Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I spent the evening over at a friend’s house last night, where we had dinner and worked on our needlepoint while discussing everything under the sun.  She mentioned pulling back from some of her projects because she was stretched too thin.  I told her how I’d hung up my inlay plans for the time being.  I was set to quit outright and sell all my tools and supplies on eBay, but E suggested just taking an indefinite break from it; that way if I changed my mind down the road, I wouldn’t have to go about buying all the stuff again.  It seemed  a logical strategy.

As we talked about it, I mentioned that, having quit for the foreseeable future, I didn’t know what I was going to do about getting a hummingbird inlaid on my guitar.  That’s what started this whole project, I said.  I’d wanted it in memory of A, because he was the one who transformed me from a frustrated quitter into a guitarist, and in doing so, opened my eyes to what truly is my joy in life.  I always knew I loved music; I never knew quite how much until I had someone to share it with who loved it, too. 

She hadn’t realized, so I told her about how I’d gotten a bid on it in October 2006, and the guy told me he could do it for $300.  I got a wild hair and wondered if I could learn to do it myself, and so blew that guy off and went about trying to teach myself how to do inlay.  A year and a few months later, I had a baker’s dozen projects under my belt and the difficult realization that I wasn’t improving, even slightly.  In fact, it felt like I was losing ground with each subsequent project.  So I walked away.

She asked me how much I’d spent trying to learn to do inlay myself, and I told her I couldn’t (and dare not) even begin to guess.  With all the tools, wood and shell, books, and the rental of instructional videos from one of the masters in the field, it probably runs to a couple thousand bucks.  She laughed and said, "So you probably should’ve paid to have it done in the first place, huh?"  Probably.

But I went on to tell her that while the learning process did not accomplish my original goal, which was to be good enough to put a hummingbird on my guitar, I did gain a lot out of it.  First of all, once I started thinking about it, researching it, and decided to do it, I was excited about the possibilities. 

I hadn’t been excited about anything, and I mean ANYTHING, since A died.  To not be excited about anything, to feel like nothing is worth looking forward to, is like a little living death unto itself, and it is a bleak, miserable place to be.  To have even a little bit of enthusiasm for anything, to begin to look forward into the future with anything less than horror and resentment, felt like a miracle.  I was excited reading the books, and eager to shop for tools and materials, and I felt the thrill of anticipation as I waited for stuff to arrive in the mail.  Learning something new forced my mind to make room for something other than my own anguish, and I was more than ready to not give 100% of my mental energy to that.

Once I started, I spent a lot of time out in my "shop."  I liked being there, liked working with tools, because that’s what A did all day long in his work.  He worked on a much grander scale than I did, but the tools were often the same kinds.  When I was in the shop, apron on, making sawdust, tunes playing, I felt close to him.  I was out there pretty much every weekend, having learned that sawing shell when I’m mentally tired from being at work all day was not going to result in gorgeous inlays.  But I also learned that sawing shell took a lot of concentration, and for a few hours each weekend, I had a mental break from thinking about the wreck and ruin of my poor heart.

As I learned what I was doing, I learned a lot about what A had done, and I understood something I’d read before that said that it is possible to learn more about the dead even once they’ve gone and cannot tell us themselves.  Many times I wished he were there to ask questions, because he would’ve been a huge help.  I felt the same way when I was working on my bathroom project these last 2 months; I desperately wanted to call him and ask him how to deal with the vanity cabinet that was giving me fits, and to express once again how impressed I was by his skills and work.  Mostly I contented myself with asking him to keep an eye on me as I used the band saw so that I walked away from the encounter with all 10 fingers.  He wouldn’t want his "guitar babe" to have to give up playing, after all.

I created my little practice projects, and several of them now reside on his ofrenda, cradled in the frame of his picture.  I wanted my beloved artisan to see his wannabe protégée’s work, and hoped he’d be proud of me.  I’m sure he is, though I imagine he’s winced many a time watching me muddle my way through.  We used to joke that I was probably qualified to sweep his shop, but anything beyond that was iffy at best.  Having observed my own tool-using abilities extensively now, I have to say that we were righter than we could know.

So while I spent a lot of money to end up with no hummingbirds on any guitar, I cannot say that I wasted my money, or my time.  There was psychological benefit aplenty.  It got me moving forward with something more than begrudging resignation.  That alone is priceless.

At this point, I don’t even know if I will ever have the hummingbird inlay done.  The guitar I had intended to put it on is one I rarely play now, and the urgency has faded somehow in time.  I find I don’t miss working on inlay since I set it aside, which was unexpected and instructive; when I’m away from my guitar for too long, I miss it and I yearn to play.  I wonder if the spark to try it, and the process of learning it, has played out just as it was meant to.  Maybe it was never about the memorial at all; maybe it was about consciously choosing to plan and step forward into a future I was, admittedly, barely ready to accept.  If that’s the case, I probably got off cheap.  That many hours in counseling would’ve cost me much more, and certainly done me less good.