Grief part 1

 Grieving JoJo - I

When I say her death was completely unexpected it sounds naive to anyone who knew her but didn’t know her. My aunt was dying for a long time but she was never a participant of her dying. She was always living. Sometimes it was annoying she was so alive. And she was alive right up until the very moment she left three weeks ago. None of us—not a single one of us—believed she would not come back home then, even if it was for mere days. We were all stunned and shattered—like bulletproof glass blown apart by a hailstorm. It was, and will always be, completely unexpected. 

Today I went to my cousins house for the first time since the night her mother, my aunt and godmother, Jackie, died. I have grieved deeply since her death. Not for her so much—because I  am comforted in my soul knowing she is free from earthly shackles, and breathing deeply, and laughing, and happy. 

I am sad for us. Here and floundering. I am mostly sad for my cousin and her father. I am so terribly sad for them. When I cry, it is mostly for them. 

I took chicken soup and a few gifts with me. And the boys were along too. Nothing like two raucous kids to distract things. But the grief was palpable and heavy in the air like early morning fairy mist. I looked at my uncle and could not imagine a way to help him smile, his pain swelled out from him like a perpetual ragged sigh. My cousins eyes were repeatedly rimmed with tears barely held back by surface tension. I let their sadness settle around me like a thick wool scarf and did not try to make anything better, as I deeply wished I could. I wished I could take a huge shovel and scoop away some of their sadness and swallow it myself, pack it in my pockets and purse, even feed it to my children so that they may feel some relief. I saw my uncle gaze at a photo of my aunt while pretending to watch television. I sat with them—both trying desperately to shuffle time between them so as not to be still or quiet for too long. 

Having lost my father many years ago I am keenly aware of this kind of grief. I have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about it. Almost 27 years. A kind of loss that is so wide spread and intense your mind cannot process it —not for weeks, months, years—a lifetime. So you wake up and think the person is in another room, or on a trip, or just out running errands. You laugh and begin to tell them something they would appreciate. And then you remember—like a great crashing wave. 

I came home and turned the boys over to my husband. I ran a bath and poured wine and cried. I cry almost every night and when I don’t cry I wake up feeling as though I must have been crying in my dreams. 

Jackie was the youngest of two sisters—my mother (the oldest) and Sheila (the middle child) are an enigma of pain that I can not grasp or even touch. They feel they have lost a critical link in their sibling chain and it is counterproductive to share any comforting perspective otherwise. That is all I can perceive for now. Their pain is wrapt in an impenetrable protective shell like stubborn, angry lead. They are more grief stricken than when their parents died. I don’t have this kind of bond with my brother. I do not even know where to begin. For now I am just shrouded. 

Hello blog -- it's 2020-- I reenter -- with new old stuff

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piger mneme

he used to pull his words 

from air i used to occupy

though “occupy” was a long-starved wish

this apathetic muse 

had longed to return to the stars 

and could not be fully freed 

or restrain his words

gleaned from my servitude

he could always create

regardless of my presence

and i would walk the earth 

siphoned against my will

gravity-bound yet unneeded

and he

he conjured words that weren’t his

and were never mine as if

derived from black matter

one day i scattered applewood
and dried peels
it burned so hot

my naivety flew

whisked into the atmosphere

closer to blasting stars

and black holes

from those scattered ashes

across that scorched earth

i crafted a garden

healer, lover, mother 

grown anew 

2013/2020

A Monday morning

“RIGHT HERE AND NOW, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. . . . Right here and now, the hour is just past six A.M., and the sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky, a fat, confident, yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the first time toward the future and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past, which darkens as it recedes, making blind men of us all.” (p. 1)

Stephen King and Peter Straub
Black House

Sleep tracking

Last night I swam into a dream so real

When I woke I didn’t know where I was

I thought, if you’re there...
You were there

There’s just no way you didn’t know

How could you not know 

All the light blue was you

Moving about

We have lived in this space for over a year now.  This space I didn't want to come back to and did. This space that I begrudgingly nurtured until I started to love it again on a long term basis. It seemed the dust had just (and finally) begun to settle, I was convinced I could tolerate South Carolina and had accepted it into my "5-10 year plan." Then Rob came home and said he suspected a position in the northeast may open soon, and also that he may be approached about it, and also that he wanted it if he was. I said ok. I don't know any other way to be. Somehow it will end up being a good thing. In the long run.

In the short run. We are moving to New York.

I'm thinking about it like a dream. I'm looking for houses and booking flights and mapping out travel plans and it's like a dream. And I think I have to keep it that way so it doesn't overwhelm me. I do things during the week that are organizational but in the back of my mind "it will make it easier when we're leaving" is the real reason. I think about how to re arrange the house so it will be ready for us when we return at Christmas. I talk in my head to the house and the trees about us leaving. Will you be okay? Have we loved you enough, in this short time, to weather our absence? And sometimes I cry.

Vapor -- and gifts from somewhere else

...a few minutes ago I heard my son faintly talking through the monitor in his room. I went upstairs and barged noisily into his room, ready to scoop him up and continue our day--but he was completely asleep, and didn't budge when I rested my hand on his little back (to make sure he was still breathing of course). He has been talking in his sleep more lately--either that or there is a child ghost chatting away in his room (also not unfathomable in this house). So I tiptoed out and back downstairs.

I walked through the kitchen and absent-mindedly picked up a peach from the fruit bowl on the table, washed it off in the sink, grabbed a paper towel and started walking toward the front door.

As I approached the door I mentioned to Emma (our niece, who is still sitting on the couch) that the thunderstorm was probably sadly going to float right past us without so much as a drop of rain, and without listening for a response (she's 11 and she's on her iPad, sooo....) I took a bite of the peach and pushed open the glass door to our front porch.

Maybe my eyes were closed for a split second. That's how it must have happened even though I sensed light as if they were open. The taste of the peach and the heat from outdoors and the familiar veil that is the smell of the woods surrounding our house -- it all happened at once.

In a split second I was 10 again. I was a long legged tom boy with white blonde hair halfway down my back. My dad and my grandparents were alive and vibrant. I had just gotten a horse that summer and my black cat, who I'd had since I was four, was stretched out on the hood of the dark blue jeep wagoneer my dad bought a few years before.  My little brother was my biggest annoyance and he and my two cousins were also my best friends. I was biting into a fat, pink, freestone peach that had been picked from a tree on my Papa's farm probably that morning and I had just walked outside to find a tree to climb so I could watch the storm roll by from its branches.

And I opened my eyes as if I was waking from a dream and had no control over it. I stood there for a moment, nearly reeling from the wave of memory and nostalgia. Then I walked to the side of the porch, leaned against the bricks and closed my eyes again in hopes of regaining any shard of that gasp of a moment

but it was gone, in a breath...

Sunday

I'm sitting on the side patio listening to the birds and the trees. Henry is still sleeping and I just finished a glass of savignon blanc. Last night we had a family over. A friend of mine, her husband, and their three girls. Henry was in hog heaven. At first my husband and I were bummed that it had started raining before they got here because we had done so much to prep the yard and porches for outdoor time, but after the initial disappointment and introductions and greetings I'm pretty sure no one even noticed. The house was a buzzing circus. It was fantastic.

It rained all night and into the morning. At some point I brought Henry to bed with us and it rained more. Henry had his head buried in Robs shoulder and his feet tucked under my rib cage. The Christmas decision to buy a king bed was a good one.

The birds are singing and the trees seem greener and everything is light and lush.
The forest is happy.