B know that I wasn’t going to be able to come after all.
And the truth is, at the time, I didn’t really want to go. I love B, but I didn’t really want to go far from home. It wasn’t personal; I didn’t want to go anywhere and the lack of an airline credit and expensive car repairs at that time were unimpeachable excuses for my not going. I can’t say I was terribly sorry. And my mood, which had been poor at Memorial Day, the anniversary of our last visit together, got continually worse through and past the July sadiversary. I muddled through, but I had gone backwards, as I’d expected might be the case. Everyone who’d been through it said so.
Several weeks after my last letter to the airline, I apparently had shamed them into doing the right thing and I had in my hand a voucher. So I rescheduled the trip for this coming weekend, still feeling a little like I was doing it because I said I would, rather than for any personal enthusiasm for the adventure.
But as I sat soaking in the tub Saturday night thinking, I realized with some surprise that I was actually looking forward to this trip. It is only the third thing I’ve looked forward to in the last 14.5 months, (and the first thing turned out so poorly that I don’t even want to count it.) It is strange that I can tell you that there have been only 3, but so it is. You become acutely aware of what you have, and what you do not have, when you lose someone you love, be it stuff, or feelings, or time, or companionship. I am looking forward to being with my friend, getting out of town, maybe seeing some fall foliage that’s not available ihere. It doesn’t hurt that it will also help me avoid home at a time when A might’ve been visiting again, but never will. But I really think I stand to have some fun, and that is nothing less than a miracle. Among all the painful “never agains” I mentally catalogued after A died, the list included “hope,” and “joy,” and “fun,” and “looking forward to anything.”
There was a long time where any of those seemed impossible, and not only that, but distasteful as well. “They” said it would get better, and it would get different, and it does, on both counts. It’s all very much a mystery to me as to how this happens, but it does. I have healing yet to do; I know I do. I think it may be a life-long process, to some extent. But frankly, I never imagined I’d get this far, so unbelievable and indescribable is the pain, sadness, and despair of those early days of bereavement. I thought I would die, and wasn’t too much bothered by the idea for my own part, though I knew it wouldn’t be good for those still here who loved me, any more than it was good for me that my sweetheart had left me. The missing him is a constant; the raw pain and the despair are gone for the most part; the longing ache comes and goes; the sadness seems to be mine to keep. And I am changed, though into what is still, as ever, evolving. Right now I can’t say that any of the changes are good. However, the sadness no longer eclipses everything else. It comes up front and recedes as it will, depending on what’s happening. It doesn’t suppress my laughter anymore; it rides tandem with it, and they take turns steering this bike. And I can cry for him for awhile of an evening and still call it a good day. That doesn’t make any logical sense, I know. Then again, the last time anything made any sense to me was July 15th, 2006. And then I watched it all crumble around me, as the world I thought I understood was shaken to rubble. I no longer require things to make sense. I just require a little peace.