He was a gift every day to me
When the holidays approached last year, starting with my birthday in November, I sunk deeper and deeper into grief. I was 4 months out, and as the last shreds of protective numbness slipped away, the harshness of my now unvarnished reality was only exacerbated by the forced cheer of the rest of the world.
I think sometimes about that protective numbness, and remember how horrible I actually felt when the numbness gave way to violent storms of aching tears. If it felt that bad when I was numb, how bad was it really? Beyond comprehension, as I recall. You almost have to respect that kind of total annihilation, that it can still overwhelm all your mental defenses, voluntary and involuntary. In all my reading after A died, I found one source that claimed that there was no greater emotional injury to the human psyche than the grief of bereavement. I don’t doubt it for a second.
I didn’t want to celebrate anything, and seeing the decorations and the ads and all the rigmarole everyone complains about anyway just seemed like a personal affront. A lot of things did, then. I bought a few gifts for my nearest and dearest, most of them online, skipped the tree, put a candle in the middle of a wreath, and just tried to make it through.
The hardest part of the holidays was finding all kinds of good gifts for him, and walking past them. I’d see something, think “Oooh…that’s perfect for A!” and a nanosecond later, when I’d remembered, the tears would come, and I’d pick up my pace to get out of there as fast as possible.
It still happens. When I travel, I would normally pick up a souvenir for him, and they still catch my eye. It is not quite so painful to pass them by now, but I still feel a pang. The impulse is still there, the desire to spoil him, too. And with the holiday madness starting to creep in (at my local Target, the Christmas stuff was on display the morning after Halloween), I feel it again. I’ve seen several perfect gifts for him. Gifts I very much wish I could give him, though I’d settle for just giving him a hug. It would do me a world of good.
This morning, then, I “bought” his Christmas gift. I was looking through a mail-order catalogue while I ate my breakfast cereal and found the perfect thing. So I clipped out the picture, and stuck it in an envelope I keep, filled with other clippings of things that he would like, comics that would’ve made him laugh, or things that have eased my heart in this journey. I don’t actually buy things I see out in the world, but the catalogues make it easy to accommodate an impulse that is so consistently thwarted by his absence. I think one of the most difficult aspects of learning to live again after you lose a loved one is that you’re constantly telling yourself “no.” No, you can’t tell him that. No, you can’t do that. No, there’s no one to give that to if you buy it. No, you can’t call him. No, you can’t e-mail him. It takes a long, long time for those habitual impulses of mind and heart to release you. It was probably 5-6 months before my mind stopped expecting him to ping me at the end of the day on chat, but my body took longer, and I had anxiety attacks every lunchtime and afternoon until I realized that my body was still expecting to hear from him, and was worried when I didn’t. You get really tired of telling yourself “no,” and you want to know “WHY? Why the hell not? Why is this my life? There must be some mistake!” Every frustrated impulse to make a gesture of love is another loss, and so you look for ways to channel it. Clipping stuff out is one way I cope with that; directing the impulse toward someone or something else is another.
My friend and her band put out a CD last year. It was coming out in October, and I told her to put me down for 2 copies, one for me and one for A; we were both looking forward to it. But A didn’t make it to October. I made it to the CD release party, one of the first outings I’d made (besides work) since he’d died, and if I hadn’t really wanted to support my friend, I would’ve bailed. I almost did anyway. And when I only bought one CD, it was just another unnecessary reminder of what I will never forget. It hurt.
Fast-forward to a couple weeks ago, a year later, and that same friend and I are playing a gig together. She is selling her CDs as usual, and my friend J who is there wants to buy one. She is short of cash, so I cover it and give it to her as my gift, refusing her money for the remainder. Of course, she never intended for me to buy it for her, and I knew that, so finally I explained, “I always meant to buy two, one for me and one for A, but I didn’t get to. If you allow me to do this, you allow me to put that impulse somewhere. You’re doing me a favor.” And she was; I felt like something that had been left hanging had been completed, even if not in the way I wanted and intended. She respected that, and let it go. And I was grateful.