It’s not really an ambush if you expect it
It’s been a pretty good day, and I’ve been enjoying myself. I slept late and had a great breakfast. I talked to a friend, settling some of our plans for next weekend in San Francisco. I worked out in the shop for several hours, stopping only when I sawed into my finger, and decided after I stitched myself up with superglue that perhaps it was a sign that I should give it a rest for the day. I played with the dogs, who always make me laugh. Finally took a shower around 4 p.m.
What was supposed to be a belated birthday dinner and basketball game out at the local pub turned out to be beanie-weenies at home as E listened to the game via the internet and I flipped channels to find a movie to watch. Pearl Harbor was on, so I watched it while fighting off the dogs who wanted my fancy dinner.
There is a scene, relatively early in the film, where Rafe, the leading man, and Evelyn, the leading lady, have said goodbye and watch each other from opposite sides of a revolving door until the very last minute. That got me. Dang. It brought me back to the airport where A and I said our last goodbye, keeping an eye on each other until I’d turned the corner into security. We had no idea it was our last.
It wasn’t the last time tears sprang to my eyes during the course of the movie, but even so, it was only a one-Kleenex movie, all told. Maybe I’m not ready for war movies yet; death in art is still pretty hard on me, but that doesn’t stop me from watching ER every week. I guess my reasoning is that I can’t avoid everything. Life is going to throw me some stark reminders and trip me up. I know I will survive them; I’ve done so many times already. I’m not afraid to cry. I think I’ve earned a Ph.D. in crying in the last year and a half.
I cried last night at open mic, as the act before me sang a song that a friend of theirs had written for a friend of hers that was dying. It was a gift of great beauty and understanding, this song, but it pulled my composure right out from under me. When the song was over, I headed to the restroom to blow my nose; you can’t sing with a stuffy nose, but the damage was done to my throat for that evening’s set. My voice cracked like a teenage boy’s, and was strained. Not my finest performance, but whadda ya gonna do?
At open mic, I ran into an old acquaintance, founder of the second defunct band I was in, who was sitting in with a friend—they’re the ones that played the song that made me cry. I asked how he was doing; he told me he’d had a heart attack in the last year, and was still trying to get his health on track. He can’t be more than 45. I told him I was very glad to see him still standing before me. He doesn’t know my story, nor did I think it useful or kind to share it with him. But damn…
I got an e-mail from another acquaintance the other day, a man in his 50s. He made some offhand joke about considering having one last fling with some young thing before his time was up, but that it might well kill him. I was a young thing; A was a man in his 50s. I don’t think I killed him, but the “joke” didn’t really find its audience with me. He doesn’t know my story, nor did I care to share it with him. I can’t really blame him for being insensitive about something he knows nothing about. But damn…
That said, none of these things ruined my day. I have wondered what healing in grief looks like; maybe non-grievers wonder, too, and maybe they would be baffled and frightened at the truth. But it seems to be this. It’s not that the tears don’t have a hair-trigger anymore; they do, but they dry up fast, too. The moment comes and the moment goes, but while the moment IS, it’s big and real and I feel it with all its emotional force. And then I dry my eyes and go on about my pretty good day. It’s not that a hundred things no longer remind me of him; they still do, but I’m glad for it, instead of feeling it as salt in the wound. It means that while he may be absent from this world, he will never be absent from mine. It’s not that I stop missing him. I never stop missing him; but I’m no longer shackled in place by the pain I felt in missing him. Not most of the time anyway. Every once in awhile I have a meltdown; I’ve found them salutary, truth be told, despite how miserable and hopeless as I feel while in the midst of one.
I suppose it could seem disappointing that this, at least for now, is what healing looks and feels like. It is not a complete return to who I was; certainly, I’m not the happy-go-lucky gal I was before I lost A. But given that I didn’t know how I’d ever learn to live again and enjoy any part of my life, or appreciate the many blessings that grace it, getting to this point is nothing short of miraculous to me. I guess it all depends on how one defines a miracle.