PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I've had occasion, a couple of times in the past month, to hear someone talking about a parent's death, or a grave illness & their actions as they cope and brace themselves and prepare for the unknown. I hear my voice and my words and feel my .... whatever it is we all radiate that is intangible to see or often describe, but we feel it, and it couches what we say. "Vibe" is just too... trendy. "Aura" is just too....hippy-dippy.

But I've heard my words and the sounds surrounding them, and I know. I know that I know it now. I know what it is to go through it. To live it, to feel it like a fire raging through your conscious, to wish it would leave your bloodstream in a reverse-junkie rage, to know there are a thousand pitfalls, days on end lost, the emptiness, the pain, the mind fucks, the everything that goes with death. I had a salesperson who came in, her father in the hospital, things don't look good, and I heard myself as I expressed my sympathies - no - my empathies. But not in an overwhelming way. (I still can crack myself, and am learning this language, no matter how much I didn't want to.)

I remember how those who know/knew used their wisdom and experience with me. I remember reading Becky's post, the post that came when I stood on the other side of the door, where I believed I KNEW, that I was wise in the ways of death, because we can only comprehend that what we have lived, and nobody wants to believe they suck at being there for someone else, for simply the sole reason of not having gone through the experience. And in the end, it's not that you suck? It's that you just don't know. You can't have that quiet acceptance inside that says, "Yeah," and doesn't need to say anything else, because it all does come down to time. Time, and love, and patience, and understanding, and lots more time. In re-reading her post, this jumped out at me: "understand that the person may not be the greatest friend for a while afterward" for indeed, I have lost friends in this process. I've even been accused of being a horrible friend, and it felt like being stabbed with a machete. But everything does heal. And I'm struck by how much I didn't know, the first time I read her words. The passage through the door certainly changes you - for better, for worse, for a lifetime.

I miss him terribly still. It's more private, it's quieter. I think of him every day when I get in my car, the car I bought with the trade-in from his truck. I think of him when I look at the grass garden we planted in his memory, freshly mulched and looking lovely as the spikes of grasses rise up through their clumps for another season. I am always comforted when he appears in my dreams, and I see the ways we overlap and I can hear his voice if I listen. For everyone who stuck it out, who listened & nodded & tried to understand - thank you.

Labels: grief, life, spring, the next year