Fifteen Wild Decembers

Cold in the earth- the deep snow piled above thee

Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!

Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,

Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave? (Brontë, 1845)

It has been 15 years since we marked the 10 year anniversary of your death, my friend. And in those years, the unthinkable has come to pass.

15 years have come and gone since your sister lamented to me that it felt like I was the only one who bothered to remember any more. Time marched on for the rest of the family, it would seem, but she could count on me to hold the yearly vigil with her. How was I to know then, soon, I would hold the vigil alone. 

[Seul même.] 

Cold in the earth- and fifteen wild Decembers

From those brown hills, have melted into spring: 

Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers

After such years of change and suffering! (Brontë, 1845)

I never expected to be here. In this space where there is no one left to prop each other up in our sadness and our pain.

[Set adrift without that community of collective grief.]

I sent a lifeline out, maybe not at the suggestion of the therapist, but in that quiet room the thought was born: maybe others still feel the echoes. Maybe you aren’t the only one. 

[If I was hoping for a buoy, I found only blood in the water.]

It seems no one marks time in deaths like I do. The days don’t hold sacred to others. Probably, they don’t lie in stasis, rooted to day by a heart heavy with grief and guilt. 

“25 years today. Therapy was fun today”

“?”

“____’s funeral was 25 years ago”

“Ah”

                          ***

And so, I sit here, on a February afternoon you’d have loved; that moment where winter teeters on the edge of spring, the sun whispering that if we just hold on a little longer, its coming, its coming as fast as it can get here.  The light dances across the river, glittering

“soon, soon you can ski the waves, hold on just a little longer in the darkness.”

 

Often I come to these shores to reminisce on these anniversaries. Take the memories down off the shelf of my mind and page through them. 

Today, I find myself contemplating.

Today,  the solitude is not comforting like so many times before.  

I have grieved you longer than I had to love you. 

[I have grieved so many.]

The litany of names like softly pealing church bells begins to mark time in my head. On my heart. I am who I sit here today because of all this loss. The community has gone on, and left me here, alone, in solitude, to muddle through this wasteland on my own. 

With no map. 

No blueprint. 

I ponder forgiveness. A foreign concept, in a family culture such as ours. 

How do I forgive you for leaving? 

How do I forgive myself for all I left unsaid.

Is there even such thing as forgiveness? 

How do I forgive you for being the catalyst for the end of normal (if you can ever really call our family normal…) Let’s settle on predictable then.  You stole that.  

How do I forgive myself for being angry at you. 

[I didn’t realize I was angry at you.]

The family imploded after you, you know. 

Exploded? 

Is there a word, even, for when something shatters outward and shrinks in on itself all at once? 

A black hole? 

A supernova? 

The big bang. 

That’s what you were; it’s fitting. 

The family’s supernova: you always had to be larger than life. 

The shockwaves of your death ripped through a family just on the verge of reconnecting. 

Of mending fences.

 Pulling its seams back in. 

And for a moment, that collective grief seemed like it would be the tie that bound.

But the black hole, the void of you, just as quickly sucked it all into a vacuum, and we were all left more broken than we were before.

Singly. 

Collectively. 

And nothing was ever the same.

25 years have passed. 

The ripples of your death are ever present.

 25 years I’ve been held in limbo, in the Putgatorio of life. 

Afraid to die. 

[Afraid to really live.]

You changed the trajectory of my life. 

But I wonder, who would I be if things hadn’t gone so sideways. 

I often wonder where I’d be, who I’d be, without the shadow of your death nipping at my heels.

Who am I, even now, when you strip the loss away?

[Would it pare down through sinew and muscle, cutting to the bone, leaving nothing behind?] 

It feels like that sometimes, when I try to dig into it. 

Laid bare.

 Nothing but bones when you pick the sadness and grief apart.

This blog feels like a carrion bird, stripping the flesh from me as I slowly try to lift back the suffocating veil of my grief.

I am unsure why I began it nearly 8 years ago. Screaming into a void once, hearing the echoes of my thoughts, and running scared.

Abandoning writing.

Abandoning poking the sleeping monster for years until the siren song of, I don’t know, [closure?] beckoned. 

Is there ever really such thing as closure? I’m unsure. It feels like a lie we have all been sold.  

That we can wrap everything up, neatly box it and stow it, and walk away intact.  I’m not sure surgical removal would even suffice to remove the tangle and snarl of whatever creeps in the darkness of my mind when left unsupervised. 

I certainly wouldn’t walk away intact.

And yet here I am, once more, screaming into the void. 

Searching. 

[If not for an end to the madness, perhaps just settling for catharsis.] 

25 years I’ve bore the responsibility of letting you go to your grave with things unspoken, apologies dead on living lips. 

25 years I’ve grieved a ghost that’s walked the halls of my mind longer than you walked this earth. 

15 years ago, I posted the music video for Hank’s Cadillac, the catalyst for your sister’s message, thanking me for remembering.

For holding the line.

There was a vintage Cadillac today, outside the therapists, next to the only available parking space. And as I sat there, trying to reign in the whatever the fuck it was that had been unleashed in that office, that liar of a warm February sun beating on my face, a lone ladybug crawled across my sunglasses. Perhaps the mark of a turning point, a step forward. 

A synchronicity. 

A benediction.

Perhaps, that absolution.