Showing posts with label sadness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sadness. Show all posts
Under the Blanket
As I walked into yoga tonight, the teacher – a friend of ours – said, "Hey Sami. How are you?" Before I could think about what was coming out of my mouth, I said, "I'm good, thanks". The moment the words left my lips, I felt my lie. I shuddered at the sound of the words. I was not good at all. I was not even okay.
I'd spent the whole drive to my 6pm yoga class with tears streaming down my cheeks. Before that, I hadn't changed out of my pajamas until 5 pm. I'd slept until nearly 1pm, fourteen hours from when I'd fallen asleep the night before. I'd spent those four waking hours in front of the television, smoking pot. I don't smoke pot often. But when I do, it's usually for the specific purpose of dulling my feelings. I bailed on plans I'd made with multiple friends over the weekend. It's not that I wanted to be alone. It's that I didn't want anyone to be around me. I didn't have the effort to show up as the woman I know I am. Or want to be. Or used to be. Or thought I was.
I've spent my whole life trying to please. I've spent thirty years wanting to be liked, be loved, be cool, be accepted, be successful, be attractive, and be it all. And as I trudge around my home with my feet stuck in cement, amidst the grey, smudged canvas that is my life, I can't focus on being anything, because it takes everything just to be. And yet ego breathes his heavy breath down my neck: I don't want anyone to see me weak. I don't want my sadness to rub off on others. I don't want to ruin anyone's day. I want to be worthy of love. For now, in the battle between masculine ego and feminine grief, she wins. I am very, very, very sad – sadder than I knew humanly possible. And sadness like this is exhausting, like a disease. And when I become so tired, I no longer have the energy to pull myself together. To try. To work. To move. To be dependable. To be funny. To be strong. It's embarrassing, to be honest. For someone who has spent her whole life trying to be perfect and loveable – to now be completely and utterly broken, and too tired and sad to try to pick up the pieces. It's as though I'm sitting amongst a pile of puzzle pieces that once fit together so beautifully and I can't find a single match. I sit, frozen, holding pieces in my hands, wondering, 'What happened?'
There is this blanket you had. It's thick, soft, fuzzy, and white. When we would lounge, that was always my blanket. It felt like I was cuddling with a cloud. These days, I am often cocooned on the couch inside of that blanket. I try to cover as much of my body as possible beneath its comfort. Maybe only the sliver of my eyes will have to see the light – my own burka of grief. I run my fingers through the fabric of that blanket and I search for signs of you inside of it. I'll find a small twig that is stuck in the weave and wonder, 'Where you here when that twig found its way into the blanket?' Or maybe I'll spot a little purple stain from a drop of wine. I'll ask you in my mind, 'Was that your spill of wine or mine?' I remember when we both used to snuggle beneath its warmth, our limbs interlaced like twist ties. When you were here, I didn't actually need the blanket to keep me warm. I had you. I had love. Now, no matter how thick or how soft the blanket is, I'm always cold. I'm chilled so deeply from within that nothing can warm me from outside. Nothing.
I feel that my life is a contradiction these days. I don't want to sleep. And then all I want is sleep. I don't want to be alone. And then I need to be alone. I don't want to eat. And then all I can do is eat. I want to feel everything. And then I don't want to feel anything. I want to be loved. And then I feel unlovable. I want to see you. And then I can't find you.
Last week, as I nestled on the couch in a fit of tears, your computer was closed and asleep on the other side of the room. It hadn't been touched in days. Suddenly, the song "Struggling Angel" started playing from your machine. It was the song written for your friend Sarah after she passed, by your favorite band. You used to listen to it "when you needed a good cry". Alarmed, I got up, walked to the computer, opened it, and woke it up. The song stopped. When the screen flashed on, there were no music applications open – in fact the only things open were Acrobat and a Chrome browser with ESPN's website up. There was no sign of the song. The next day, as I painted my toenails (again, on the couch), the TV – which was off – turned on, and flipped from Netflix to DVD mode on both the video and the audio – that task involves various buttons on two remotes, which were on the table. An episode of Seinfeld, which you gave me for my birthday, began to play. I looked up from my polishing, dumbfounded and yet hardly surprised. Obviously, you are around. You are sneakily saying hello in the ways that you can. But while I find it comforting on some level, I also find it distressingly sad. It is you who I love, but I don't know how to love a ghost.
The next time someone asks me how I am, I hope I have the wherewithal to speak my truth. I am not OK. I am lost. I am sad. I am lonely. I am confused. I am a mess. I am barely in motion. But I am here, in the flesh and no matter how here you are in essence, you are not here in the way that I need you.
I'd spent the whole drive to my 6pm yoga class with tears streaming down my cheeks. Before that, I hadn't changed out of my pajamas until 5 pm. I'd slept until nearly 1pm, fourteen hours from when I'd fallen asleep the night before. I'd spent those four waking hours in front of the television, smoking pot. I don't smoke pot often. But when I do, it's usually for the specific purpose of dulling my feelings. I bailed on plans I'd made with multiple friends over the weekend. It's not that I wanted to be alone. It's that I didn't want anyone to be around me. I didn't have the effort to show up as the woman I know I am. Or want to be. Or used to be. Or thought I was.
I've spent my whole life trying to please. I've spent thirty years wanting to be liked, be loved, be cool, be accepted, be successful, be attractive, and be it all. And as I trudge around my home with my feet stuck in cement, amidst the grey, smudged canvas that is my life, I can't focus on being anything, because it takes everything just to be. And yet ego breathes his heavy breath down my neck: I don't want anyone to see me weak. I don't want my sadness to rub off on others. I don't want to ruin anyone's day. I want to be worthy of love. For now, in the battle between masculine ego and feminine grief, she wins. I am very, very, very sad – sadder than I knew humanly possible. And sadness like this is exhausting, like a disease. And when I become so tired, I no longer have the energy to pull myself together. To try. To work. To move. To be dependable. To be funny. To be strong. It's embarrassing, to be honest. For someone who has spent her whole life trying to be perfect and loveable – to now be completely and utterly broken, and too tired and sad to try to pick up the pieces. It's as though I'm sitting amongst a pile of puzzle pieces that once fit together so beautifully and I can't find a single match. I sit, frozen, holding pieces in my hands, wondering, 'What happened?'
There is this blanket you had. It's thick, soft, fuzzy, and white. When we would lounge, that was always my blanket. It felt like I was cuddling with a cloud. These days, I am often cocooned on the couch inside of that blanket. I try to cover as much of my body as possible beneath its comfort. Maybe only the sliver of my eyes will have to see the light – my own burka of grief. I run my fingers through the fabric of that blanket and I search for signs of you inside of it. I'll find a small twig that is stuck in the weave and wonder, 'Where you here when that twig found its way into the blanket?' Or maybe I'll spot a little purple stain from a drop of wine. I'll ask you in my mind, 'Was that your spill of wine or mine?' I remember when we both used to snuggle beneath its warmth, our limbs interlaced like twist ties. When you were here, I didn't actually need the blanket to keep me warm. I had you. I had love. Now, no matter how thick or how soft the blanket is, I'm always cold. I'm chilled so deeply from within that nothing can warm me from outside. Nothing.
I feel that my life is a contradiction these days. I don't want to sleep. And then all I want is sleep. I don't want to be alone. And then I need to be alone. I don't want to eat. And then all I can do is eat. I want to feel everything. And then I don't want to feel anything. I want to be loved. And then I feel unlovable. I want to see you. And then I can't find you.
Last week, as I nestled on the couch in a fit of tears, your computer was closed and asleep on the other side of the room. It hadn't been touched in days. Suddenly, the song "Struggling Angel" started playing from your machine. It was the song written for your friend Sarah after she passed, by your favorite band. You used to listen to it "when you needed a good cry". Alarmed, I got up, walked to the computer, opened it, and woke it up. The song stopped. When the screen flashed on, there were no music applications open – in fact the only things open were Acrobat and a Chrome browser with ESPN's website up. There was no sign of the song. The next day, as I painted my toenails (again, on the couch), the TV – which was off – turned on, and flipped from Netflix to DVD mode on both the video and the audio – that task involves various buttons on two remotes, which were on the table. An episode of Seinfeld, which you gave me for my birthday, began to play. I looked up from my polishing, dumbfounded and yet hardly surprised. Obviously, you are around. You are sneakily saying hello in the ways that you can. But while I find it comforting on some level, I also find it distressingly sad. It is you who I love, but I don't know how to love a ghost.
The next time someone asks me how I am, I hope I have the wherewithal to speak my truth. I am not OK. I am lost. I am sad. I am lonely. I am confused. I am a mess. I am barely in motion. But I am here, in the flesh and no matter how here you are in essence, you are not here in the way that I need you.
Moonlight and Momentum
I drove home tonight and looked up at the moon. As I saw the moonshine cast upon the fresh snow making my path home sparkle, my heart felt heavy. My heart is always heavy these days. But as I noticed the moon, it became even weightier. I wondered if I would ever look at the moon with joy again. Now, when I see the moon I am taken back to that night. The night I drove to the hospital in the back of my Audi, with a policeman driving. I stared at the moon. We were following your ambulance. I hadn't cried yet at that point. Adrenaline was surging. When I'd seen you wheeled out of our front door, on a stretcher, they'd said you had a faint pulse. There was hope. I stared at the moon. My mind raced. I thought of so many things and somehow also nothing at all. I clutched something. I don't remember what it was. My purse? My phone? Your wallet? Kevin's hand? A stone? I don't know. But I know I was looking at the moon. I know I was praying to the moon.
Now, I go days without opening the blinds in our bedroom. I turn my back on beauty because it hurts my eyes. I still say my gratitude prayer, like we did nightly while we admired the view from our room – but I can't look anymore. I avert my eyes from the glittering citylights, the acres of pines, and the moonlit scape. The beauty taunts my heavy heart. Some nights I sleep in another room, distancing myself from the comfort of what it felt like to be so loved.
It's been four months since you left this Earth. It's been four months of daily tears, barely coping, chasing my tail in slow circles, and living in a womb of confusion. Not a day goes by when I don't walk into our bedroom and expect you to be sitting casually between the sheets. My ignorance irritates me, but I guess somehow I still live in disbelief. You would have a book in your hands and a tired, sly smile on your face. You would pat the mattress to your right – my spot. I'd bounce into bed and kiss your cheek, lovingly. Reaching over and flirtatiously removing the book from in between your hands, I'd dogear your page and set it down on your nightstand. As you laid down on your back, I'd slide on top of you. You'd reach over your left shoulder and flick off the light. The sounds of our love would be the last noises we'd make that night. The moon would cast silent flickers on our walls from between the slivers of blinds – the night's voyeur.
And yet, every time I walk into our bedroom, you are not there.
I know there is no set pace for grief. There is no seven-minute-mile that I can train for to speed up this pain. But, honestly, I think this is a process I don't want to speed up. Some days, I'm all grief. Head to toe, can't get out of bed, immoveable sadness. But most days, I'm all over the place – neither here nor there. Sometimes my arms are stretching forward but my feet are stuck in quicksand. Sometimes my body is full-speed ahead, but my heart is pumping backwards. Sometimes I dress myself up in a pretty package – sparkly paper, bright red lips, stiletto Louboutins, and a bow on my head – but the box is empty. I've never felt so off-kilter and I've never felt so slow.
I used to feel an emotion and know what it was I was experiencing. It's something we learn as infants. I get pricked, "Ow!" I feel pain. I see a smile, "Yay!" I feel joy. I am given a hug, "Aw!" I feel love. I am spooked, "Ah!" I feel fear. But now, my emotions are a snowball. I can no long decipher one emotion from another. I am hurt. I am not just upset, instead I feel all the feelings. I am given a wonderful gift. I do not feel just gratitude, instead I feel all the feelings. I drink three glasses of wine, now I really feel all the feelings. It's exhausting to not be able to pinpoint your own emotions. Particularly because you and I used to communicate so clearly about the way we felt, what we were experiencing, and why. Now, I know nothing. I just know I am sad, I feel gratitude, I feel love, I feel panic, I feel anger, I feel loss, I feel fucking everything. This is the first time in my life when there are days when I think, 'Damn. Can someone just give me a pill so I stop feeling so fucking much?!'
It's been four months. People ask me big questions. Where will you go from here? What's next for you? Today, I moved a pile of your stuff from the den to the studio. I saw your drum kit and I fell to the floor. I crawled to your throne and I pulled myself onto it. I sat behind your kit and listened to the sound it made when my tears hit the snare, then the tom, then the snare, and then the tom. As I sat, listening to my percussion beat of sadness, I struggled with frustration. I am used to moving with momentum. I'm used to accomplishing tasks with determination and pace. I'm used to answering the big questions with gusto and knowing. But now, in this place, I can't. I'm moving in slow motion and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I don't know anything. And I can't answer any questions, theirs or mine.
I moved three things today – a pile, a box, and a rug. And that was accomplishing a lot. Because with each movement comes reminders of what was and what will not be.
I moved the pile and had to confront the drum kit.
I moved the box and discovered what was inside – hundreds of old letters, notes, and cards. You had saved over two decades of correspondence. I got lost in your world. It made me sad because I wanted you to be able to be there with me, telling me the stories behind each letter. I read love notes from teenage girlfriends who I can't remember if you ever told me about. I wanted to read those love notes and hear your subtext. I wanted to hear about where those girls are now and smile because they loved you in a time before I knew I loved you. It makes me happy to know you were loved. I thought about the decades of love notes that I had planned to write to you and that you were supposed to save in those same boxes... and then more boxes because you would run out of space in the box you had. I saw all the letters your mom sent you. She wrote you at camp when you were a kid. She wrote you a poem when you graduated high school. She sent you birthday cards each year. She sent you letters just because. But now that you're gone, she can't write you anymore. I thought of all the boxes that would go unfilled.
I swapped a rug that I didn't like with one I found in storage that I did like. And for the rest of the day, every time I walk through the room, I stop and wonder if you would like it there. I consider switching the old rug back just to keep the room how it was when you were here. I am living in your catacomb and I can't fathom leaving.
Change is inevitable, but it is taxing. Movement is unavoidable, but momentum is rare. Big questions loom, but there are no answers in sight.
I drove home tonight and looked up at the moon. It was a crescent shape. I noticed how it looked like a ladle that could hold anything and just let a slow drip spill out. I imagined you, as an mischievous angel, balancing yourself dexterously on its crescent ridges. You always loved to climb things. I tried to look at the moon with something other than disappointment, 'I prayed to you and you let me down...' I tried to look at the moon the way you and I looked at it when we admired the view from our bedroom window. But, I couldn't. I averted my eyes. It hurt, as if I had stared at the sun for too long. I'm simply not there yet. Instead, I am here, feeling it all.
Now, I go days without opening the blinds in our bedroom. I turn my back on beauty because it hurts my eyes. I still say my gratitude prayer, like we did nightly while we admired the view from our room – but I can't look anymore. I avert my eyes from the glittering citylights, the acres of pines, and the moonlit scape. The beauty taunts my heavy heart. Some nights I sleep in another room, distancing myself from the comfort of what it felt like to be so loved.
It's been four months since you left this Earth. It's been four months of daily tears, barely coping, chasing my tail in slow circles, and living in a womb of confusion. Not a day goes by when I don't walk into our bedroom and expect you to be sitting casually between the sheets. My ignorance irritates me, but I guess somehow I still live in disbelief. You would have a book in your hands and a tired, sly smile on your face. You would pat the mattress to your right – my spot. I'd bounce into bed and kiss your cheek, lovingly. Reaching over and flirtatiously removing the book from in between your hands, I'd dogear your page and set it down on your nightstand. As you laid down on your back, I'd slide on top of you. You'd reach over your left shoulder and flick off the light. The sounds of our love would be the last noises we'd make that night. The moon would cast silent flickers on our walls from between the slivers of blinds – the night's voyeur.
And yet, every time I walk into our bedroom, you are not there.
I know there is no set pace for grief. There is no seven-minute-mile that I can train for to speed up this pain. But, honestly, I think this is a process I don't want to speed up. Some days, I'm all grief. Head to toe, can't get out of bed, immoveable sadness. But most days, I'm all over the place – neither here nor there. Sometimes my arms are stretching forward but my feet are stuck in quicksand. Sometimes my body is full-speed ahead, but my heart is pumping backwards. Sometimes I dress myself up in a pretty package – sparkly paper, bright red lips, stiletto Louboutins, and a bow on my head – but the box is empty. I've never felt so off-kilter and I've never felt so slow.
I used to feel an emotion and know what it was I was experiencing. It's something we learn as infants. I get pricked, "Ow!" I feel pain. I see a smile, "Yay!" I feel joy. I am given a hug, "Aw!" I feel love. I am spooked, "Ah!" I feel fear. But now, my emotions are a snowball. I can no long decipher one emotion from another. I am hurt. I am not just upset, instead I feel all the feelings. I am given a wonderful gift. I do not feel just gratitude, instead I feel all the feelings. I drink three glasses of wine, now I really feel all the feelings. It's exhausting to not be able to pinpoint your own emotions. Particularly because you and I used to communicate so clearly about the way we felt, what we were experiencing, and why. Now, I know nothing. I just know I am sad, I feel gratitude, I feel love, I feel panic, I feel anger, I feel loss, I feel fucking everything. This is the first time in my life when there are days when I think, 'Damn. Can someone just give me a pill so I stop feeling so fucking much?!'
It's been four months. People ask me big questions. Where will you go from here? What's next for you? Today, I moved a pile of your stuff from the den to the studio. I saw your drum kit and I fell to the floor. I crawled to your throne and I pulled myself onto it. I sat behind your kit and listened to the sound it made when my tears hit the snare, then the tom, then the snare, and then the tom. As I sat, listening to my percussion beat of sadness, I struggled with frustration. I am used to moving with momentum. I'm used to accomplishing tasks with determination and pace. I'm used to answering the big questions with gusto and knowing. But now, in this place, I can't. I'm moving in slow motion and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I don't know anything. And I can't answer any questions, theirs or mine.
I moved three things today – a pile, a box, and a rug. And that was accomplishing a lot. Because with each movement comes reminders of what was and what will not be.
I moved the pile and had to confront the drum kit.
I moved the box and discovered what was inside – hundreds of old letters, notes, and cards. You had saved over two decades of correspondence. I got lost in your world. It made me sad because I wanted you to be able to be there with me, telling me the stories behind each letter. I read love notes from teenage girlfriends who I can't remember if you ever told me about. I wanted to read those love notes and hear your subtext. I wanted to hear about where those girls are now and smile because they loved you in a time before I knew I loved you. It makes me happy to know you were loved. I thought about the decades of love notes that I had planned to write to you and that you were supposed to save in those same boxes... and then more boxes because you would run out of space in the box you had. I saw all the letters your mom sent you. She wrote you at camp when you were a kid. She wrote you a poem when you graduated high school. She sent you birthday cards each year. She sent you letters just because. But now that you're gone, she can't write you anymore. I thought of all the boxes that would go unfilled.
I swapped a rug that I didn't like with one I found in storage that I did like. And for the rest of the day, every time I walk through the room, I stop and wonder if you would like it there. I consider switching the old rug back just to keep the room how it was when you were here. I am living in your catacomb and I can't fathom leaving.
Change is inevitable, but it is taxing. Movement is unavoidable, but momentum is rare. Big questions loom, but there are no answers in sight.
I drove home tonight and looked up at the moon. It was a crescent shape. I noticed how it looked like a ladle that could hold anything and just let a slow drip spill out. I imagined you, as an mischievous angel, balancing yourself dexterously on its crescent ridges. You always loved to climb things. I tried to look at the moon with something other than disappointment, 'I prayed to you and you let me down...' I tried to look at the moon the way you and I looked at it when we admired the view from our bedroom window. But, I couldn't. I averted my eyes. It hurt, as if I had stared at the sun for too long. I'm simply not there yet. Instead, I am here, feeling it all.
A Walk
Today I took a walk. It was the same walk that I took about six months ago. I retraced my steps – something I've been avoiding doing often. I saw the same rocks. I saw the same creek. I saw the same path. I saw the same mountains. And yet everything was so different. The grass is now dormant. The ruddy trail has a different landscape. There are no prairie dogs. There are different stacks of cairns along the way. Everything is the same and yet so different.
As Kira and I walked the path six months back, I had noted the damage from the floods. This time as we walked the path, I again noticed the damage from the floods – but I also noticed the damage from my own flood. I walked along the creek and I came to the place where six months ago I saw the tracks of a mountain lion. I texted you about it right then, because it was just a day or two after you'd seen three mountain lions trotting across the road just meters away. Through our texts, we questioned if it was one of the same lions. Now a run in with a mountain lion seems very minor. Death trumps animal encounter.
I remember how complete I felt that day on that walk. Taking some time for myself, getting some exercise, making Kira happy, giving you some alone time. Now it's all alone time. Or is it? No matter how many bodies I surround myself with – I always feel alone. But when I'm alone, I can more connected. Why does that connection frighten me?
I have not gotten outside very much lately. I have stayed on the couch, under a blanket, in bed, hiding in the arms of a loved one, inebriated by music or drink or circumstance, behind the guise of social media or a screen – I have been numbing the pain. And that's okay. It's okay because I recognize what it is that I'm doing. The path that I'm choosing. I'm understanding that I have a need to hurt in a different way, disguise the pain, mistake it as something else. But I still feel it always. Even when I dam up the path, the grief breaks through powerfully and floods my spirit with sorrow. So when I stepped outdoors today and into solitude – as I walked on that path, traveling through time to that place six months ago and then back again – I felt the weight of my grief. I sat with the reality of my grief. Grief comes in many forms: It feels. It stings. It burns. It loiters. It numbs. If you experienced the symptoms of grief without being aware of your issue, you would certainly call your doctor to find out what's wrong.
As I walked, I realized I felt angry at the beauty of nature. I wondered if the dead grass along the way would feel the same way, if it could feel. I felt angry at the sun for warming my skin – for allowing me to be in a t-shirt in 70° weather in February. Something that would usually make me so happy, except today it made me sad. I felt angry at the brook for allowing water to run so peacefully from here to there. Here to where? I listen to the sound of it gently babbling over rocks around sticks and warming under the heat of the warm sun. I felt angry at Kira for each excited step, moving swiftly like a champion. I felt envious of what I can only imagine is her ability to forget, even just for a bit.
A couple years ago my friend Leah told me that when things got hard she often reminded herself to 'look up'. So as I walked along the path today, instead of looking down at my next rocky step, I looked up. I saw the splendor of the mountains, the grace of the horizon, the rays of the sun, the swing of the trees. I saw life. And when I saw life around me, it infused the life within me. I was forced to sip it in with each breath. My insides warmed just a bit. But maybe a bit is all I can handle.
There are so many ways to numb pain. Hiding under a blanket. Oversleeping. Overworking. Staying too busy. A screen. A drink. A pill. A puff. A line. A dip. And yet what do those quick fixes do except create a bottleneck in the brook which needs to flow? Create a bottleneck in the tears that need to fall? My teacher Baron says, "In order to heal, you must feel". Getting on that path today showed me a bit of light. It took me away from the buzz of distraction and numbing agents, and back into the space of remembering. Remembering my grief in its heaviness. Remembering the non-linear nature of this beast. Remembering the memories of the last time I walked there, when it seemed much smoother. It reminded me that I can be with the stillness – that the stillness breaks up the clutter in my mind. It gives me space for thoughts, memories, breath, and grief: the loiterer that it is. Sometimes life in the shadows is ok, but we need to step into the sun to feel the warmth.
As Kira and I walked the path six months back, I had noted the damage from the floods. This time as we walked the path, I again noticed the damage from the floods – but I also noticed the damage from my own flood. I walked along the creek and I came to the place where six months ago I saw the tracks of a mountain lion. I texted you about it right then, because it was just a day or two after you'd seen three mountain lions trotting across the road just meters away. Through our texts, we questioned if it was one of the same lions. Now a run in with a mountain lion seems very minor. Death trumps animal encounter.
I remember how complete I felt that day on that walk. Taking some time for myself, getting some exercise, making Kira happy, giving you some alone time. Now it's all alone time. Or is it? No matter how many bodies I surround myself with – I always feel alone. But when I'm alone, I can more connected. Why does that connection frighten me?
I have not gotten outside very much lately. I have stayed on the couch, under a blanket, in bed, hiding in the arms of a loved one, inebriated by music or drink or circumstance, behind the guise of social media or a screen – I have been numbing the pain. And that's okay. It's okay because I recognize what it is that I'm doing. The path that I'm choosing. I'm understanding that I have a need to hurt in a different way, disguise the pain, mistake it as something else. But I still feel it always. Even when I dam up the path, the grief breaks through powerfully and floods my spirit with sorrow. So when I stepped outdoors today and into solitude – as I walked on that path, traveling through time to that place six months ago and then back again – I felt the weight of my grief. I sat with the reality of my grief. Grief comes in many forms: It feels. It stings. It burns. It loiters. It numbs. If you experienced the symptoms of grief without being aware of your issue, you would certainly call your doctor to find out what's wrong.
As I walked, I realized I felt angry at the beauty of nature. I wondered if the dead grass along the way would feel the same way, if it could feel. I felt angry at the sun for warming my skin – for allowing me to be in a t-shirt in 70° weather in February. Something that would usually make me so happy, except today it made me sad. I felt angry at the brook for allowing water to run so peacefully from here to there. Here to where? I listen to the sound of it gently babbling over rocks around sticks and warming under the heat of the warm sun. I felt angry at Kira for each excited step, moving swiftly like a champion. I felt envious of what I can only imagine is her ability to forget, even just for a bit.
A couple years ago my friend Leah told me that when things got hard she often reminded herself to 'look up'. So as I walked along the path today, instead of looking down at my next rocky step, I looked up. I saw the splendor of the mountains, the grace of the horizon, the rays of the sun, the swing of the trees. I saw life. And when I saw life around me, it infused the life within me. I was forced to sip it in with each breath. My insides warmed just a bit. But maybe a bit is all I can handle.
There are so many ways to numb pain. Hiding under a blanket. Oversleeping. Overworking. Staying too busy. A screen. A drink. A pill. A puff. A line. A dip. And yet what do those quick fixes do except create a bottleneck in the brook which needs to flow? Create a bottleneck in the tears that need to fall? My teacher Baron says, "In order to heal, you must feel". Getting on that path today showed me a bit of light. It took me away from the buzz of distraction and numbing agents, and back into the space of remembering. Remembering my grief in its heaviness. Remembering the non-linear nature of this beast. Remembering the memories of the last time I walked there, when it seemed much smoother. It reminded me that I can be with the stillness – that the stillness breaks up the clutter in my mind. It gives me space for thoughts, memories, breath, and grief: the loiterer that it is. Sometimes life in the shadows is ok, but we need to step into the sun to feel the warmth.
Uncontainable Love
Over the past week, I've learned that, surprisingly, I can live without you. It's a painful thing to type and a painful thing to feel. When you walked this earth as my counterpart, as my soul mate in the flesh, I did not think that I would be able to survive without you. I thought that if you left, I would crumple into a pile of dirt. Gone. Though I feel like a puddle, when I look in the mirror, my reflection looks back at me. I am still here. I am the same. I don't know how it is possible, but it is so.
When we were together, you were the air I breathed. And when you left, I felt as though I could not breathe any longer and I no longer wanted to if you were not here with me. Yet, despite a fight between my body and spirit, I've learned how to breathe air again. My body won. Air is not as good to breathe as you were. I want to breathe breaths of you. You were pure and sacred to inhale, and exhaling you left me feeling as though my insides sparkled. Every breath of you filled me with vitality, love, and effervescent joy. Now, I still breathe, but I breathe reprocessed, tormented, and brokenhearted air. Every inhale leaves me wanting more and every exhale drains energy from my weary body.
My life these days feels like a facade. I am going through the motions that I always have: Get proper rest. Feed myself. Exercise my body. Meditate my brain. Give myself pleasure. Seek passion. Exhibit love to others. Be grateful. Let music sooth my soul. Write and create. Stay busy. Call my mother... But it all feels dull, like scratched facets of a fake diamond. And the main element is missing: you. Give you love. Be there for you. Listen to you. Be listened to by you. Laugh with you. Smile with you. Plan the future with you. Help you. Teach you. Be taught by you. Hear you. Kiss you. Offer my everything to you.
Life after you will never be like life was before you.
Seeing life continue without the main actor is a very confusing process to witness and be a part of. The show goes on. The clock ticks. Hair grows. Seasons change. Laughter still sounds. Often I want to shake people or even slap them, and say, "How the fuck are we living without him!? This is not OK!" Often, I want to slap myself and yell the same thing. Sometimes I do. It was not supposed to be like this: shaking and slapping. It was supposed to be a fairy tale.
As I see life continue it's as though we're all on a moving sidewalk and you are stuck way behind us on the unmoving road. We can't turn around and walk backwards – and you are still, no longer trying to catch up. One of my biggest fears is that I will move so far away from you that you will be forgotten. My moving sidewalk could be very long. It could continue on well over sixty more years. And I'm scared that you will blend in with all the other things in my past – that you will somehow become a dull and blurred memory, a chapter in a book. Our love and your memory deserves more than that. It makes me fear, am I even worthy of the love you gave me?
Our love deserves churches, altars, skyscrapers, and memorials that will keep reminding me and all of the man that was you. You, the man whose name appears in lights and whose silhouette is drawn by the clouds. You chose me. And now I watch you slip through my fingers and away into dust as life goes on, even though I'm backwards with my arms outstretched, crying on my knees. I'm scared I'll forget you and everything you taught me. I'm scared I'll forget what love is. I'm scared I'll forget that love is the only thing worth anything.
I don't know this path. The body and mind's capacity for healing is shocking to me. I did not think that I would be able to survive. But I am surviving. So I go through the motions of life. But it is not how it was with you. There is no color. It's all grey.
You were my container for love. The love I offered is floating somewhere, not contained. It was housed in your body, in your heart. And now, poof! It's escaped. I feel like I'm scampering around trying to capture it. I scream at the space around me, "Hey, give me back my love! That's for Teddy, not you! That love is sacred. That love is too righteous to be mixed in with the plethora of other shit out there! Give me back my love, damnit!" But it's too late. My love that was for only you lost its container. It has slipped away and mixed in with recycled breath and untethered souls. And the love you gave me, the love that is housed in my being, I'm trying to treasure it. I'm trying to keep it clean and pure. But it's mixing with confusion, loneliness, anger, and unworthiness – and they are really trying hard to dirty the love, just like the oil in my car.
So I'm surviving. I'm putting one foot in front of the other and stringing words together to form poetic messages, sarcastic comments, and dirty jokes. But I'm not enjoying it. I can't hear you laughing. I can't feel your hand on the small of my back supporting me. I'm treading water. I'm gasping for the air that I became addicted to – you. Your love is my drug.
When we were together, you were the air I breathed. And when you left, I felt as though I could not breathe any longer and I no longer wanted to if you were not here with me. Yet, despite a fight between my body and spirit, I've learned how to breathe air again. My body won. Air is not as good to breathe as you were. I want to breathe breaths of you. You were pure and sacred to inhale, and exhaling you left me feeling as though my insides sparkled. Every breath of you filled me with vitality, love, and effervescent joy. Now, I still breathe, but I breathe reprocessed, tormented, and brokenhearted air. Every inhale leaves me wanting more and every exhale drains energy from my weary body.
My life these days feels like a facade. I am going through the motions that I always have: Get proper rest. Feed myself. Exercise my body. Meditate my brain. Give myself pleasure. Seek passion. Exhibit love to others. Be grateful. Let music sooth my soul. Write and create. Stay busy. Call my mother... But it all feels dull, like scratched facets of a fake diamond. And the main element is missing: you. Give you love. Be there for you. Listen to you. Be listened to by you. Laugh with you. Smile with you. Plan the future with you. Help you. Teach you. Be taught by you. Hear you. Kiss you. Offer my everything to you.
Life after you will never be like life was before you.
Seeing life continue without the main actor is a very confusing process to witness and be a part of. The show goes on. The clock ticks. Hair grows. Seasons change. Laughter still sounds. Often I want to shake people or even slap them, and say, "How the fuck are we living without him!? This is not OK!" Often, I want to slap myself and yell the same thing. Sometimes I do. It was not supposed to be like this: shaking and slapping. It was supposed to be a fairy tale.
As I see life continue it's as though we're all on a moving sidewalk and you are stuck way behind us on the unmoving road. We can't turn around and walk backwards – and you are still, no longer trying to catch up. One of my biggest fears is that I will move so far away from you that you will be forgotten. My moving sidewalk could be very long. It could continue on well over sixty more years. And I'm scared that you will blend in with all the other things in my past – that you will somehow become a dull and blurred memory, a chapter in a book. Our love and your memory deserves more than that. It makes me fear, am I even worthy of the love you gave me?
Our love deserves churches, altars, skyscrapers, and memorials that will keep reminding me and all of the man that was you. You, the man whose name appears in lights and whose silhouette is drawn by the clouds. You chose me. And now I watch you slip through my fingers and away into dust as life goes on, even though I'm backwards with my arms outstretched, crying on my knees. I'm scared I'll forget you and everything you taught me. I'm scared I'll forget what love is. I'm scared I'll forget that love is the only thing worth anything.
I don't know this path. The body and mind's capacity for healing is shocking to me. I did not think that I would be able to survive. But I am surviving. So I go through the motions of life. But it is not how it was with you. There is no color. It's all grey.
You were my container for love. The love I offered is floating somewhere, not contained. It was housed in your body, in your heart. And now, poof! It's escaped. I feel like I'm scampering around trying to capture it. I scream at the space around me, "Hey, give me back my love! That's for Teddy, not you! That love is sacred. That love is too righteous to be mixed in with the plethora of other shit out there! Give me back my love, damnit!" But it's too late. My love that was for only you lost its container. It has slipped away and mixed in with recycled breath and untethered souls. And the love you gave me, the love that is housed in my being, I'm trying to treasure it. I'm trying to keep it clean and pure. But it's mixing with confusion, loneliness, anger, and unworthiness – and they are really trying hard to dirty the love, just like the oil in my car.
So I'm surviving. I'm putting one foot in front of the other and stringing words together to form poetic messages, sarcastic comments, and dirty jokes. But I'm not enjoying it. I can't hear you laughing. I can't feel your hand on the small of my back supporting me. I'm treading water. I'm gasping for the air that I became addicted to – you. Your love is my drug.
Anger
I was never angry at you a single time when you were alive. Our life together was fluid. It was calm like a still lake; the only turbulence was passion and adventure. When we disagreed, the ripples were small and resolved quickly through immediate discourse. It was as if a fish jumped out of the water and then without any memory, hook, line, or sinker, just disappeared back from where it came. Together, we were frictionless.
So, it feels wrong to be angry with you now. It's an unnatural emotion for me. One of those responses that stays way on the back burner. "USE ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY." Well, this defines an emergency. So here comes anger. Shit, watch out.
You aren't here to defend yourself. You aren't here to react. You aren't here to tell me your side of the story. You aren't here to hug me and make it OK. But that's why I'm angry. You're not here. What the fuck, babe?
You promised me you would be here for me. When I left three yoga studios, a business I'd built from the ground, sold my house, and said goodbye to dozens of friends – it was because you promised me you'd be here for me. You would build a home with me. You would help me find a new career here. You would wake up next to me every day and kiss me good morning. You would be my one. You promised me this was it. I knew it. You knew it. So why did you break your promise? What did I do wrong? Why am I alone? Where did you go? Why won't you answer me? Why do I look around and see everyone else so happy – love, marriage, houses, families, success, security, smiles – and I'm alone and sad. You said you would be here for me. You never lied to me. But now you have.
When you were alive, you were so cautious not to hurt others. Even when they needed to be scolded, you were still tender. We trusted you to treat us kindly. We trusted you. I trusted you. We believed you would be here for us forever. We depended on you. I depended on you. When you were floating off to the light, did you know how much we needed you here? How much I needed you here? Maybe you were done with us, but we weren't done with you, Ted. I had so much more love to give you. We all did. Why did you rob us of that chance to love you more? Why did you rob me?
I came undone for you. Every wall I'd built up, every protective sheath, every guard, every story, every excuse – I let it all go when I fell in love with you. I softened like a ripe fruit. I let myself be vulnerable. And you held me gently. You held me as if I were an egg that could crack at anytime and you wouldn't dare let that happen. You teased me into full exposure. You were tender. You were loving. You cared for me with the nurturing of a mother. You showed me that there was none other than you. You were my match. You made me whole. Until you left. Death flirted with you, showed you her daunting beauty, and you chose her over me. You left me. You left all of us here who love you and need you. You broke the egg, smashed it into a thousand pieces and let the yolk spill out into the mud. You took that supple fruit and you gripped it so hard it bruised until it exploded, rotten pulp oozing into the hot sun and making your fingers sticky. You have broken me. I was whole and now I am broken. Shattered. Bruised. Tarnished. Damaged goods.
This anger scares me. I don't want to feel it and I don't want to fight with you. I am sorry for my anger. And I know you are sorry too. I know you are.
A couple days ago, right after my anger had really begun to appear, an old friend of yours sent me a message. She told me you had appeared to her in a dream. Initially, you were alive in the dream. You were a lifeguard at a pool. The two of you were chatting like old times. Then, the truth hit. You are dead. She said the dream became much more intense, more lucid. You changed forms from the lifeguard and began to disappear, as though you were being taken away. She said it was as though you didn't want to leave but couldn't control it. Watching you leave, she asked, "Is there anything you want me to tell anyone?" You remained quiet. "Is there anything you want me to tell Sami?" she asked. "Tell her 'I'm sorry'," you said. And then you were gone.
I hear you. I know you're sorry. But I just don't know if I'm ready to accept it quite yet. I will, my love. I will. But it's not easy.
And so goes life. One day I feel darkness, the next I feel lightness. One day I feel loneliness, the next I feel connected. One day I feel love, the next I feel anger. It is confusing. It feels bottomless. Someone will say to me, "You're pulling through! This is a turning point for you." Yes. A turning point that will turn right back around and go back in the opposite direction. Just give it a few days, a few hours, a few minutes. Grief is like a pendulum that swings back and forth. When it starts to slow down, something or nothing comes in and wacks it again – catapulting it into high gear all over again.
I have heard that anger is a step of the grief process. Honestly, I thought I would leapfrog it. 'I am bigger than anger,' I told myself. I thought, 'I've never been angry at him before, so why would I be now?' Well, once again, grief has humbled me; I am not bigger than anger. It has slapped me in the face and it stings. It's not a natural place for me to be. It feels as though I'm ice skating with socks on; it's slippery. But, I recognize that I can't control my emotions. This is how I feel now, but it can change in an instant. Today, anger has gripped me with it's ugly, sticky hands. It's taking me for a ride that makes me motion sick. And though this ride makes me ill, I will hold on to my truth and eventually I'll make it through, truth intact. Anger will retract his fierce claws.
So, it feels wrong to be angry with you now. It's an unnatural emotion for me. One of those responses that stays way on the back burner. "USE ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY." Well, this defines an emergency. So here comes anger. Shit, watch out.
You aren't here to defend yourself. You aren't here to react. You aren't here to tell me your side of the story. You aren't here to hug me and make it OK. But that's why I'm angry. You're not here. What the fuck, babe?
You promised me you would be here for me. When I left three yoga studios, a business I'd built from the ground, sold my house, and said goodbye to dozens of friends – it was because you promised me you'd be here for me. You would build a home with me. You would help me find a new career here. You would wake up next to me every day and kiss me good morning. You would be my one. You promised me this was it. I knew it. You knew it. So why did you break your promise? What did I do wrong? Why am I alone? Where did you go? Why won't you answer me? Why do I look around and see everyone else so happy – love, marriage, houses, families, success, security, smiles – and I'm alone and sad. You said you would be here for me. You never lied to me. But now you have.
When you were alive, you were so cautious not to hurt others. Even when they needed to be scolded, you were still tender. We trusted you to treat us kindly. We trusted you. I trusted you. We believed you would be here for us forever. We depended on you. I depended on you. When you were floating off to the light, did you know how much we needed you here? How much I needed you here? Maybe you were done with us, but we weren't done with you, Ted. I had so much more love to give you. We all did. Why did you rob us of that chance to love you more? Why did you rob me?
I came undone for you. Every wall I'd built up, every protective sheath, every guard, every story, every excuse – I let it all go when I fell in love with you. I softened like a ripe fruit. I let myself be vulnerable. And you held me gently. You held me as if I were an egg that could crack at anytime and you wouldn't dare let that happen. You teased me into full exposure. You were tender. You were loving. You cared for me with the nurturing of a mother. You showed me that there was none other than you. You were my match. You made me whole. Until you left. Death flirted with you, showed you her daunting beauty, and you chose her over me. You left me. You left all of us here who love you and need you. You broke the egg, smashed it into a thousand pieces and let the yolk spill out into the mud. You took that supple fruit and you gripped it so hard it bruised until it exploded, rotten pulp oozing into the hot sun and making your fingers sticky. You have broken me. I was whole and now I am broken. Shattered. Bruised. Tarnished. Damaged goods.
This anger scares me. I don't want to feel it and I don't want to fight with you. I am sorry for my anger. And I know you are sorry too. I know you are.
A couple days ago, right after my anger had really begun to appear, an old friend of yours sent me a message. She told me you had appeared to her in a dream. Initially, you were alive in the dream. You were a lifeguard at a pool. The two of you were chatting like old times. Then, the truth hit. You are dead. She said the dream became much more intense, more lucid. You changed forms from the lifeguard and began to disappear, as though you were being taken away. She said it was as though you didn't want to leave but couldn't control it. Watching you leave, she asked, "Is there anything you want me to tell anyone?" You remained quiet. "Is there anything you want me to tell Sami?" she asked. "Tell her 'I'm sorry'," you said. And then you were gone.
I hear you. I know you're sorry. But I just don't know if I'm ready to accept it quite yet. I will, my love. I will. But it's not easy.
And so goes life. One day I feel darkness, the next I feel lightness. One day I feel loneliness, the next I feel connected. One day I feel love, the next I feel anger. It is confusing. It feels bottomless. Someone will say to me, "You're pulling through! This is a turning point for you." Yes. A turning point that will turn right back around and go back in the opposite direction. Just give it a few days, a few hours, a few minutes. Grief is like a pendulum that swings back and forth. When it starts to slow down, something or nothing comes in and wacks it again – catapulting it into high gear all over again.
I have heard that anger is a step of the grief process. Honestly, I thought I would leapfrog it. 'I am bigger than anger,' I told myself. I thought, 'I've never been angry at him before, so why would I be now?' Well, once again, grief has humbled me; I am not bigger than anger. It has slapped me in the face and it stings. It's not a natural place for me to be. It feels as though I'm ice skating with socks on; it's slippery. But, I recognize that I can't control my emotions. This is how I feel now, but it can change in an instant. Today, anger has gripped me with it's ugly, sticky hands. It's taking me for a ride that makes me motion sick. And though this ride makes me ill, I will hold on to my truth and eventually I'll make it through, truth intact. Anger will retract his fierce claws.
Too Sad To Write
I have been too sad to write for the past three days. Grief can be like paralysis.
Three days ago we celebrated New Years. I didn't want to celebrate. I didn't open my blinds to see 2015 until this morning. I wanted to remain cocooned in darkness. I didn't want to see what a new year looked like without you. I have stepped outside one time so far this year. I don't want to feel the breath of the new year on my skin. I have hardly responded to my phone messages. I've ignored my email. I haven't opened my computer. I don't want to see what the technology is offering. I don't want to hear the "Happy New Years". I don't want to see who got engaged. I don't want to hear the pop of champagne bottles or the clink of glasses. I've stayed as horizontal as possible until friends coerced me up to eat or Kira asked to go outside. But even she didn't want to see the sun.
Everyone who knows you is sad. I know that. I don't want to compare my grief to others. But watching others smile, celebrate, and honor you through stickers, signs, stories, and memorabilia isn't enough for me. I tried to do it. It worked for a few hours. But the highs are low and the lows aren't describable by language. That's why I haven't been writing. I can't put words to my sadness. There's no way to explain the sorrow when I wake up and you're not there. There's no way to explain how it feels to remember you're gone minute-after-minute. There's no way to explain what life looks like with the knowledge that I can't be with you. Every time I close my eyes I'm taken back to that night. When I sleep, what used to be dreams are now robbed by chilling nightmares. When I feel close to you for a moment – maybe by hearing a song you loved, being near someone who reminds me of you, or seeing a sign from above – the comfort is fleeting. What lingers is a gut-wrenching reminder of how absent you are and guilt for my temporary solace.
I've spent the last week or so surrounded by friends of yours who have been in your life for years, many more years then I was. I have heard story after story that I wasn't around for. I have met people that you never got to introduce me to. I've had heart-to-hearts with friends that I wasn't able to deeply connect with until now, until tragedy hit. And they're all sad. They all miss you. They all love you. But I watch their lives continue and it makes me feel angry. It's anger that I know isn't warranted. But I want to dive under my covers, ignore any semblance of forward motion, and never come out – and definitely not watch others move forward with their new year and their happy lives.
I'm envious of all the people who shared decades with you. I didn't even get two years with you. And yet I had dreams about you since I was a child. And since we started our life together, since we fell in love, I needed to wake up with you each morning. I depended on your kiss to fuel the start of my day. I got to admire you as you did little nothings like brush your teeth, shave, or make tea. I took great care in sudsing you up in the shower, cleaning every bit of you with love and organic soap. I exercised more patience than I knew I had when I'd towel you dry. I moved slowly when I'd kiss your chest and watch your eyes light up with desire. I got to combine my pleasure with your pleasure and witness the creation of true love.
But now I wake up alone. I washed the sheets yesterday because they smelled of tears, sweat, loneliness, and nightmares. And last night I barely slept. I was cold in our bed. I felt so foreign on those clean sheets, the ones that I'd surprised you with one day because they were made out of bamboo and I knew you'd love them. When I did sleep, I dreamt that our house was being robbed while I lay in bed unaware. I woke up in fear and I realized it's a dream I've had a few times now – everything I thought was mine disappearing, everything I thought I could trust being ripped out from under me – a thinly veiled reality.
Kira sleeps on the bed next to me now. She can tell she's needed. She tries to let the weight of her body and the rise and fall of her breath comfort me, but it hardly helps. It just makes me feel even more sad for her loss. Because she misses you too. She wanders around the house and stares out into the distance with the sad eyes of an old dog who's left watching her mom cry all day when just months ago we were all so happy together.
On New Year's Eve I went all-access to your favorite show. I wore stickers with your initials all over me. I stuck smiley faces all over myself and everything I touched, something you were known for doing. I held a sign in the air that read "Team Welles". I brought a bit of your ashes with me to the show in a Ziploc bag and dozens of your friends poured tubes of glitter in with them. I told those who knew you, "If you'd like to take some of him, you can. We can all toss him up in the air at midnight." We called it 'Teddy Confetti'.
I thought people would think I was nuts. But they didn't. With gratitude and love, hand after hand after hand (including band members and their wives!) scooped up your glittery remains and not only offered you to the air, but put you on their faces like warpaint and pressed you to their lips like a kiss. There was more Ted on people's faces than I ever would have been OK with had you been alive! It was an honor to know that the man I love so much, the man I miss and crave so desperately will never be forgotten. And it was truly beautiful to witness how much people wanted a part of you to be a part of them. During the encore, the lights lit up with your name and the band sang the refrain, "Sometimes it seems like such a hard life, but there's good times around the bend. The rollercoaster's got to roll to the bottom if you want to climb to the top again". For about five-minutes, I felt joyful. But when the band left the stage and the house lights came on displaying the wreckage of dirty confetti and popped balloons, my sadness sank in deeper and the guilt-clock chimed.
For every step forward, it's a few steps back. I feel I'm still lingering somewhere around the start-point. Time slithers forward even though I regress. What is time anyway? What is something you can't see, you can't feel, you can't taste? Is it even real? And yet we celebrate the damned thing anyway. So, New Years – the end of a year that housed so much love, so much beauty, and both the happiest and the saddest days of my life. Around me, I watched people curse the old and await the new, while I curse the now and the new, and hide under my sheets hoping to go back three months – back to happiness, back to love, and back to when I wanted to see the light that each day brings.
Three days ago we celebrated New Years. I didn't want to celebrate. I didn't open my blinds to see 2015 until this morning. I wanted to remain cocooned in darkness. I didn't want to see what a new year looked like without you. I have stepped outside one time so far this year. I don't want to feel the breath of the new year on my skin. I have hardly responded to my phone messages. I've ignored my email. I haven't opened my computer. I don't want to see what the technology is offering. I don't want to hear the "Happy New Years". I don't want to see who got engaged. I don't want to hear the pop of champagne bottles or the clink of glasses. I've stayed as horizontal as possible until friends coerced me up to eat or Kira asked to go outside. But even she didn't want to see the sun.
Everyone who knows you is sad. I know that. I don't want to compare my grief to others. But watching others smile, celebrate, and honor you through stickers, signs, stories, and memorabilia isn't enough for me. I tried to do it. It worked for a few hours. But the highs are low and the lows aren't describable by language. That's why I haven't been writing. I can't put words to my sadness. There's no way to explain the sorrow when I wake up and you're not there. There's no way to explain how it feels to remember you're gone minute-after-minute. There's no way to explain what life looks like with the knowledge that I can't be with you. Every time I close my eyes I'm taken back to that night. When I sleep, what used to be dreams are now robbed by chilling nightmares. When I feel close to you for a moment – maybe by hearing a song you loved, being near someone who reminds me of you, or seeing a sign from above – the comfort is fleeting. What lingers is a gut-wrenching reminder of how absent you are and guilt for my temporary solace.
I've spent the last week or so surrounded by friends of yours who have been in your life for years, many more years then I was. I have heard story after story that I wasn't around for. I have met people that you never got to introduce me to. I've had heart-to-hearts with friends that I wasn't able to deeply connect with until now, until tragedy hit. And they're all sad. They all miss you. They all love you. But I watch their lives continue and it makes me feel angry. It's anger that I know isn't warranted. But I want to dive under my covers, ignore any semblance of forward motion, and never come out – and definitely not watch others move forward with their new year and their happy lives.
I'm envious of all the people who shared decades with you. I didn't even get two years with you. And yet I had dreams about you since I was a child. And since we started our life together, since we fell in love, I needed to wake up with you each morning. I depended on your kiss to fuel the start of my day. I got to admire you as you did little nothings like brush your teeth, shave, or make tea. I took great care in sudsing you up in the shower, cleaning every bit of you with love and organic soap. I exercised more patience than I knew I had when I'd towel you dry. I moved slowly when I'd kiss your chest and watch your eyes light up with desire. I got to combine my pleasure with your pleasure and witness the creation of true love.
But now I wake up alone. I washed the sheets yesterday because they smelled of tears, sweat, loneliness, and nightmares. And last night I barely slept. I was cold in our bed. I felt so foreign on those clean sheets, the ones that I'd surprised you with one day because they were made out of bamboo and I knew you'd love them. When I did sleep, I dreamt that our house was being robbed while I lay in bed unaware. I woke up in fear and I realized it's a dream I've had a few times now – everything I thought was mine disappearing, everything I thought I could trust being ripped out from under me – a thinly veiled reality.
Kira sleeps on the bed next to me now. She can tell she's needed. She tries to let the weight of her body and the rise and fall of her breath comfort me, but it hardly helps. It just makes me feel even more sad for her loss. Because she misses you too. She wanders around the house and stares out into the distance with the sad eyes of an old dog who's left watching her mom cry all day when just months ago we were all so happy together.
On New Year's Eve I went all-access to your favorite show. I wore stickers with your initials all over me. I stuck smiley faces all over myself and everything I touched, something you were known for doing. I held a sign in the air that read "Team Welles". I brought a bit of your ashes with me to the show in a Ziploc bag and dozens of your friends poured tubes of glitter in with them. I told those who knew you, "If you'd like to take some of him, you can. We can all toss him up in the air at midnight." We called it 'Teddy Confetti'.
I thought people would think I was nuts. But they didn't. With gratitude and love, hand after hand after hand (including band members and their wives!) scooped up your glittery remains and not only offered you to the air, but put you on their faces like warpaint and pressed you to their lips like a kiss. There was more Ted on people's faces than I ever would have been OK with had you been alive! It was an honor to know that the man I love so much, the man I miss and crave so desperately will never be forgotten. And it was truly beautiful to witness how much people wanted a part of you to be a part of them. During the encore, the lights lit up with your name and the band sang the refrain, "Sometimes it seems like such a hard life, but there's good times around the bend. The rollercoaster's got to roll to the bottom if you want to climb to the top again". For about five-minutes, I felt joyful. But when the band left the stage and the house lights came on displaying the wreckage of dirty confetti and popped balloons, my sadness sank in deeper and the guilt-clock chimed.
For every step forward, it's a few steps back. I feel I'm still lingering somewhere around the start-point. Time slithers forward even though I regress. What is time anyway? What is something you can't see, you can't feel, you can't taste? Is it even real? And yet we celebrate the damned thing anyway. So, New Years – the end of a year that housed so much love, so much beauty, and both the happiest and the saddest days of my life. Around me, I watched people curse the old and await the new, while I curse the now and the new, and hide under my sheets hoping to go back three months – back to happiness, back to love, and back to when I wanted to see the light that each day brings.
144 Things I Want and 20 I Don't
I don't want to be alone.
I don't want to be an inspiration because I meet grief with grace.
I don't want to have to be brave.
I don't want a new chapter.
I don't want to learn these lessons.
I don't want the sound of sirens to give me flashbacks.
I don't want the talk of death to remind me of you.
I don't want to be jealous when I see love.
I don't want to walk into our house and remember you're not here.
I don't want to see a picture and be saddened by the memory.
I don't want you to be past tense.
I don't want to avoid places because we went there together.
I don't want to hear songs and cry because the lyrics remind me of my loss.
I don't want hugs of pity.
I don't want to be the woman who was with that amazing man who died.
I don't want to have to be looked after.
I don't want to be worried about.
I don't want to cry myself to sleep every night.
I don't want life to look bleak.
I don't want the word angel to remind me of you.
I want you.
I want to see the flecks of sunshine in your eyes.
I want you to kiss every curve of my body.
I want you to ride me like you rode the mountains.
I want to hear your laugh.
I want to see your smile.
I want to sit next to you.
I want to marry you.
I want to be your wife.
I want to be the mother of your children.
I want to watch you be a father.
I want my babies to look like you.
I want to make you a pie.
I want to work around each another in the kitchen.
I want you to take a picture of me doing a handstand.
I want to you to rub my belly when my stomach hurts.
I want you to write me a love note.
I want to make cookies with you.
I want to you to cook the eggs.
I want to sit next to you on the couch.
I want to curl up on your lap.
I want you to bring me tea with three ice cubes.
I want you to hold my hand.
I want you there when I'm hungover.
I want to lay my cheek on your chest.
I want to you to order the sushi.
I want to throw a party together.
I want to listen to your new favorite song.
I want to you to remind me of that person's name.
I want to make memories together.
I want to see you.
I want to touch you.
I want to smell you.
I want to lick you.
I want to taste you.
I want to turn you on.
I want to watch porn with you.
I want to make you come.
I want to gaze into your eyes.
I want to watch the sunrise with you.
I want to grow old together.
I want to do yoga with you.
I want to pick out a lamp with you.
I want to go on a hike together.
I want to take the dance classes we signed up for.
I want you to give me more crystal hearts.
I want to choose an outfit for you to see.
I want you to tell me I look beautiful.
I want my phone to light up with a text from you.
I want to shovel snow with you.
I want to pick out a Christmas tree together.
I want to get in the hot tub together.
I want to go to Jamaica with you.
I want to go on our honeymoon.
I want to make the bed with you.
I want to fold your laundry.
I want us to eat almond butter on strawberries.
I want to take a shower with you.
I want to see you in the bathroom mirror.
I want to buy you a new shirt.
I want to unbutton your new shirt.
I want your new shirt on the floor.
I want you to bend me over the bathroom counter.
I want you to remind me to take my vitamins.
I want you to drum on my butt with your hands.
I want to see you in the crowd.
I want to watch you laugh.
I want to pull you close.
I want you there when I'm at a party.
I want to take your clothes to the dryer cleaner.
I want to hear you sneeze.
I want to play dress up with you.
I want to admire the view with you.
I want to walk the dog together.
I want to raise teenagers together.
I want you to finish the book you were reading.
I want to see you naked.
I want you to tell me I work too much.
I want to watch a sitcom with you.
I want you to leave me a voicemail.
I want you to buy me flowers.
I want you to drive.
I want to put our hand prints in wet cement.
I want to smoke a joint with you.
I want to stay up all night with you.
I want you next to me when I wake up.
I want to have a glass of wine together.
I want you to tell me a joke.
I want you to tell me I loaded the dishwasher wrong.
I want to hear you playing the drums.
I want to watch you on stage.
I want to pop champagne together.
I want to watch the turkeys with you.
I want you to tell me my products are taking up too much room in the shower.
I want you to tell me a fact about apple cider vinegar.
I want you to feed the cat.
I want you to clean her litter box.
I want to make you a whiskey sour.
I want to take a bath with you.
I want to make fun of our feet together.
I want to look at Playboy with you.
I want to hear your opinion.
I want to agree with you.
I want you to tap your finger on my belly button.
I want you to ask me what color I got my nails painted.
I want to clean out the fridge with you.
I want you to ask me how my class was.
I want to double check for pine nuts and sunflower seeds.
I want to make you fresh juice.
I want a bite of your food.
I want another bite.
I want you to tell me to slow down.
I want you to put concealer on the scars on my back because I can't reach.
I want to use your body as my plaything.
I want you to pack us a cooler.
I want to wash the dishes with you.
I want to set up the tent together.
I want to make salad dressing with you.
I want to eat organic with you.
I want to keep trying to get you to like sweet potatoes.
I want to go back to Canada with you and your family.
I want to grow a garden together.
I want to complain about my headache to you.
I want to take the dog for a walk with you.
I want to sit on the deck with you.
I want to climb things together.
I want to go back to the Playa with you.
I want us to play Yahtzee.
I want you to make a fire in the fireplace.
I want you to remind me not to use so many paper towels.
I want to watch you watch music.
I want you to teach me to ski.
I want you to teach me.
I want you to go on a date with you.
I want you to pay.
I want to snuggle with you.
I want to have hotel sex with you.
I want to have birthday sex with you.
I want to make love to you.
I want to fuck you.
I want you to tell me you love me.
I want my future to include you.
I want to know where you are.
I want you to kiss me at midnight.
I don't want to be an inspiration because I meet grief with grace.
I don't want to have to be brave.
I don't want a new chapter.
I don't want to learn these lessons.
I don't want the sound of sirens to give me flashbacks.
I don't want the talk of death to remind me of you.
I don't want to be jealous when I see love.
I don't want to walk into our house and remember you're not here.
I don't want to see a picture and be saddened by the memory.
I don't want you to be past tense.
I don't want to avoid places because we went there together.
I don't want to hear songs and cry because the lyrics remind me of my loss.
I don't want hugs of pity.
I don't want to be the woman who was with that amazing man who died.
I don't want to have to be looked after.
I don't want to be worried about.
I don't want to cry myself to sleep every night.
I don't want life to look bleak.
I don't want the word angel to remind me of you.
I want you.
I want to see the flecks of sunshine in your eyes.
I want you to kiss every curve of my body.
I want you to ride me like you rode the mountains.
I want to hear your laugh.
I want to see your smile.
I want to sit next to you.
I want to marry you.
I want to be your wife.
I want to be the mother of your children.
I want to watch you be a father.
I want my babies to look like you.
I want to make you a pie.
I want to work around each another in the kitchen.
I want you to take a picture of me doing a handstand.
I want to you to rub my belly when my stomach hurts.
I want you to write me a love note.
I want to make cookies with you.
I want to you to cook the eggs.
I want to sit next to you on the couch.
I want to curl up on your lap.
I want you to bring me tea with three ice cubes.
I want you to hold my hand.
I want you there when I'm hungover.
I want to lay my cheek on your chest.
I want to you to order the sushi.
I want to throw a party together.
I want to listen to your new favorite song.
I want to you to remind me of that person's name.
I want to make memories together.
I want to see you.
I want to touch you.
I want to smell you.
I want to lick you.
I want to taste you.
I want to turn you on.
I want to watch porn with you.
I want to make you come.
I want to gaze into your eyes.
I want to watch the sunrise with you.
I want to grow old together.
I want to do yoga with you.
I want to pick out a lamp with you.
I want to go on a hike together.
I want to take the dance classes we signed up for.
I want you to give me more crystal hearts.
I want to choose an outfit for you to see.
I want you to tell me I look beautiful.
I want my phone to light up with a text from you.
I want to shovel snow with you.
I want to pick out a Christmas tree together.
I want to get in the hot tub together.
I want to go to Jamaica with you.
I want to go on our honeymoon.
I want to make the bed with you.
I want to fold your laundry.
I want us to eat almond butter on strawberries.
I want to take a shower with you.
I want to see you in the bathroom mirror.
I want to buy you a new shirt.
I want to unbutton your new shirt.
I want your new shirt on the floor.
I want you to bend me over the bathroom counter.
I want you to remind me to take my vitamins.
I want you to drum on my butt with your hands.
I want to see you in the crowd.
I want to watch you laugh.
I want to pull you close.
I want you there when I'm at a party.
I want to take your clothes to the dryer cleaner.
I want to hear you sneeze.
I want to play dress up with you.
I want to admire the view with you.
I want to walk the dog together.
I want to raise teenagers together.
I want you to finish the book you were reading.
I want to see you naked.
I want you to tell me I work too much.
I want to watch a sitcom with you.
I want you to leave me a voicemail.
I want you to buy me flowers.
I want you to drive.
I want to put our hand prints in wet cement.
I want to smoke a joint with you.
I want to stay up all night with you.
I want you next to me when I wake up.
I want to have a glass of wine together.
I want you to tell me a joke.
I want you to tell me I loaded the dishwasher wrong.
I want to hear you playing the drums.
I want to watch you on stage.
I want to pop champagne together.
I want to watch the turkeys with you.
I want you to tell me my products are taking up too much room in the shower.
I want you to tell me a fact about apple cider vinegar.
I want you to feed the cat.
I want you to clean her litter box.
I want to make you a whiskey sour.
I want to take a bath with you.
I want to make fun of our feet together.
I want to look at Playboy with you.
I want to hear your opinion.
I want to agree with you.
I want you to tap your finger on my belly button.
I want you to ask me what color I got my nails painted.
I want to clean out the fridge with you.
I want you to ask me how my class was.
I want to double check for pine nuts and sunflower seeds.
I want to make you fresh juice.
I want a bite of your food.
I want another bite.
I want you to tell me to slow down.
I want you to put concealer on the scars on my back because I can't reach.
I want to use your body as my plaything.
I want you to pack us a cooler.
I want to wash the dishes with you.
I want to set up the tent together.
I want to make salad dressing with you.
I want to eat organic with you.
I want to keep trying to get you to like sweet potatoes.
I want to go back to Canada with you and your family.
I want to grow a garden together.
I want to complain about my headache to you.
I want to take the dog for a walk with you.
I want to sit on the deck with you.
I want to climb things together.
I want to go back to the Playa with you.
I want us to play Yahtzee.
I want you to make a fire in the fireplace.
I want you to remind me not to use so many paper towels.
I want to watch you watch music.
I want you to teach me to ski.
I want you to teach me.
I want you to go on a date with you.
I want you to pay.
I want to snuggle with you.
I want to have hotel sex with you.
I want to have birthday sex with you.
I want to make love to you.
I want to fuck you.
I want you to tell me you love me.
I want my future to include you.
I want to know where you are.
I want you to kiss me at midnight.
A Christmas Poem
As I awake this Christmas morning,
I am met with a mood so blue.
Because all I asked in my time of mourning,
was to wake up next to you.
Children's toe are tapping and pitter patting,
as they wake up bright with cheer.
Today is the day, for my whole life,
it was the happiest time of year!
Families laughing and gift unwrapping,
a trip home from afar.
I never considered that someday soon,
today's joy would be a scar.
Those who are blessed, be grateful this fest,
and hold your loved ones near.
Be thankful for toys for little girls and boys,
some brothers and sisters aren't here.
Chestnuts popping and missing stockings,
all isn't merry and bright.
As you gather around the tree,
remember that some can't see the light.
Hold your loved ones, kiss them and hug them,
if you think they don't look so cheer.
Because today will bear the weight,
of ones who are no longer here.
Head hanging low under mistletoe,
Christmas comes but once a year.
Let gentleness thrive cause some live and some die,
and grief hardly stops here.
I am met with a mood so blue.
Because all I asked in my time of mourning,
was to wake up next to you.
Children's toe are tapping and pitter patting,
as they wake up bright with cheer.
Today is the day, for my whole life,
it was the happiest time of year!
Families laughing and gift unwrapping,
a trip home from afar.
I never considered that someday soon,
today's joy would be a scar.
Those who are blessed, be grateful this fest,
and hold your loved ones near.
Be thankful for toys for little girls and boys,
some brothers and sisters aren't here.
Chestnuts popping and missing stockings,
all isn't merry and bright.
As you gather around the tree,
remember that some can't see the light.
Hold your loved ones, kiss them and hug them,
if you think they don't look so cheer.
Because today will bear the weight,
of ones who are no longer here.
Head hanging low under mistletoe,
Christmas comes but once a year.
Let gentleness thrive cause some live and some die,
and grief hardly stops here.
Anchors
This week in my therapy session, we talked about anchors. Anchors are stimuli that trigger certain states of mind - thoughts and
emotions. They can be brought on unconsciously without knowing what the anchor is. They can be triggered by memories, like the smell of a rhubarb pie making me hungry, the sound of an old favorite song making me nostalgic, or the love I feel from the unconditional kiss and wagging tail my ten-year-old dog greets me with whenever I come home. An anchor can be a scent, a sight, a taste, a feeling, a person, or a sound. People develop hundreds of them as we grow, unconsciously.
I'm back in Toledo, Ohio – my hometown – for the holidays. I've been thinking about the anchors that draw me back to this place. For me, the smell of a Gino's pizza, extra crispy with pineapple and banana pepper makes me feel like a salivating seven-year-old. The Christmas Eve tradition of spaghetti dinner with our best family friends brings me back together. No matter what's happening in my life, on that night there will always be meat sauce, paper crowns, and lotto tickets on every seat. Even tomorrow night, despite all my pain and holiday cynicism, there will still be hot spaghetti and those dear friends.
Tonight, I'm in my bedroom, sitting in the same bed I've slept in since I was ten years old. My bed is an anchor.
I remember lying here when I was in the sixth grade listening to Love Phones on my alarm clock radio. It was a late-night hotline style radio show where callers rang in to ask about sex-related questions. I would listen to it for hours before falling asleep with the radio volume as low as possible, so my parents wouldn't hear. I was certainly not supposed to be listening to such content. I learned much more about sex than an eleven-year-old should have ever known.
I remember being in this bed when I was a junior in high school and my on-again/off-again boyfriend came over after school. He was just supposed to be dropping me off, but when we saw that my parents weren't home, he came in. Mid-session, my father came home. He saw my boyfriend's car in the driveway. We could barely pull ourselves together before my red-faced and furious father, stormed into my room, doors slamming. The boy had one leg out my bedroom window. He was trying to make a dash for it, Dawson's Creek style. Until that boy became a dear and platonic friend a decade later, he was never the type to enter or exit through the front door. I was grounded immediately and from that point on (until very recently) my parents had a very mean nickname for that guy.
I remember this bed when later that same year, I was recovering from a major back surgery. I had been diagnosed with stenosis and two herniated disks in my low spine. After eight months of major pain killers, physical therapy, and unrelenting numbness and pain – I was operated on at the University of Michigan. A couple weeks after the surgery, I had my preview night for my senior year of high school. I went to school a shadow of my former self. The once fun-loving, social, impressionable cheerleader could now barely put on a pair of pajama pants and had no desire to see any of her friends. It was that night when I realized the months of overly-prescribed medication had resulted in an opiate addiction. Wanting to reconnect with my true self, I went cold turkey that night. My mom had to sleep in my bed with me for days while I sweat, shook, and had visceral nightmares while I detoxed from the dosages the doctors had prescribed me. (To this day, spare a near-death motorcycle accident, I haven't gone near painkillers. That shit is poison.)
I remember this bed when I was twenty-five and got laid off of my job working with the Olympics and broke off a five-year relationship all in the same week. I moved out of the condo I had shared with my partner and came home. I stayed home that summer trying to piece back together who I was. Or maybe I was trying to figure it out for the first time. That summer, 2009, I had no plan. No man. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing. That summer, it felt like freedom. It felt like anything was possible.
The canvas has drawn a blank again for me in a way now. But this time, it doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like a noose has been tightened around my neck. It feels like the floor has been ripped out from beneath me. It feels like I can't breath. It feels like emptiness.
You and I slept in this bed together just two times. You were a part of this anchor too. The first time was about eighteen months ago. We came home for a wedding. We stayed half of the time at my parent's house and the other half at your parent's house. We liked that. We thought it would always be like that when we would return home for holidays and trips over the course of our life together. The second time was less than a year ago. My grandmother had died and I flew home immediately. You had a gig that night, but joined me in Toledo just a day later after her memorial service. Your flight came in very late and I was exhausted and worn out by the time we made it home from the airport. I was beyond emotional at the loss of my grandmother who had served as a beacon of class and generosity for me as a young woman. You cradled me as I cried myself to sleep. Of all the times I slept in this bed, that was the most comforted I had ever been. You held me tight, just like my mother had when I had sweat out painkillers a dozen years before. But that night last year, there were no nightmares. There were beautiful dreams of the beautiful life we would share. It was just the dawn.
This morning, I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom. I dropped the towel that I'd had wrapped around my torso and I stared at my naked body in the mirror on the back of my door. 'The mirror is an anchor too,' I thought. That mirror has seen my body morph more than any person. It has seen my reflection grow over decades with many backdrops. It has seen an adolescent swimmer of ten with creamy pink walls behind her, jumping on one foot, head cocked to the side, trying to get water out of her ear. It has seen a nervous thirteen-year-old ballerina trying to pin up her bun perfectly with bobby pins while popping a zit; behind her the walls are now wallpapered with pages of fashion magazines and a collage of sixty-nine photos of Leonardo DiCaprio is taped on the mirror's glass surface. It has seen a naive young woman of sixteen trying on the outfit she'd wear to school the next day, grey pinstriped polyester pants her crush said made her butt look 'hot' – the walls are now neon green and orange. It has seen a high school senior, in her cheerleading uniform practicing herkies while lip synching to Britney Spears's remix of "I Love Rock and Roll", the walls now a more mature palette of brown and tan. It has seen a woman leaving her hometown for the second time for Austin to find herself and a new career, dressed in Banana Republic slacks because now she's grown up – the walls have finally been taken over by her parents after a remodel, they are off-white.
The mirror in my childhood bedroom has seen me more over the past month then it has in years. I looked at my thirty-year-old body. I noticed how it's changed over the decades. I noticed places that were softer, larger, firmer, or smaller. I moved my face up-close and ran my finger across the thin wrinkles on my forehead. I searched for a grey hair amongst the blonde, surely one has sprouted over the past two months. I turned the edges of my mouth into a fake smile and looked at the laugh lines that had been starting to form because of all the smiling I did with you. I started to cry, a woeful sob. I watched the tears drip down my cheeks in the mirror's reflection. I saw the tracks that the tears took, my face now recognizing the path of salty sorrow. I saw an ugly woman staring back at me. She had my eyes, but they were sadder now. She was so much older than I remembered her. In a way she looked like a stranger.
That mirror has witnessed a lot of tears over the years. But of the decades of tears it's seen, lately, they've been the most sad. There is no comparison to tears of grief. They even look different than other tears when studied under a microscope. They are sharp fractals without any order or pattern. They look painful to touch. In fact, they look an awful lot like they feel. These are not tears from a boy who didn't call a fifteen year-old girl. These aren't tears because I'm pissed at my parents for grounding me for sneaking out. These are not tears from belly laughing at a funny punchline so hard that my eyes water. These aren't tears because I was cast as the ugly step-sister instead of Cinderella. These aren't tears because I got wait-listed at my first choice university. These aren't tears because of a breakup that is sad and hard, but instigated by me. These aren't the tears I cried when my grandmother died peacefully at ninety-plus years.
These are tears of deep, deep devastation. These are the tears of loosing the father of the babies I couldn't wait to have. These are the tears of not being able to call my best friend. These are the tears of shattered tradition. These are the tears of loosing the life I'd always dreamed of. These are the tears of a second family slipping away through my fingertips. These are tears of questioning the value of life without you. These are tears of confusion. These are tears of loosing faith. These are tears that really have no words to describe them.
The anchors remain. The ones here in my bedroom remind me nostalgically of childhood. But in my current state of grief, retreating to memories of the past, before these tears, is comforting. The anchors pull me in and ground me. They remind me that while you aren't here, there was something here before you and there are still things that remain here now. This is your hometown too. And in your absence I wish I'd had the time to learn more about what pulled you back to memories, what rooted you. I am not sure how it will be when I return to our house in Colorado next week. There, the anchors all bear the weight of memories of my life with you. I want it and I fear it at the same time. So for now, I will lay in this bed. I will curl up and try to remember what it was like to sleep peacefully like I did as a child.
I'm back in Toledo, Ohio – my hometown – for the holidays. I've been thinking about the anchors that draw me back to this place. For me, the smell of a Gino's pizza, extra crispy with pineapple and banana pepper makes me feel like a salivating seven-year-old. The Christmas Eve tradition of spaghetti dinner with our best family friends brings me back together. No matter what's happening in my life, on that night there will always be meat sauce, paper crowns, and lotto tickets on every seat. Even tomorrow night, despite all my pain and holiday cynicism, there will still be hot spaghetti and those dear friends.
Tonight, I'm in my bedroom, sitting in the same bed I've slept in since I was ten years old. My bed is an anchor.
I remember lying here when I was in the sixth grade listening to Love Phones on my alarm clock radio. It was a late-night hotline style radio show where callers rang in to ask about sex-related questions. I would listen to it for hours before falling asleep with the radio volume as low as possible, so my parents wouldn't hear. I was certainly not supposed to be listening to such content. I learned much more about sex than an eleven-year-old should have ever known.
I remember being in this bed when I was a junior in high school and my on-again/off-again boyfriend came over after school. He was just supposed to be dropping me off, but when we saw that my parents weren't home, he came in. Mid-session, my father came home. He saw my boyfriend's car in the driveway. We could barely pull ourselves together before my red-faced and furious father, stormed into my room, doors slamming. The boy had one leg out my bedroom window. He was trying to make a dash for it, Dawson's Creek style. Until that boy became a dear and platonic friend a decade later, he was never the type to enter or exit through the front door. I was grounded immediately and from that point on (until very recently) my parents had a very mean nickname for that guy.
I remember this bed when later that same year, I was recovering from a major back surgery. I had been diagnosed with stenosis and two herniated disks in my low spine. After eight months of major pain killers, physical therapy, and unrelenting numbness and pain – I was operated on at the University of Michigan. A couple weeks after the surgery, I had my preview night for my senior year of high school. I went to school a shadow of my former self. The once fun-loving, social, impressionable cheerleader could now barely put on a pair of pajama pants and had no desire to see any of her friends. It was that night when I realized the months of overly-prescribed medication had resulted in an opiate addiction. Wanting to reconnect with my true self, I went cold turkey that night. My mom had to sleep in my bed with me for days while I sweat, shook, and had visceral nightmares while I detoxed from the dosages the doctors had prescribed me. (To this day, spare a near-death motorcycle accident, I haven't gone near painkillers. That shit is poison.)
I remember this bed when I was twenty-five and got laid off of my job working with the Olympics and broke off a five-year relationship all in the same week. I moved out of the condo I had shared with my partner and came home. I stayed home that summer trying to piece back together who I was. Or maybe I was trying to figure it out for the first time. That summer, 2009, I had no plan. No man. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing. That summer, it felt like freedom. It felt like anything was possible.
The canvas has drawn a blank again for me in a way now. But this time, it doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like a noose has been tightened around my neck. It feels like the floor has been ripped out from beneath me. It feels like I can't breath. It feels like emptiness.
You and I slept in this bed together just two times. You were a part of this anchor too. The first time was about eighteen months ago. We came home for a wedding. We stayed half of the time at my parent's house and the other half at your parent's house. We liked that. We thought it would always be like that when we would return home for holidays and trips over the course of our life together. The second time was less than a year ago. My grandmother had died and I flew home immediately. You had a gig that night, but joined me in Toledo just a day later after her memorial service. Your flight came in very late and I was exhausted and worn out by the time we made it home from the airport. I was beyond emotional at the loss of my grandmother who had served as a beacon of class and generosity for me as a young woman. You cradled me as I cried myself to sleep. Of all the times I slept in this bed, that was the most comforted I had ever been. You held me tight, just like my mother had when I had sweat out painkillers a dozen years before. But that night last year, there were no nightmares. There were beautiful dreams of the beautiful life we would share. It was just the dawn.
This morning, I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom. I dropped the towel that I'd had wrapped around my torso and I stared at my naked body in the mirror on the back of my door. 'The mirror is an anchor too,' I thought. That mirror has seen my body morph more than any person. It has seen my reflection grow over decades with many backdrops. It has seen an adolescent swimmer of ten with creamy pink walls behind her, jumping on one foot, head cocked to the side, trying to get water out of her ear. It has seen a nervous thirteen-year-old ballerina trying to pin up her bun perfectly with bobby pins while popping a zit; behind her the walls are now wallpapered with pages of fashion magazines and a collage of sixty-nine photos of Leonardo DiCaprio is taped on the mirror's glass surface. It has seen a naive young woman of sixteen trying on the outfit she'd wear to school the next day, grey pinstriped polyester pants her crush said made her butt look 'hot' – the walls are now neon green and orange. It has seen a high school senior, in her cheerleading uniform practicing herkies while lip synching to Britney Spears's remix of "I Love Rock and Roll", the walls now a more mature palette of brown and tan. It has seen a woman leaving her hometown for the second time for Austin to find herself and a new career, dressed in Banana Republic slacks because now she's grown up – the walls have finally been taken over by her parents after a remodel, they are off-white.
The mirror in my childhood bedroom has seen me more over the past month then it has in years. I looked at my thirty-year-old body. I noticed how it's changed over the decades. I noticed places that were softer, larger, firmer, or smaller. I moved my face up-close and ran my finger across the thin wrinkles on my forehead. I searched for a grey hair amongst the blonde, surely one has sprouted over the past two months. I turned the edges of my mouth into a fake smile and looked at the laugh lines that had been starting to form because of all the smiling I did with you. I started to cry, a woeful sob. I watched the tears drip down my cheeks in the mirror's reflection. I saw the tracks that the tears took, my face now recognizing the path of salty sorrow. I saw an ugly woman staring back at me. She had my eyes, but they were sadder now. She was so much older than I remembered her. In a way she looked like a stranger.
That mirror has witnessed a lot of tears over the years. But of the decades of tears it's seen, lately, they've been the most sad. There is no comparison to tears of grief. They even look different than other tears when studied under a microscope. They are sharp fractals without any order or pattern. They look painful to touch. In fact, they look an awful lot like they feel. These are not tears from a boy who didn't call a fifteen year-old girl. These aren't tears because I'm pissed at my parents for grounding me for sneaking out. These are not tears from belly laughing at a funny punchline so hard that my eyes water. These aren't tears because I was cast as the ugly step-sister instead of Cinderella. These aren't tears because I got wait-listed at my first choice university. These aren't tears because of a breakup that is sad and hard, but instigated by me. These aren't the tears I cried when my grandmother died peacefully at ninety-plus years.
These are tears of deep, deep devastation. These are the tears of loosing the father of the babies I couldn't wait to have. These are the tears of not being able to call my best friend. These are the tears of shattered tradition. These are the tears of loosing the life I'd always dreamed of. These are the tears of a second family slipping away through my fingertips. These are tears of questioning the value of life without you. These are tears of confusion. These are tears of loosing faith. These are tears that really have no words to describe them.
The anchors remain. The ones here in my bedroom remind me nostalgically of childhood. But in my current state of grief, retreating to memories of the past, before these tears, is comforting. The anchors pull me in and ground me. They remind me that while you aren't here, there was something here before you and there are still things that remain here now. This is your hometown too. And in your absence I wish I'd had the time to learn more about what pulled you back to memories, what rooted you. I am not sure how it will be when I return to our house in Colorado next week. There, the anchors all bear the weight of memories of my life with you. I want it and I fear it at the same time. So for now, I will lay in this bed. I will curl up and try to remember what it was like to sleep peacefully like I did as a child.
Innocence Found
I was a swimmer as a child. Swim lessons from the age of two – paddling from mom to dad in a waterlogged diaper, living on the beach in Jamaica at six – running up and down the shore, topless and smiling, bleach-blonde hair and my face painted. By the time I was seven years old and back in Ohio I was on the swim team. I remember the YWCA pool very well. Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the off season – six days a week, sometimes twice a day, in the winter season. The water was always a touch too cold with suspicious warm spots as you moved through. I remember the scent of chlorine meets AquaSwim shampoo in the locker room shower. I can still feel the athlete's foot, in fact to this day, it never quite entirely cleared up. I can hear the shouts of our coach, Cheryl, commanding us to swim the next 100m faster. "Kick harder! Harder! Harder!" I'd hear her yells on every inhale when I turned my little cheek to breathe in. She moonlighted as a swim coach, her daytime gig was across the street as a warden for the inner city youth jail. Let's just say she knew how to get results in kids.
At the end of practice, we'd swim our cool-down, maybe 4 or 8 lengths of the pool. That was when I had my favorite moments. You see, when I was a child I used to believe that I had been mermaid once. I had complete faith in life under the sea. The Little Mermaid was my bible. I eventually got teased for it. Anyone who knew me in elementary school will remember taunting me with the nickname 'Mermaid Girl'. But then, I was full of wonder.
During my last few laps of the pool, I would take a deep breath and dive down into the water. I would channel my inner Ariel and dolphin kick my legs as I dove deep. I would open my eyes, letting the chlorine into burn my retinas and gaze at everything there was to see down there at the bottom of the pool. Mind you, there was not much to see: stray hairbands, a swim cap, a lost fin, a dead bug, a hairball, maybe a shiny coin if I was lucky. I would strap on my imagination and pretend I was back in the ocean waters I had explored in Jamaica. I would imagine colorful fish swimming effortlessly in sparkling schools, bright red and blue coral that grew so quickly you could almost watch it rise towards the heavens, large rays that gracefully slid across the ocean floor casting shadows on the sea floor like clouds from the sky. Maybe there would be a treasure chest, spilling over with gold coins and colorful rubies and emeralds. While I was reasonably fast, the pool was far too distracting for me to be taken too seriously as a competitor in a race. Instead, the water was my world, my secret garden of underwater adventure. A blue or red ribbon was just bonus points.
When I was nine, we moved to Belize for a year. Again, the ocean was my oyster! I would play in the water for hours. I'd watch fish soar through underground playgrounds with an easy sense of cooperation. Did you know that an entire school of fish vote on which way they'll go by a simple turn of the head? After 51% of the fish look one way, the whole school switches direction instantaneously and without missing a beat. (Imagine if people were like that... but I digress.) I remember jumping off of a motor boat to go snorkeling. Once submerged, I turned back towards the boat to catch the eye of my mom who was about to jump in. I noticed the shadow of something under the boat. It was a huge nurse shark. But it was a time in my life when I was fearless. Until I wasn't.
Two occurrences on that trip broke me and my innocent, imaginative relationship with water.
We went on a day trip to a tiny island with only three palm trees on it. The adults, armed with mediocre weed and coolers of beer, had a beach party. I decided to catch hermit crabs and organize a race for the party goers. Each person chose a crab. I drew a circle in the sand and put all the crabs in the middle. The first one out of the circle was the winner. I was the maestro supreme! Later that day, we went for a snorkel. As we swam along the reef, I remember watching a barracuda and a huge mantra ray swim by. I was still fearless. I understood that I was a part of the whole ecosystem. We are not a drop of the ocean, we are the entire ocean in a drop.
We began to swim over a huge bed of coral. The guide, whose English was not great, instructed me NOT to touch the coral. "Fire coral!" he yelled. He pointed at the coral all around me. It appeared to be centimeters from my skin. The objects in water are closer than they appear, but I did not know that at the time. He continued to yell at me, "Fire coral! Fire coral! Do not touch. Will burn!" He pointed to a nasty scar engulfing his leg. It looked like a parasite joined up with a shark bite and then the infection festered on his calf. In my mind now, I know there is no way he got that injury from fire coral. But in my nine-year-old brain, I was screwed. I hovered over the water, regressing from freestyle to a doggy paddle immediately. I was paralyzed by fear mid-snorkle. My parents had to lure me out of the water. I have been frightened of coral ever since. I can hardly swim in the ocean without fear of the coral grabbing me in it's rocky mitts and burning my body while it pulls me down and drowns me.
Later that year the other event happened that scarred me and destroyed my blooming career as a mermaid. Again, I was on the beach catching crabs. Let's face it, I liked to catch crabs as a little girl. All jokes aside, they were sand crabs. (Let it be known that I have never actually had crabs.) I had made friends with an older boy, Mario, on the beach. In Belize, many of the young girls were encouraged to help their mothers in the home, so much of my outdoor roaming time was either alone or with boys.
Mario convinced me that there would be more crabs in the brackish water of the mangrove swamp down the beach. It was further than I was aloud to go and my parents weren't around to ask, so I was wary. He convinced me it would be quick and bountiful. I was a bit of a rebel, so I went along with it.
Inside the mangrove forest, the floor of the ocean was almost like quicksand. My little legs were getting stuck in the sticky, muddy earth. I was distracted from the hunt as I tried to un-stick myself from the ground. I thought Mario was setting a trap from a crab, but apparently, he had a different intention. When I looked up from my battle with the sediment, moments later – he had exposed himself to me. A small, brown, uncircumcised, erect, teenage penis pointed at me. Pants down, he started towards me. All in one swift inhale, I felt confusion, surprise, curiosity, guilt, excitement, anger, and fear.
As Mario sludged his way through the mud to me, I felt the mud floor free my ankles. It was as though the earth had taken my side in the battle. I braced myself by grabbing onto the distended roots of the mangrove trees that surrounded me and lifted my body up out of the water. Without much forethought, I used one of my free legs to swiftly kick Mario square in the junk, hard. As he cowered in pain, I took off running. Suddenly, the floor of that swamp was as solid and buoyant as the turf on a track. I had the distinct feeling that something greater was helping me fight back and run away. When I escaped from the mangrove swamp, there was a golf cart driving by with a small search party on it. They had been looking for me. I hopped aboard and zipped my lips.
You were one of the first people I ever told the full story to. I buried it deep down, a secret tale of shame with a splash of fiery bravery and divine intervention.
But I no longer felt innocent. I no longer caught sand crabs and painted messages on their shells with nail polish. I didn't imagine I was a mermaid anymore. I stopped believing in buried treasures and hermit crabs that sang and had names like Sebastian. When I came back from Belize and joined the swim team again, I swam to win. I didn't dive down deep and explore the bottom of the pool anymore. I didn't pretend that the stray pennies were silver dollars or that the drain pipes led to secret caverns. I swam in a straight line. I closed my eyes on my flip-turns. I kicked harder. I moved with a sense of purpose instead of a sense of wonder.
It wasn't until I met you that I really began to peel back that guard I'd put up. I let go of stifled fear when I fell in love with you. I found my sense of marvel again. You had a naturalness for being like a kid. I used to watch you sleep and when you would wake up, I'd tell you about how you reminded me of a little boy. You were always searching for wonder. You always wanted to dig deep and climb high. You reminded me what it was like to live in the light. With you, I set the innocent, little girl inside of me free again.
Not many thirty-four year old men have an entire drawer dedicated to stickers. If anyone ever had glitter, your words were, "Yes, please!" You liked to play dress up with neon colors and fuzzy fabrics. You spent over a hundred dollars on fabric and materials to make our Burning Man scooter look like the cartoon character, Tigger. Your penmanship was as perfect as a fifth grader who wanted to ace his handwriting exam. Your favorite shows were animated. You barely flinched when thousands of pieces of 80's themed confetti were thrown all over the floor of our house at my birthday party (I'm looking at you, Larson sisters). You were famous in the jam band scene for secretly tagging friends and strangers with dozens of sparkly smiley face stickers. And just your being in general, you were a kid at heart.
When reality and adulthood loomed, you'd face it. You weren't immature by any means. But, you'd balance being a man with mischief and fun, with a silly pun, a high-five or a somersault, and a broad grin with dancing eyes. You were never going to let go of that wonder. You never did.
I lept into the water with you – eyes wide, heart open. Me, armed with authenticity and big dreams. You, armed with innocence and a Scorpio tattoo. When we fell in love, I believed in fairy tales again. I believed in hidden treasures and I knew for damn sure there was such thing as Prince Charming. I'd kissed some toads and I'd gotten you. My own boy to hold hands with and jump in. You made me want to open my eyes again. You made me feel safe: no burns, no attacks – just wonder.
So now, I will take my all past experiences, including this terrible loss, and I will strap them onto my back. Though the load with bear me down, I will not fall. And if I stumble, I will use my fiery, strong legs to get back up. And when I'm scared and lonely, I will think of our memories and I will smile, though at first it will be fake, maybe someday it will turn honest. I will trust in the signs. I will remember that energy that lifted me up out of that quicksand and helped me escape when I was a child, and I will know that now I have you up there too. In whatever way, I know you will guide me through and you will in some way, some day, show me again what it's like to dive in, wonder, and not think have to worry about the next breath.
At the end of practice, we'd swim our cool-down, maybe 4 or 8 lengths of the pool. That was when I had my favorite moments. You see, when I was a child I used to believe that I had been mermaid once. I had complete faith in life under the sea. The Little Mermaid was my bible. I eventually got teased for it. Anyone who knew me in elementary school will remember taunting me with the nickname 'Mermaid Girl'. But then, I was full of wonder.
During my last few laps of the pool, I would take a deep breath and dive down into the water. I would channel my inner Ariel and dolphin kick my legs as I dove deep. I would open my eyes, letting the chlorine into burn my retinas and gaze at everything there was to see down there at the bottom of the pool. Mind you, there was not much to see: stray hairbands, a swim cap, a lost fin, a dead bug, a hairball, maybe a shiny coin if I was lucky. I would strap on my imagination and pretend I was back in the ocean waters I had explored in Jamaica. I would imagine colorful fish swimming effortlessly in sparkling schools, bright red and blue coral that grew so quickly you could almost watch it rise towards the heavens, large rays that gracefully slid across the ocean floor casting shadows on the sea floor like clouds from the sky. Maybe there would be a treasure chest, spilling over with gold coins and colorful rubies and emeralds. While I was reasonably fast, the pool was far too distracting for me to be taken too seriously as a competitor in a race. Instead, the water was my world, my secret garden of underwater adventure. A blue or red ribbon was just bonus points.
When I was nine, we moved to Belize for a year. Again, the ocean was my oyster! I would play in the water for hours. I'd watch fish soar through underground playgrounds with an easy sense of cooperation. Did you know that an entire school of fish vote on which way they'll go by a simple turn of the head? After 51% of the fish look one way, the whole school switches direction instantaneously and without missing a beat. (Imagine if people were like that... but I digress.) I remember jumping off of a motor boat to go snorkeling. Once submerged, I turned back towards the boat to catch the eye of my mom who was about to jump in. I noticed the shadow of something under the boat. It was a huge nurse shark. But it was a time in my life when I was fearless. Until I wasn't.
Two occurrences on that trip broke me and my innocent, imaginative relationship with water.
We went on a day trip to a tiny island with only three palm trees on it. The adults, armed with mediocre weed and coolers of beer, had a beach party. I decided to catch hermit crabs and organize a race for the party goers. Each person chose a crab. I drew a circle in the sand and put all the crabs in the middle. The first one out of the circle was the winner. I was the maestro supreme! Later that day, we went for a snorkel. As we swam along the reef, I remember watching a barracuda and a huge mantra ray swim by. I was still fearless. I understood that I was a part of the whole ecosystem. We are not a drop of the ocean, we are the entire ocean in a drop.
We began to swim over a huge bed of coral. The guide, whose English was not great, instructed me NOT to touch the coral. "Fire coral!" he yelled. He pointed at the coral all around me. It appeared to be centimeters from my skin. The objects in water are closer than they appear, but I did not know that at the time. He continued to yell at me, "Fire coral! Fire coral! Do not touch. Will burn!" He pointed to a nasty scar engulfing his leg. It looked like a parasite joined up with a shark bite and then the infection festered on his calf. In my mind now, I know there is no way he got that injury from fire coral. But in my nine-year-old brain, I was screwed. I hovered over the water, regressing from freestyle to a doggy paddle immediately. I was paralyzed by fear mid-snorkle. My parents had to lure me out of the water. I have been frightened of coral ever since. I can hardly swim in the ocean without fear of the coral grabbing me in it's rocky mitts and burning my body while it pulls me down and drowns me.
Later that year the other event happened that scarred me and destroyed my blooming career as a mermaid. Again, I was on the beach catching crabs. Let's face it, I liked to catch crabs as a little girl. All jokes aside, they were sand crabs. (Let it be known that I have never actually had crabs.) I had made friends with an older boy, Mario, on the beach. In Belize, many of the young girls were encouraged to help their mothers in the home, so much of my outdoor roaming time was either alone or with boys.
Mario convinced me that there would be more crabs in the brackish water of the mangrove swamp down the beach. It was further than I was aloud to go and my parents weren't around to ask, so I was wary. He convinced me it would be quick and bountiful. I was a bit of a rebel, so I went along with it.
Inside the mangrove forest, the floor of the ocean was almost like quicksand. My little legs were getting stuck in the sticky, muddy earth. I was distracted from the hunt as I tried to un-stick myself from the ground. I thought Mario was setting a trap from a crab, but apparently, he had a different intention. When I looked up from my battle with the sediment, moments later – he had exposed himself to me. A small, brown, uncircumcised, erect, teenage penis pointed at me. Pants down, he started towards me. All in one swift inhale, I felt confusion, surprise, curiosity, guilt, excitement, anger, and fear.
As Mario sludged his way through the mud to me, I felt the mud floor free my ankles. It was as though the earth had taken my side in the battle. I braced myself by grabbing onto the distended roots of the mangrove trees that surrounded me and lifted my body up out of the water. Without much forethought, I used one of my free legs to swiftly kick Mario square in the junk, hard. As he cowered in pain, I took off running. Suddenly, the floor of that swamp was as solid and buoyant as the turf on a track. I had the distinct feeling that something greater was helping me fight back and run away. When I escaped from the mangrove swamp, there was a golf cart driving by with a small search party on it. They had been looking for me. I hopped aboard and zipped my lips.
You were one of the first people I ever told the full story to. I buried it deep down, a secret tale of shame with a splash of fiery bravery and divine intervention.
But I no longer felt innocent. I no longer caught sand crabs and painted messages on their shells with nail polish. I didn't imagine I was a mermaid anymore. I stopped believing in buried treasures and hermit crabs that sang and had names like Sebastian. When I came back from Belize and joined the swim team again, I swam to win. I didn't dive down deep and explore the bottom of the pool anymore. I didn't pretend that the stray pennies were silver dollars or that the drain pipes led to secret caverns. I swam in a straight line. I closed my eyes on my flip-turns. I kicked harder. I moved with a sense of purpose instead of a sense of wonder.
It wasn't until I met you that I really began to peel back that guard I'd put up. I let go of stifled fear when I fell in love with you. I found my sense of marvel again. You had a naturalness for being like a kid. I used to watch you sleep and when you would wake up, I'd tell you about how you reminded me of a little boy. You were always searching for wonder. You always wanted to dig deep and climb high. You reminded me what it was like to live in the light. With you, I set the innocent, little girl inside of me free again.
Not many thirty-four year old men have an entire drawer dedicated to stickers. If anyone ever had glitter, your words were, "Yes, please!" You liked to play dress up with neon colors and fuzzy fabrics. You spent over a hundred dollars on fabric and materials to make our Burning Man scooter look like the cartoon character, Tigger. Your penmanship was as perfect as a fifth grader who wanted to ace his handwriting exam. Your favorite shows were animated. You barely flinched when thousands of pieces of 80's themed confetti were thrown all over the floor of our house at my birthday party (I'm looking at you, Larson sisters). You were famous in the jam band scene for secretly tagging friends and strangers with dozens of sparkly smiley face stickers. And just your being in general, you were a kid at heart.
When reality and adulthood loomed, you'd face it. You weren't immature by any means. But, you'd balance being a man with mischief and fun, with a silly pun, a high-five or a somersault, and a broad grin with dancing eyes. You were never going to let go of that wonder. You never did.
I lept into the water with you – eyes wide, heart open. Me, armed with authenticity and big dreams. You, armed with innocence and a Scorpio tattoo. When we fell in love, I believed in fairy tales again. I believed in hidden treasures and I knew for damn sure there was such thing as Prince Charming. I'd kissed some toads and I'd gotten you. My own boy to hold hands with and jump in. You made me want to open my eyes again. You made me feel safe: no burns, no attacks – just wonder.
So now, I will take my all past experiences, including this terrible loss, and I will strap them onto my back. Though the load with bear me down, I will not fall. And if I stumble, I will use my fiery, strong legs to get back up. And when I'm scared and lonely, I will think of our memories and I will smile, though at first it will be fake, maybe someday it will turn honest. I will trust in the signs. I will remember that energy that lifted me up out of that quicksand and helped me escape when I was a child, and I will know that now I have you up there too. In whatever way, I know you will guide me through and you will in some way, some day, show me again what it's like to dive in, wonder, and not think have to worry about the next breath.
Obituary
Today I read your obituary in the newspaper.
I can't imagine the difficulty it took for your parents to sit down and write their only son's obituary. Their handsome and healthy son, who was just 34 years old. The son who they were planning on celebrating the thirty fifth birthday of just five days later. The son who they'd never seen so happy. The son who they were expecting a call from any day with the joyful news of engagement, not their worst nightmare, a three a.m. call from the emergency room announcing his death. And yet, that is now the reality, the reality that we are all facing every day in new ways.
Just when it feels like the news of your death has sunk in, a new discovery proves that it has not. The pain is so raw.
I remember when I wrote my eulogy for you. It was just three days after your death. I had barely slept. I was traumatized by being witness to my worst nightmare. I hadn't eaten anything and what I'd tried to eat, I'd thrown up. I was in shock. I was being held on my feet only by the sturdy arms of friends and family. I was on the brink with every breath.
I had my father go out and buy me a new notebook. I simply requested a "nice" one. I couldn't open a computer to write, that seemed too official, like work. And if I had used a computer, I knew I would be stimulated by all of the other material on the screen, like the show I had been watching just minutes before on that night you seized. So, armed with my notebook, I sat down on our bed and began to write.
As I wrote, I felt as though my hand wasn't doing the writing. I felt like I was being channeled by something larger. Maybe it was simply adrenaline. Maybe it was your help. But just like your incredible family and the obituary, I made it through. I strung sentences together and wrote down everything I needed to say out loud to a crowd of witnesses. I wrote the vows that I'd intended to write to you on our wedding day. As I wrote, it became more real. My new notebook wrinkled with dried tears. Words on paper seemed to make your death more concrete.
I heard the obituary had been printed today. I had already read the text before press with your sister Berkley. We had both cried and talked about how beautiful it was. We had chosen the final photo to be used. But today, when I asked my parents to bring me a copy of the newspaper, it became real all over again.
I saw my mom's hesitation as she handed the obituary to me, a single page already separated from the rest of the issue. I reached for the paper with an outstretched hand, fingers trembling. I felt it between the pads of my fingers, grey and thin. It is the same newspaper I read the comics in as a young child. Peanuts made me smile with anthropomorphic pets and witty punchlines every Sunday morning. The same newspaper that I saw a picture of myself in when I was eleven and in the Nutcracker. I had red cheeks, a heart painted on my lips, toe shoes on my feet, and the tight fitting red and gold trim jacket of a solider. The same paper that I would look up movie times in when scheduling teenage co-ed excursions with a boy I might hold hands with. The same newspaper I would help my grandma clip coupons from. The same newspaper that featured the firm I was at when I worked with the Olympics as a young professional. The same newspaper I dreamt would someday house our marriage announcement. The newspaper had arrived every morning to our doorstep without fail for the past thirty years. My dad would go fetch it in his robe while the current family dog would run out alongside him and take her morning pee in the front yard. But today's newspaper was different. Today, in the obituaries, alongside nine strangers who all looked so old, was you – my Ted – looking so handsome, so young, and so ready to take on the world.
Obituary can be found here.
I can't imagine the difficulty it took for your parents to sit down and write their only son's obituary. Their handsome and healthy son, who was just 34 years old. The son who they were planning on celebrating the thirty fifth birthday of just five days later. The son who they'd never seen so happy. The son who they were expecting a call from any day with the joyful news of engagement, not their worst nightmare, a three a.m. call from the emergency room announcing his death. And yet, that is now the reality, the reality that we are all facing every day in new ways.
Just when it feels like the news of your death has sunk in, a new discovery proves that it has not. The pain is so raw.
I remember when I wrote my eulogy for you. It was just three days after your death. I had barely slept. I was traumatized by being witness to my worst nightmare. I hadn't eaten anything and what I'd tried to eat, I'd thrown up. I was in shock. I was being held on my feet only by the sturdy arms of friends and family. I was on the brink with every breath.
I had my father go out and buy me a new notebook. I simply requested a "nice" one. I couldn't open a computer to write, that seemed too official, like work. And if I had used a computer, I knew I would be stimulated by all of the other material on the screen, like the show I had been watching just minutes before on that night you seized. So, armed with my notebook, I sat down on our bed and began to write.
As I wrote, I felt as though my hand wasn't doing the writing. I felt like I was being channeled by something larger. Maybe it was simply adrenaline. Maybe it was your help. But just like your incredible family and the obituary, I made it through. I strung sentences together and wrote down everything I needed to say out loud to a crowd of witnesses. I wrote the vows that I'd intended to write to you on our wedding day. As I wrote, it became more real. My new notebook wrinkled with dried tears. Words on paper seemed to make your death more concrete.
I heard the obituary had been printed today. I had already read the text before press with your sister Berkley. We had both cried and talked about how beautiful it was. We had chosen the final photo to be used. But today, when I asked my parents to bring me a copy of the newspaper, it became real all over again.
I saw my mom's hesitation as she handed the obituary to me, a single page already separated from the rest of the issue. I reached for the paper with an outstretched hand, fingers trembling. I felt it between the pads of my fingers, grey and thin. It is the same newspaper I read the comics in as a young child. Peanuts made me smile with anthropomorphic pets and witty punchlines every Sunday morning. The same newspaper that I saw a picture of myself in when I was eleven and in the Nutcracker. I had red cheeks, a heart painted on my lips, toe shoes on my feet, and the tight fitting red and gold trim jacket of a solider. The same paper that I would look up movie times in when scheduling teenage co-ed excursions with a boy I might hold hands with. The same newspaper I would help my grandma clip coupons from. The same newspaper that featured the firm I was at when I worked with the Olympics as a young professional. The same newspaper I dreamt would someday house our marriage announcement. The newspaper had arrived every morning to our doorstep without fail for the past thirty years. My dad would go fetch it in his robe while the current family dog would run out alongside him and take her morning pee in the front yard. But today's newspaper was different. Today, in the obituaries, alongside nine strangers who all looked so old, was you – my Ted – looking so handsome, so young, and so ready to take on the world.
Obituary can be found here.
Foreign Ground
I walked up to a barista to get a coffee this morning and suddenly realized I didn't speak the language. That's when it hit me. Oh yeah, you're in Spain now. I decided to go look for beauty someplace I've never been before. Also, importantly, somewhere we've never been together. That sounds very sad to say. The way I feel inside is unfamiliar and now the outside is unfamiliar, too.
The travel over the past day, much like the last six weeks, has been a blur. After my friend Natalia's good advice to stay in tune with my yoga practice throughout this tragedy, I decided I'd follow some other advice she'd given me – visit her in the South of Spain. Here I sit, encompassed by language I don't understand, foreign surroundings, and people who look nothing like you – except when they do.
While some people escape into a bottle or a quick fix pill, I escape through travel.
I'm reminded again that there is no escape from this nightmare. No matter how far I run, your absence is always present. No matter where I put my own physical body, I'm confronted with the knowledge that your physical body is not here with me. My yoga teacher, Baron Baptiste, often says "You're either now here, or nowhere." Every time I would snag that quote for use in one of my classes, you would snicker. You thought it was a silly play on words. Well, my love, it's really landing for me now.
Being in an airport was very hard. Well, everything is very hard.
In the past couple years, airports have been a gateway to you. I was either flying to be with you, leaving a beautiful time we shared together, or traveling with you by my side. Being that we were long distance for half of our time together and that we both loved to travel, airports were a norm. But now, flying with the comprehension that you were not going to be on either end of the baggage claim or in the window seat next to me was yet another blow of reality.
As I went through security in Detroit, I reminisced about how I'd always race you to get through the security line first. First one with shoes on and bags in arms, wins! I won every time. OK, maybe you won once or twice when I had a particularly complicated pair of shoes to put back on. But, in general, I was the victor. Your slow pace at gathering your items was due to your meticulous organization when packing.
You always traveled with the same green Timbuktu carry-on bag. You'd had it since college, you told me. I was planning to get you a new one this Christmas.
Every item had its place: Keys in this pocket. Travel wallet in that pocket. Floss and Kind Bars in this zippered compartment. Laptop in main section. Laptop cord, wrapped perfectly, nestled in another section. Writing utensils in pen slots. Spare napkins and cutlery in another spot. Water bottle, slid in the main section, carefully. iPhone charger in its specific meshed area. Playboy magazines, always your favorite to whip out mid-flight – horrifying a neighbor, near laptop.
When you had to take your computer out of the bag to go through security, it took a few extra moments for you to put it back in – the Ted way – making sure everything was in its place. Your belt would come off carefully. Your shoes would come off deliberately. They would also be put back on very carefully. I would stand there watching you with a taunting smile, my boots already slipped on and computer tossed haphazardly back into my unzipped bag. "Bunny ears technique?" I'd joke as you tied your shoes slowly, taking the time to double knot. You'd shoot me a grin back, knowing I'd won.
However, when it came time to find headphones later while in-flight, you'd win. I'd dig around in my giant bag, tossing aside keys, old receipts, unkempt power cords, makeup compacts, iPhone, keys again. "Why can I always find my keys when I don't need them, and not when I do!" I'd ask. "Maybe you should find a spot for everything?" you'd suggest. "That sounds like a terrible idea. What's the fun of knowing where everything is," I'd joke. I'd find my headphones after you already finished listening to a song and then I'd spend the next five minutes untangling them. You'd ask for a pen, your bag being carefully stowed overhead to give you leg-room and mine being at my feet with me stepping all over it. "Sure thing! One sec, let me find one," I'd say. I'd reach into my bag and pull out a chapstick, a mascara, a lipstick, and a tampon before finding a pen for you to use. I may have won in security, but you won at packing.
Some people try to join the Mile High Club while traveling. We agreed that it would be an awkward situation and not worth the risk of being caught (and let's be honest, we were both already members). We made up our own sexy air travel club. We made it our goal to visit as many family restrooms as possible across the globe. And not to use the toilet. From San Diego to Johannesburg, and Bangor to Cancun, we enjoyed each others company in family bathrooms. We had a joke that we would someday actually make our own family in one of them, and until then we'd practice. As I've traveled today, I've seen three family bathrooms. My reaction is a combination of nostalgia, humor, arousal, and deep loneliness. We had so many more family bathrooms to visit together, Teddy!
Friends and family have said to me over the past week or so, "Have fun in Spain!" or asked, "Are you excited?" No. It's the honest answer. And as a woman who has lived her whole life in a state of excitement for what's to come – not being excited is a really shitty place to be.
Spain will be a place where I did not go with you. It will be a change of scenery from our home in Colorado or our home in Ohio, where memories of you fill every inch of my periphery and hindsight. But, the lack of memories will also make it deeply lonely. It's alarming and painful to make new memories without you.
I constantly imagine you being by my side. As I stood in line at the coffee shop and realized I'd forgotten my conversational Spanish, I thought about how if you were there we would get by just fine. You would have remembered how to order a coffee, and I wouldn't have ended up just repeating what the person in front of me said and getting something I didn't really want.
I think about what I want to say to you in casual moments. Like when I was on my international flight and horrendous versions of Christmas carols were playing. I knew we'd be laughing at the backing tracks and the terrible harmonies. Instead of being able to laugh, I cried. The carols taunted me. No, this Christmas WON'T be a very special Christmas for me.
I want to board a flight and have you in the seat beside me. I want to rest my cheek on your chest as you wrap your strong arm around me. I want to hear your heartbeat and your breath as we fly through the clouds. Instead, I opened my window and stared out at the sky, looking for you. I wondered if I was actually closer to you there then when I was on the ground. And maybe if I looked really hard, I'd see you soaring on a cloud, with giant wings, carrying a harp, and smiling at me.
This has become my reality.
The travel over the past day, much like the last six weeks, has been a blur. After my friend Natalia's good advice to stay in tune with my yoga practice throughout this tragedy, I decided I'd follow some other advice she'd given me – visit her in the South of Spain. Here I sit, encompassed by language I don't understand, foreign surroundings, and people who look nothing like you – except when they do.
While some people escape into a bottle or a quick fix pill, I escape through travel.
I'm reminded again that there is no escape from this nightmare. No matter how far I run, your absence is always present. No matter where I put my own physical body, I'm confronted with the knowledge that your physical body is not here with me. My yoga teacher, Baron Baptiste, often says "You're either now here, or nowhere." Every time I would snag that quote for use in one of my classes, you would snicker. You thought it was a silly play on words. Well, my love, it's really landing for me now.
Being in an airport was very hard. Well, everything is very hard.
In the past couple years, airports have been a gateway to you. I was either flying to be with you, leaving a beautiful time we shared together, or traveling with you by my side. Being that we were long distance for half of our time together and that we both loved to travel, airports were a norm. But now, flying with the comprehension that you were not going to be on either end of the baggage claim or in the window seat next to me was yet another blow of reality.
As I went through security in Detroit, I reminisced about how I'd always race you to get through the security line first. First one with shoes on and bags in arms, wins! I won every time. OK, maybe you won once or twice when I had a particularly complicated pair of shoes to put back on. But, in general, I was the victor. Your slow pace at gathering your items was due to your meticulous organization when packing.
You always traveled with the same green Timbuktu carry-on bag. You'd had it since college, you told me. I was planning to get you a new one this Christmas.
Every item had its place: Keys in this pocket. Travel wallet in that pocket. Floss and Kind Bars in this zippered compartment. Laptop in main section. Laptop cord, wrapped perfectly, nestled in another section. Writing utensils in pen slots. Spare napkins and cutlery in another spot. Water bottle, slid in the main section, carefully. iPhone charger in its specific meshed area. Playboy magazines, always your favorite to whip out mid-flight – horrifying a neighbor, near laptop.
When you had to take your computer out of the bag to go through security, it took a few extra moments for you to put it back in – the Ted way – making sure everything was in its place. Your belt would come off carefully. Your shoes would come off deliberately. They would also be put back on very carefully. I would stand there watching you with a taunting smile, my boots already slipped on and computer tossed haphazardly back into my unzipped bag. "Bunny ears technique?" I'd joke as you tied your shoes slowly, taking the time to double knot. You'd shoot me a grin back, knowing I'd won.
However, when it came time to find headphones later while in-flight, you'd win. I'd dig around in my giant bag, tossing aside keys, old receipts, unkempt power cords, makeup compacts, iPhone, keys again. "Why can I always find my keys when I don't need them, and not when I do!" I'd ask. "Maybe you should find a spot for everything?" you'd suggest. "That sounds like a terrible idea. What's the fun of knowing where everything is," I'd joke. I'd find my headphones after you already finished listening to a song and then I'd spend the next five minutes untangling them. You'd ask for a pen, your bag being carefully stowed overhead to give you leg-room and mine being at my feet with me stepping all over it. "Sure thing! One sec, let me find one," I'd say. I'd reach into my bag and pull out a chapstick, a mascara, a lipstick, and a tampon before finding a pen for you to use. I may have won in security, but you won at packing.
Some people try to join the Mile High Club while traveling. We agreed that it would be an awkward situation and not worth the risk of being caught (and let's be honest, we were both already members). We made up our own sexy air travel club. We made it our goal to visit as many family restrooms as possible across the globe. And not to use the toilet. From San Diego to Johannesburg, and Bangor to Cancun, we enjoyed each others company in family bathrooms. We had a joke that we would someday actually make our own family in one of them, and until then we'd practice. As I've traveled today, I've seen three family bathrooms. My reaction is a combination of nostalgia, humor, arousal, and deep loneliness. We had so many more family bathrooms to visit together, Teddy!
Friends and family have said to me over the past week or so, "Have fun in Spain!" or asked, "Are you excited?" No. It's the honest answer. And as a woman who has lived her whole life in a state of excitement for what's to come – not being excited is a really shitty place to be.
Spain will be a place where I did not go with you. It will be a change of scenery from our home in Colorado or our home in Ohio, where memories of you fill every inch of my periphery and hindsight. But, the lack of memories will also make it deeply lonely. It's alarming and painful to make new memories without you.
I constantly imagine you being by my side. As I stood in line at the coffee shop and realized I'd forgotten my conversational Spanish, I thought about how if you were there we would get by just fine. You would have remembered how to order a coffee, and I wouldn't have ended up just repeating what the person in front of me said and getting something I didn't really want.
I think about what I want to say to you in casual moments. Like when I was on my international flight and horrendous versions of Christmas carols were playing. I knew we'd be laughing at the backing tracks and the terrible harmonies. Instead of being able to laugh, I cried. The carols taunted me. No, this Christmas WON'T be a very special Christmas for me.
I want to board a flight and have you in the seat beside me. I want to rest my cheek on your chest as you wrap your strong arm around me. I want to hear your heartbeat and your breath as we fly through the clouds. Instead, I opened my window and stared out at the sky, looking for you. I wondered if I was actually closer to you there then when I was on the ground. And maybe if I looked really hard, I'd see you soaring on a cloud, with giant wings, carrying a harp, and smiling at me.
This has become my reality.
Emergency
Oh Teddy. I needed you so much today.
Black Friday – the day when Americans rise at the crack of dawn to stampede over one another for a flat screen TV – twelve hours after giving thanks for what they already have. I slept in and avoided the crowds. I tried to keep the thanks that abounded yesterday present in my spirit – but a gratitude hangover kept creeping in. The high (a very relative high) of being with family, loved ones, and surrounded by comfort had worn off – and a low set in. The aching, deep sadness welled up in my body and heart spilled out all day.
I took my grandma to her doctor's appointment. Walking into the clinic was incredibly hard. The smell of the waiting room brought back the trauma of the emergency room. The forms made me recall that night when they wouldn't tell me what was happening with your condition but they were asking me for IDs, co-pays, and insurance cards. Sitting in a doctor's office with that bed, different, but still so similar. I watched my grandma get her blood pressure tested and I knew my own was through the roof. I could hear my heartbeat in my temples. Deep breaths, I told myself.
Last spring, we went out for sushi with Chris and Cassie. I hadn't been feeling very well for a couple days, my stomach had been upset. After polishing off a boatload (literally) of sushi between the four of us, you and I left to go home. On the way home my stomach began to cramp like crazy. I lowered the passenger seat all-the-way back and moaned the whole drive home. You began to get very concerned. By the time we got home, the cramps had gotten unbearable. I had work to do and was dedicated to completing my deadline versus resting. My steadfast focus on work always drove you nuts, but especially in that moment. I laid in bed, gripped my stomach, cried, and laid out pages for my magazine in between running to the bathroom to vomit.
You were beside yourself with concern. I was convinced that I would be OK and tried to keep working. You wouldn't take no for an answer. You nearly dragged me to the car to head to the Emergency Room. I asked if I could bring my computer so I could continue working, you wouldn't hear of it. You were convinced it was appendicitis.
I had never seen you drive so fast. You were going seventy MPH down the strict thirty-five MPH zone on Broadway in Boulder. I joked, "You're going to kill us just getting there! Is this how you're going to drive when I'm in labor someday?" You looked at me and I saw that you had tears streaming down your cheeks. "Sami. This is not a joke, I don't know what I would do if something happened to you," you were dead serious. That was one of the moments when I realized how much you loved me and how you couldn't imagine life without me.
After ninety minutes in the ER, an IV, various failed attempts to hit a vein to insert said IV, a CT-scan, and a urinalysis – the diagnosis was in – it was a bad urinary tract infection and a sushi overdose. I left the ER at 2 am with a bunch of cranberry pills, a mild antibiotic, strict instructions to pee after sex, and a $10,000 bill (not an exaggeration).
As I slowly paid my bill off each month, I would remind you about your paranoia that night, about how you thought something was so wrong and it had been minor. Every time, you would insist that we had done the right thing. You would launch into a long explanation about how you wouldn't know how to go on without me, you had never been so scared in your life, and about how I was your everything. Despite the bill, I agreed with you. We had done the right thing. I would wrap my arms around you and promise that I would never leave you.
When the tables turned the night of your death, I acted in the exact same way that you did. The instant something seemed off, I called 911 – three numbers I had never dialed consecutively before. Three numbers I never, in my worst nightmare, expected I'd have to dial. Before panic set in, adrenaline filled my veins and I acted to the best of my ability. Except adrenaline and action weren't enough. We didn't get off lucky. We got off horribly, horribly wrong. And now, I am learning what life is like without you. And it's not OK. I am not OK. And in moments of sheer devastation, I scream at the sky, "How could you leave me? You said you would never leave me!"
Today, after my grandma's appointment, we went to a restaurant in Perrysburg to grab a salad. As my mom, grandma, and myself sat in a booth – we noticed some commotion behind us near the door. An elderly man had slipped and hit his head. He was passed out and a crowd of people were gathering around. Sheer panic began to fill my body, my hair stood up on my skin. "We already called 911!" I heard someone shout. I turned to my mom and said, "This is not going to be OK for me."
Within a few minutes (not sixteen...) I saw emergency lights flashing against the brick walls of the restaurant. "Do not turn around," my mom instructed. I turned around. EMTs filled the front of the restaurant responding to the man's needs. "He is going to be OK. He conscious," my mom said. I didn't turn around again. I gripped the booth with my fingernails, trying to ground myself. I took more deep breaths. I sat in that booth, quivered, and sobbed silent tears for the next ten minutes until the man left. He was OK. 'Why him. Why was he OK and Ted wasn't? He's an old, frail man and Teddy was only 34. Ted still had his whole life to live!' I tried not to think about it. After the commotion died down, I stood up to refill my coffee. My legs felt like jello. I thought, 'Oh great, now I'm going to pass out and they're going to have to come back for me.' The thought of myself in an ambulance made me snap out of it. I let it go.
The reaction of the trauma is nothing compared to the loss. But together, the pain and stress continue to snowball. I try to go on with my days, but they feel so empty. I try to put out of my mind what this holiday season was supposed to be for us, but it sneaks in. It was supposed to be so beautiful. It was supposed to be the happiest holiday season of our lives. And as I walked into stores today, holiday jingles chirping and evergreen candles casting out their nostalgic 'Oh what a wonderful time of year!' scent, I felt constricted with grief and emptiness.
I had a dream with you in it last night. I was snuggled up with you on a chair. We were arm-in-arm and my legs were draped over your lap. I asked you if you had any idea where we would be one-year from now. You said you didn't. You said, "I know where we will be ten years from now, but I do not know where we will be in one year." Then, I remembered that you were dead. I wrapped myself around you, started to cry, and begged you not to leave. Your skin changed to a grey color and you became cold and hard as I held you. You were gone. I wept as I embraced your stone body.
I do not know where I will be in one year. I do not know where I will be in ten years. And it is so hard, because just weeks ago, I KNEW. I knew where we were headed. I knew how beautiful it had all become, and that it was only getting more beautiful. We both shared with each other often that we felt that we deserved it – we deserved to finally be so happy. With you, I felt complete. I felt held. I felt loved. I felt whole. I felt fearless. I felt secure. I felt accepted. I felt creative. I felt nurtured. And for the first time in my life, I felt ready. And now, I feel none of that. I feel empty. I feel lost. I feel bewildered. And I feel lonely.
Black Friday – the day when Americans rise at the crack of dawn to stampede over one another for a flat screen TV – twelve hours after giving thanks for what they already have. I slept in and avoided the crowds. I tried to keep the thanks that abounded yesterday present in my spirit – but a gratitude hangover kept creeping in. The high (a very relative high) of being with family, loved ones, and surrounded by comfort had worn off – and a low set in. The aching, deep sadness welled up in my body and heart spilled out all day.
I took my grandma to her doctor's appointment. Walking into the clinic was incredibly hard. The smell of the waiting room brought back the trauma of the emergency room. The forms made me recall that night when they wouldn't tell me what was happening with your condition but they were asking me for IDs, co-pays, and insurance cards. Sitting in a doctor's office with that bed, different, but still so similar. I watched my grandma get her blood pressure tested and I knew my own was through the roof. I could hear my heartbeat in my temples. Deep breaths, I told myself.
Last spring, we went out for sushi with Chris and Cassie. I hadn't been feeling very well for a couple days, my stomach had been upset. After polishing off a boatload (literally) of sushi between the four of us, you and I left to go home. On the way home my stomach began to cramp like crazy. I lowered the passenger seat all-the-way back and moaned the whole drive home. You began to get very concerned. By the time we got home, the cramps had gotten unbearable. I had work to do and was dedicated to completing my deadline versus resting. My steadfast focus on work always drove you nuts, but especially in that moment. I laid in bed, gripped my stomach, cried, and laid out pages for my magazine in between running to the bathroom to vomit.
You were beside yourself with concern. I was convinced that I would be OK and tried to keep working. You wouldn't take no for an answer. You nearly dragged me to the car to head to the Emergency Room. I asked if I could bring my computer so I could continue working, you wouldn't hear of it. You were convinced it was appendicitis.
I had never seen you drive so fast. You were going seventy MPH down the strict thirty-five MPH zone on Broadway in Boulder. I joked, "You're going to kill us just getting there! Is this how you're going to drive when I'm in labor someday?" You looked at me and I saw that you had tears streaming down your cheeks. "Sami. This is not a joke, I don't know what I would do if something happened to you," you were dead serious. That was one of the moments when I realized how much you loved me and how you couldn't imagine life without me.
After ninety minutes in the ER, an IV, various failed attempts to hit a vein to insert said IV, a CT-scan, and a urinalysis – the diagnosis was in – it was a bad urinary tract infection and a sushi overdose. I left the ER at 2 am with a bunch of cranberry pills, a mild antibiotic, strict instructions to pee after sex, and a $10,000 bill (not an exaggeration).
As I slowly paid my bill off each month, I would remind you about your paranoia that night, about how you thought something was so wrong and it had been minor. Every time, you would insist that we had done the right thing. You would launch into a long explanation about how you wouldn't know how to go on without me, you had never been so scared in your life, and about how I was your everything. Despite the bill, I agreed with you. We had done the right thing. I would wrap my arms around you and promise that I would never leave you.
When the tables turned the night of your death, I acted in the exact same way that you did. The instant something seemed off, I called 911 – three numbers I had never dialed consecutively before. Three numbers I never, in my worst nightmare, expected I'd have to dial. Before panic set in, adrenaline filled my veins and I acted to the best of my ability. Except adrenaline and action weren't enough. We didn't get off lucky. We got off horribly, horribly wrong. And now, I am learning what life is like without you. And it's not OK. I am not OK. And in moments of sheer devastation, I scream at the sky, "How could you leave me? You said you would never leave me!"
Today, after my grandma's appointment, we went to a restaurant in Perrysburg to grab a salad. As my mom, grandma, and myself sat in a booth – we noticed some commotion behind us near the door. An elderly man had slipped and hit his head. He was passed out and a crowd of people were gathering around. Sheer panic began to fill my body, my hair stood up on my skin. "We already called 911!" I heard someone shout. I turned to my mom and said, "This is not going to be OK for me."
Within a few minutes (not sixteen...) I saw emergency lights flashing against the brick walls of the restaurant. "Do not turn around," my mom instructed. I turned around. EMTs filled the front of the restaurant responding to the man's needs. "He is going to be OK. He conscious," my mom said. I didn't turn around again. I gripped the booth with my fingernails, trying to ground myself. I took more deep breaths. I sat in that booth, quivered, and sobbed silent tears for the next ten minutes until the man left. He was OK. 'Why him. Why was he OK and Ted wasn't? He's an old, frail man and Teddy was only 34. Ted still had his whole life to live!' I tried not to think about it. After the commotion died down, I stood up to refill my coffee. My legs felt like jello. I thought, 'Oh great, now I'm going to pass out and they're going to have to come back for me.' The thought of myself in an ambulance made me snap out of it. I let it go.
The reaction of the trauma is nothing compared to the loss. But together, the pain and stress continue to snowball. I try to go on with my days, but they feel so empty. I try to put out of my mind what this holiday season was supposed to be for us, but it sneaks in. It was supposed to be so beautiful. It was supposed to be the happiest holiday season of our lives. And as I walked into stores today, holiday jingles chirping and evergreen candles casting out their nostalgic 'Oh what a wonderful time of year!' scent, I felt constricted with grief and emptiness.
I had a dream with you in it last night. I was snuggled up with you on a chair. We were arm-in-arm and my legs were draped over your lap. I asked you if you had any idea where we would be one-year from now. You said you didn't. You said, "I know where we will be ten years from now, but I do not know where we will be in one year." Then, I remembered that you were dead. I wrapped myself around you, started to cry, and begged you not to leave. Your skin changed to a grey color and you became cold and hard as I held you. You were gone. I wept as I embraced your stone body.
I do not know where I will be in one year. I do not know where I will be in ten years. And it is so hard, because just weeks ago, I KNEW. I knew where we were headed. I knew how beautiful it had all become, and that it was only getting more beautiful. We both shared with each other often that we felt that we deserved it – we deserved to finally be so happy. With you, I felt complete. I felt held. I felt loved. I felt whole. I felt fearless. I felt secure. I felt accepted. I felt creative. I felt nurtured. And for the first time in my life, I felt ready. And now, I feel none of that. I feel empty. I feel lost. I feel bewildered. And I feel lonely.
What I know and what I don't know.
I can officially, without a drop of doubt in my mind, now say that the worst month of my life is behind me. You have been gone a month. It's been a month since we talked. It's been a month since we looked into each others eyes. It's been a month since we said "I love you". It's been a month since we kissed. And like all measures of time, it's one I can't take back.
Time is an interesting concept. One that I don't really even understand anymore, to be honest. I used to think we 'had time on our side'. That was not the case. Time robbed us. Or maybe something else robbed time. An hour seems long when you want it to be short. When you want an hour to last forever, it rushes by. Certain years of my life seem to have lasted ages, when others I had hardly remember because they whisked by. It seems like forever since I last saw you. But then it also seems like just a moment ago. I don't know what time is. I know you didn't either. We used to talk about quantum physics and agree, there was a lot more to space and time than humanity could calculate.
I remember our last kiss. It was at 8:20 pm on Friday, October 24th (2014). It was gentle and loving. We looked into each others eyes. It wasn't rushed. There is no way we could have ever known that was to be our last kiss, that you would take your last breath just five hours later. But considering it was, I have no regrets about that kiss. It was perfect.
I also remember our first kiss. It was on Sunday, January 27th 2013 at about 2 am. You said, "Can I kiss you now!?" It was as if you'd been waiting forever to do so. Maybe you had. Maybe you'd been waiting since our last lifetime together was cut short. No one knows when their first kiss will happen either. One may hope – or maybe it comes out of the blue. Eagerness and lust filling you up. Excitement standing in line with breath mints, chapstick, and impatience. Our first kiss was perfect.
I imagined our kiss on the altar thousands of times. The one that would happen after we got to say "I do". I imagined it as a collage of all the best romance movie kisses – expect better. It would be fueled with true love, excitement, passion, hope, destiny, and faith. It was going to be perfect. It still will be, someday, whatever that means.
What I never once imagined was that it wouldn't happen. I was so sure... wasn't I? Why hadn't I ever considered things could have taken a dark turn, as they did? Had I stuffed premonitions and ominous occurrences aside, and just assumed, with false hope, that we would get what we so thought we deserved – real happiness? Isn't that what the point of life is? Love? Did life deliver us what we deserved? Was our twenty months of true connection and love what life had in store for us? Did we get to squeeze as much love as most beings have in seventy years into that short time? I will never know.
There's not a lot of things I know right now. I am confused about this thing we call time. I am up in the air about the specifics of afterlife. I'm trying to decide if there's a difference between fate, destiny, and happenstance. I am hopeful, but not one-hundred-percent sure that you are watching over me. I'm not sure what to gather from the visions, the mediums, and the signs that have been appearing everywhere. I don't know where you are, I hope it's not just in dust and ashes inside of a cold urn. I don't know why you died. I don't know if there is anything I could have done. I don't know if this is a part of a master plan. I don't know what our children would have looked like, if they would have been blonde or brunette, like we often thought about. I don't know if I will ever be a mother. I don't know if we only have one soul mate. I don't know if I will ever love again. I don't know if you will come back as my child, like you told me you would. I don't know how I'm still standing. I don't know how the hair is still growing on my legs and how my cycle continues to flow, when my heart feels like it has stopped, though I can hear it beat.... beat... beat. I don't know what's next.
But, there's a few things I do know.
"I know that I am glad we had this time together. I am glad we shared our love, even though time cut it short. I also know that I still have all the love. It didn't go anywhere. In fact, it still grows. As the grief grows, the love grows. I have all this love, you gave it to me, and that is your gift to me. That is the biggest gift anyone could receive. Because now I know love, I own love, and I have your love inside of me. And I can share it, like you did. I know that my life will never be the same. I will be a new kind of woman. I will be a new kind of teacher. I will be a new kind of lover. I will be you, in some ways. I KNOW that you are inside of me – not in all the ways I want (giggity) – but you are here. I know that I would not be able to wake up, get out of bed, carry on a conversation, take care of myself, eat, even laugh, for god's sake, without you being in me. I know you are carrying me. In what way that is, I do not know at all, and I never will – but I know you are and that you always will be."
I love you.
Time is an interesting concept. One that I don't really even understand anymore, to be honest. I used to think we 'had time on our side'. That was not the case. Time robbed us. Or maybe something else robbed time. An hour seems long when you want it to be short. When you want an hour to last forever, it rushes by. Certain years of my life seem to have lasted ages, when others I had hardly remember because they whisked by. It seems like forever since I last saw you. But then it also seems like just a moment ago. I don't know what time is. I know you didn't either. We used to talk about quantum physics and agree, there was a lot more to space and time than humanity could calculate.
I remember our last kiss. It was at 8:20 pm on Friday, October 24th (2014). It was gentle and loving. We looked into each others eyes. It wasn't rushed. There is no way we could have ever known that was to be our last kiss, that you would take your last breath just five hours later. But considering it was, I have no regrets about that kiss. It was perfect.
I also remember our first kiss. It was on Sunday, January 27th 2013 at about 2 am. You said, "Can I kiss you now!?" It was as if you'd been waiting forever to do so. Maybe you had. Maybe you'd been waiting since our last lifetime together was cut short. No one knows when their first kiss will happen either. One may hope – or maybe it comes out of the blue. Eagerness and lust filling you up. Excitement standing in line with breath mints, chapstick, and impatience. Our first kiss was perfect.
I imagined our kiss on the altar thousands of times. The one that would happen after we got to say "I do". I imagined it as a collage of all the best romance movie kisses – expect better. It would be fueled with true love, excitement, passion, hope, destiny, and faith. It was going to be perfect. It still will be, someday, whatever that means.
What I never once imagined was that it wouldn't happen. I was so sure... wasn't I? Why hadn't I ever considered things could have taken a dark turn, as they did? Had I stuffed premonitions and ominous occurrences aside, and just assumed, with false hope, that we would get what we so thought we deserved – real happiness? Isn't that what the point of life is? Love? Did life deliver us what we deserved? Was our twenty months of true connection and love what life had in store for us? Did we get to squeeze as much love as most beings have in seventy years into that short time? I will never know.
There's not a lot of things I know right now. I am confused about this thing we call time. I am up in the air about the specifics of afterlife. I'm trying to decide if there's a difference between fate, destiny, and happenstance. I am hopeful, but not one-hundred-percent sure that you are watching over me. I'm not sure what to gather from the visions, the mediums, and the signs that have been appearing everywhere. I don't know where you are, I hope it's not just in dust and ashes inside of a cold urn. I don't know why you died. I don't know if there is anything I could have done. I don't know if this is a part of a master plan. I don't know what our children would have looked like, if they would have been blonde or brunette, like we often thought about. I don't know if I will ever be a mother. I don't know if we only have one soul mate. I don't know if I will ever love again. I don't know if you will come back as my child, like you told me you would. I don't know how I'm still standing. I don't know how the hair is still growing on my legs and how my cycle continues to flow, when my heart feels like it has stopped, though I can hear it beat.... beat... beat. I don't know what's next.
But, there's a few things I do know.
"I know that I am glad we had this time together. I am glad we shared our love, even though time cut it short. I also know that I still have all the love. It didn't go anywhere. In fact, it still grows. As the grief grows, the love grows. I have all this love, you gave it to me, and that is your gift to me. That is the biggest gift anyone could receive. Because now I know love, I own love, and I have your love inside of me. And I can share it, like you did. I know that my life will never be the same. I will be a new kind of woman. I will be a new kind of teacher. I will be a new kind of lover. I will be you, in some ways. I KNOW that you are inside of me – not in all the ways I want (giggity) – but you are here. I know that I would not be able to wake up, get out of bed, carry on a conversation, take care of myself, eat, even laugh, for god's sake, without you being in me. I know you are carrying me. In what way that is, I do not know at all, and I never will – but I know you are and that you always will be."
I love you.
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