timeline

At first you count the minutes.  It is the only way to keep moving forward.  Keep breathing in and out.  It has been ten minutes.

The minutes turn into hours and you stare at the clock.  It has been 24 hours.

Hours accumulate against your will and so you start counting in days.  You have to start eating, everyone loves to tell you.  But everything has lost its flavor.  Every color is gone.  It has been six days.

Soon you move on to marking the passage of time in weeks.  You watch as people, who walked with you during the minutes and hours and days, start walking ahead at a faster clip.  It has been four weeks.

Eventually you make the move from weeks to months.  You start to look at the time trailing out behind you and wonder how it is possible that you have survived as long as this.  It has been five months.

Finally time passes in increments of a year.  You look at your future spreading before you and you begin to realize the missing is never going to go away.  It will get better because it already is better.  But you know that the missing will be your constant companion.  It has been one year.

Now.  Still the missing, even with the happy, always the missing.  It has been nearly three years.

replant

When George died we got lots of flowers.  Bouquets and bouquets of flowers from friends and family, attached with their sympathies.  As the days passed and we continued to stay holed up in our small apartment, afraid of the world outside, the petals from the flowers all started to wilt and drop one by one from their sagging stems.  At one point, I remember sitting on our couch, sobbing while I watched the petals from a particular white rose fall to the table below.  I hated those flowers for dying.

We also got two baskets of living plants.  I honestly don't remember who gave them to us but I became attached to them immediately.  Books about grief and grieving love to advise people not to send living plants in sympathy for someone's loss as it might feel overwhelming for them to take care of.  I think that is complete bullshit.  In the immediate aftermath I needed something to take care of.  I couldn't take care of George anymore and I certainly didn't do a stellar job of taking care of myself for a long while.  But those plants I cared for.  

It has been nearly three years since he died and even though I couldn't keep all the plants in those baskets alive there are two that are still thriving.  All this time they have been in their original containers, looking pretty shabby, because I've been afraid to replant them, convinced that the only thing keeping them alive was luck and whatever magic was in the wicker baskets.

Something had to be done with them though.  After three years they were beginning to look too depressing even for me.  So Leif and I took them to a neighborhood nursery and asked them to replant them for us.  It was a particularly chilly morning and the entire place had taken on sort of an ethereal frosty glow.  The stone frogs had halos of ice.  The rounded Buddhas had frozen watery beards.  The trees and shrubs wore icy coats.  We picked out two pots from the dozen or so that they told us would work well for our needs: one large teal one and a smaller white one.  They took care of the hard part of transferring them and I just roamed around admiring the way the frost had transformed everything.

Twenty minutes later the shabby baskets were gone and the plants looked quite majestic in their new homes.  They actually seemed to be standing a bit straighter as if they were no longer pulled down by the very heavy burden of their initial sentiment.  

When we asked how to take care of them they told us that whatever we were doing was working fine.  Just do what you were doing, they said.  I was hoping for more concrete instructions.   All I was doing was watering them and missing the lost baby they were sent in condolence for.

no title

I've been trying to write something here for months.  Literally months.  I open up my laptop, log into my account and proceed to write a few sentences before completely blanking out.  I stare at the screen thinking that if I do this for long enough the thoughts I have knocking around in my head will magically appear, like when you stare at a cloud long enough it starts to look like an old man's profile blowing smoke through pursed lips or a dog on roller skates.

I guess this is what they call writer's block.  Only I don't fancy myself a writer and the only things I've ever thought I was any good at writing about are death and desperation.  Well, writing about those things indefinitely has turned out to be unsustainable for me.  I think partly because of self-consciousness and partly because I don't know how many times I can write about the same thing.

I miss George.  I wonder what he would have been like.  It is lonely.  It never goes away.  Sometimes I miss the person who I was before he died.

There.  You just read the summary of this entire blog in five sentences.  How is that for some Cliff's Notes?

But I keep coming back here because since I left Los Angeles and the handful of people there who I was readily able to talk to about those five sentences I'm kind of on my own out here.  Of course there is the phone and Skype but it just doesn't feel the same as sitting in front of or next to someone who you can look in the eye and know that they understand you.  My life here feels utterly and completely removed from the one I was living in California.

There is a support group meeting tomorrow morning.  I already know that I am going to miss it.  I've looked up meetings here before and thought about going to them only to chicken out when the date came near.  I'll do it again tomorrow, I am sure of it.  Because as lonely as I am in my grief I am even more afraid of allowing myself to go back to the emotional place that going to a support group will bring me to.

I've been emotional enough recently as it is.

So I am back here...watching for old men and dogs on roller skates.

come home

i feel a lone flare in the night sky

even though I know better

he will never follow the light of my vigil back to this life

he will never return 

and still i burn for him

a pathetic and obvious exercise in futility 

i want him

always

always

always

i'm habituated to the dull ache

there, always, in the periphery 

even when i am happy 

still incomplete

tonight the dull ache is sharp and stings

self-flagellation 

where did i go wrong

where

where

where

he feels like a memory that only i can remember

i think he is fading out of existence

one day i will stand alone 

still waiting

still waiting

still waiting

for him to follow my burning heart 

and come home.

berries

In George's Garden there are berries.  Raspberries and blueberries, two different kinds I think.  There are roses and hydrangeas and a number of other plants that border the circular plot of earth in my in-law's backyard that is named after their first grandchild.  But it is the raspberries and the blueberries that make my heart ache each time I find myself there.

So easily I can conjure up images of Clio and her cousins -maybe one day a living sibling too- clamoring around the garden snatching blueberries and gingerly maneuvering around thorns to capture tart raspberries.  I see blue mouths and red stains.  I smell dirt-stained knees and I hear the gaggle of laughter bubbling up from tiny mouths.

It is the blueberries and raspberries that make my heart ache.

Because I so much would like to be able to see there with the rest of them a little tow-headed boy with his father's eyes and his mother's toothy grin, leading the charge into the clearing of grass with blueberries and raspberries in hand.

But instead I see a ghost roaming in and out of the periphery of my vision and I wonder how long it will take before even that is gone.

a westerly fold

An interesting thing happened a couple months back; Leif expressed some interest in starting a blog with me.  We finally went ahead and did it, although I have no idea what it will be about as I'm sure it will evolve over time.  But I do know that it will be a little bit of Leif: art, music, graphic design.  With a little bit (more) of me: wordy sentences, half-finished crafts, high caloric food.  Probably a little of us together: home-remodeling (When we buy a home of course, we aren't going to be remodeling any random person's house.  Unless, of course, you're offering to finance us remodeling your space because then hell yeah, there'll be some of that), city-exploring, Clio-loving, photography and hopefully some small business-starting.

A little something for everyone.

So I am going to bid adieu to my other blog, The One Year Lease.  I hope you can come by and visit us at A Westerly Fold.

grandpa george

Bridget was a toy poodle, a ball of tight black curls and fluff who had a love for dirty socks that were still attached to their owner's feet.  Any napper or leisurely couch-recliner at my grandparents' house was subject to a game of sock tug-o-war with her, a game of which she was nearly always the victor.  Her tenacity for sock-chewing was unrivaled by any beast.  It is Bridget and the awe of a tiny glass menagerie that make up the majority of foggy memories that play in my head about that time of my youthful life.  That was before my grandmother died and time and distance and other issues too abstract for a little me to understand removed my sister and I from that part of our lives.

Now, about 25 years later and a world of experiences later, my grandfather George, a man I love but hardly know, is dying. Four days ago, after landing in another state and on the morning of a job-interview, I received a text from my mom letting me know that my father's father had a massive stroke and was in the hospital.  When someone gets to be 91 years-old news of their approaching death shouldn't be surprising to those in close proximity yet somehow death always seems surprising. Despite the most inevitable fact of life being death, we are all blindsided when it's cold breath brushes against our neck on its way to claim the person we are standing next to.  It is simple arrogance and delusion on our parts but undeniable nevertheless.  

I've spent the last few days thinking about the life of a man whom I barely know but who also shares a name with my father, my father's grandfather, and my own son.  What I've been able to accumulate in my mind is little more than a references of facts about his life; son of a famous track coach, sports star in school, went to medical school at Dartmouth, married and had three children, lost a son at the age of 19 to a drunk driver, avid fisherman, lover of Dr. Pepper and Rocky Road ice cream.  I remember sharing a warm coke with him at the kitchen table when I was no older than seven or eight and big strong hands and golf trophies and a quiet demeanor.  Of course what little I remember and what even littler I know of him isn't the total of who he is and yet that is all that I really have to draw upon to form my opinion of him.  

It is only inevitable that now I no longer have the opportunity to ask him questions I can think of a million that I would like answers to.  What was it like to be at the 1936 Olympics?  Why is my dad's nickname Jay when his real name is George?  Why doesn't my own dad know the answer to that one?  Does he have regrets?  Great triumphs?  How did he endure the death of his youngest child?  How did he go on living after something so terrible?  Did he ever think about his great grandson, who was his namesake?  Whatever the answers to those questions may be they will be lost with him and a part of me grieves those losses just as much as I will grieve the loss of the man himself.

A couple of days ago, while I was eight hundred miles away from his bedside, my aunt put me on speaker phone so I could talk to him.  I spoke to him about how I was far away but that I wished I could see him and give him a hug.  Despite being completely paralyzed on one side of his body by the stroke and unable to speak, my aunt told me that he smiled while I spoke to him.  Now that I am back in the same state as he is and a four hour drive away he is passed the point of any recognition and so I am grateful that I had the chance to speak with him when I did.  But really our goodbyes were already said last month when I called him on his birthday.  We chatted about trivial matters like Rocky Road ice cream and about how I was moving to Oregon.  I told him that in August I was going to bring Clio to meet him on our way through California, which he said he thought would be wonderful.

"I love you," he said to me.

I replied, "I love you too, Grandpa"