Family matters
I heard back from my sister-in-law today regarding my e-mail titled "Benign." She commented on the end that I could now get back to my life, but it might never look the same again. I responded to her, somewhat cryptically, a bit dramatically, and entirely honestly that my life hadn’t looked the same for a long time now.
It bothers me that my family does not, and never will, understand the depth of my loss of A. I know that’s my fault; I could’ve been open, and honest, and up front about it, and I was too afraid to do so. Afraid, and maybe stubborn, too; I don’t discuss things about myself with people who I know are going to disapprove. Why go there? If I don’t want to deal with your censure, I don’t let you in to those parts of my life.
But they are less aware of how I’ve changed than just about anyone else in my life. I live far away, so they didn’t really have a sense of the before- and after-death me, or rather, they only know the before, and can only assume that that’s who I am still, having no conception of why I might not be.
I often feel like a coward for not telling them that A was my love and my lover. And then I doubt myself and think telling them would have been merely self-serving, because the only reason I’d tell them is so that I could feel more understood, that maybe I could’ve had their support and sympathy. And it makes it hard, I guess, to explain where I’m coming from when I share some perspectives that I only have because my beloved died, when I have not yet explained that my beloved died.
As frustrated as I became in the aftermath because A never told his family about me, I could never blame him, because I was the same way with mine. And that was not surprising; we both handled things our way, and felt no need to justify ourselves to others in anything in our lives. We kept/keep our own counsel, and did/do as we see fit. And for the most part, that still works for me.
But there are moments, sometimes, when good people who love me say something like my sister-in-law did, completely unknowingly, that make me think, "Lady, you have no idea…" I can’t blame her, either. It’s just another reminder of what a damn mess this was. Not that anyone has a neat, tidy, uncomplicated epilogue to their death, but I guess by now, the rawness of the mess has gone away, and I don’t really focus on the time right after he died anymore. I think about the man much more than I think about the man’s death, because the man I loved and adored, and the death I hate. So I don’t think about it, and sometimes sort of forget about it, until those moments arrive, and I am reminded…reminded of what silence has cost me, and what it will continue to cost me as the years pass. I wish the world had been ready for us, so we could’ve done things differently. I wish we had been ready for the world, so we could’ve done things differently.