In his element
Thursday night I attended a class to learn how to use my new band saw, which was out of the box and assembled this past weekend, but I was afraid to turn it on. But the local Woodcraft store offered a beginner band saw class, so I signed up.
When I got there, I was early, and there was no one in the classroom, so I sat and looked around the room. Power tools of all sorts, wood, goggles and aprons, hand tools. I realized that while I was sitting in the somewhat artificial reality of a classroom shop, at the same time, I was, for the first time, sitting in an environment not terribly different (if cleaner) than the one A spent every day in. It gave me pause, but not for long, and my overriding feeling was of closeness to him, even though we’d never spent much time in his shop. I only got to see it once; he feared I’d be overcome by my allergies from the sawdust. I offered to help clean it, more than once; he never wanted to spend our time together doing that. I’m sure his sister wished we had.
One of the most supportive grief books I’ve read, and still read, is a book of daily meditations, by Martha Whitmore Hickman, who earned her grief badge through the terrible loss of her teenage daughter. Each day starts with a quotation, a brief mulling of the theme, and an affirmation. It’s a good book for the short-attention span that accompanies early grief, and the things I’ve read in it have actually helped. They’ve strengthened me when I’ve felt especially weak. They’ve shed light on my path when I’ve felt especially lost. I remember there being one about how, even after our loved ones are gone, we continue to know them better, to deepen our understanding of who they were, in their own lives and in ours. It seems impossible that this would be the case, that we could continue to grow closer to someone we can no longer interact with directly, and yet I’ve found it to be true.
Since A left, I have had experiences, even sought some of them out, that are similar to things he lived through, and allow me to understand things he shared with me in a visceral way, rather than just an intellectual way. He talked to me about his divorce, and how the breakup of his marriage took him years to process, but he found happiness again, slowly, though from time to time the pain still flared. Divorce is not the same as bereavement, but they are not entirely dissimilar, either, particularly when the loss of your loved one was not by your choice, and entirely unexpected. He told me that his work was still suffering from the malaise that arrived with the break-up, despite working through the necessary grieving for a dead relationship; it was understandable, I thought, but now I understand. I’m still scatterbrained and disinterested at work, to an astonishing degree.
My hobby, and even this class, has brought me a greater understanding of what he did, and what it took, as he spent his days “rearranging wood.” I was mighty impressed when I first learned he was a cabinetmaker; the more I learned about it, the more impressed I became, and that continues to be true. I could ask much better questions now, and I’m sorry he’s not here to answer them. I’m sorry that he’s not here to answer them, but I suppose it is only because of him that I am so interested in knowing, so perhaps he has his hand in yet.
Meanwhile, back at the class, the instructor came in, inevitably bald and bearded, though he was both balder and more bearded than my love, and significantly shorter, for that matter. But he was affable, and when I shook his hand, there was shock of recognition, at least for me. His hand was so like A’s, the hand of a craftsman—strong, dry, and just a little rough, but not unpleasantly so. I have been surprised over and over again at how my body has its own memories as much as my mind does: reacting to light reminiscent of the partly cloudy day we last spent together out walking in a park near his house; the humidity that reminded me of the July weather on the day I found out he’d died; how my fingers and lips can remember his so clearly that I still get butterflies. To feel his touch in a stranger’s grip was at once disconcerting and gratifying, like I’d received a momentary gift, however bittersweet. I’ll take bittersweet; it beats pure bitterness.
My three classmates, all men of a certain age and contemporaries of the instructor, reminded me of him in small ways as well. One had a beard. The instructor, when he was working, had the same focus of a man listening to an internal voice and tuning out the rest of the world that my A did. All had the easy confidence that I notice seems to be standard equipment of men that age, at least the ones I’ve run across. I like it. I often commented to A that one of the things that delighted me most about him was how comfortable he was in his own skin, literally and figuratively; I loved to watch him sit; he didn’t just sit in a chair—he inhabited it. He inhabited his body entirely, and both moved and rested with a casual grace that made me catch my breath.
As I took my turn practicing on the saw, making sawdust, I couldn’t help being a little bit proud of learning to do something that A did. I was doing it for my project, of course, but I hoped he’d be proud of my efforts (even if a blind chimp could put a band saw to more accurate use than I can).
Thursday night had all the ingredients to highlight the distance between A and I; it really could’ve wrecked me, and the fact that it did not tells me I’ve come a long way on this healing road. I actually felt closer to him in that shop than I have for most of the time he’s been gone. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday evening.