Grief is a Bitch

This morning I had the feeling that I needed to go pick you up. The kind of feeling you get when you've made plans with someone, and you tell them, "I'll come get you in the morning." Today is Memorial Day. Today, I was lying on the beach, as I do every single weekend. I was listening to reggae, some of the songs you love-loved and introduced me to, as I do every single weekend. The same way that usually cheers me up.

And the feeling that you were missing, that I didn't go pick you up, was so strong. I hurt like I did when I realized I would never see you again. And I cried on the beach for an hour. I've cried all day. I've cried all night. I must have dreamed of you. We must have made plans in the dream. There is no logical explanation for me to wake up feeling like I was going to see you later. There's no explanation for feeling like I was awake in a dream all day. At the beach, I wrote this:

There must be somewhere in the universe where I pull up to your house & I find you in the garage putting the finishing touches on all the songs you want me to hear & you send me into the house to get the tray of jerk pork you have waiting to go with us & you say you're almost ready, but you're not because it always takes you forever. But then you finally are, and we go find our people. And everyone is so happy you're there because you are the life of every party. And you manage to get around and talk to each and every one of them over the course of this beautiful day. We listen to your crazy stories about your crazy amazing life. We entertain your ideas for some new thing you'll invent. Maybe somewhere in the universe the day never ends.

It made your sisters cry. 

It made me wish that I understood quantum physics enough to know where there is a version of us in the universe that you are still alive, and everything is still so good. Somewhere we are blissfully unaware that in February of 2012 in some other part of the universe, you had a stroke. We're someplace where I don't know anything about what you look like with half of your body paralyzed. I don't know what your face looks like when you want me to know you are going to give up. There's a place where I don't ever watch you lose the ability to eat, and then watch you code. And I don't know what a doctor sounds like if she were to tell Grace that you are absolutely not going to live. I never have to utter the words to your daughter that she must fly in right away, that you will not make it. I don't watch your father's heart break as his son is passing away before he does. I don't know what it feels like to sleep on 2 waiting room chairs pushed together, waiting for you to die. I don't know how silent silence can be when my brain goes deaf after you're finally gone. Somewhere, we are still telling you that Black & Milds are not better than cigarettes. Somewhere we are still fishing and bullshitting until it gets dark. Somewhere we are hatching plans to camp and travel. Somewhere we are still the oddest pairing of friends. 

I haven't missed you this much in so long. I haven't felt this alone, this misunderstood, this vacant.

Humans of New York (in Mexico City, Mexico)

I felt the need to share my experience after seeing this photo and caption. I hope that it falls in front of the eyes that need to see it. The kind of pain experienced by the abandonment of a parent is something many of us feel compelled to pretend doesn't affect us because we usually know we were not in the wrong. But it is a private deep pain, and it exists, and even when you think you don't feel it, it's still affecting things all the time.

My feelings about the father who abandoned me changed a lot over the years of my life. When I was little I just wanted a dad. When I was a teenager, I talked crap about him (because his rejection hurt more than I could articulate to anyone). When I was 16 he apologized to me. I didn't care about the apology. It was the acknowledgement that I didn't cause him to reject me. HE was defective. 4 days after the apology he was killed in an accident. And I found out that even as he apologized he was betraying me in such a way that is too unbelievable to not be fiction. But it was real, and it was the ultimate wound. I spent my 20s angry at him and myself. 

In my late 20s I finally forgave him (and me) and made peace with who he was. I found out that his childhood was horrific. I saw him as a human being finally. I sought out people who were his friends so they could tell me positive things about him. I learned that the things that made him eccentric and weird to so many people, the things his father tried to beat out of him, were the qualities everyone else loved about me. He had contributed certain things, and even his absence was a contribution once I learned to view it that way. 

I'm in my 30s and I will never get over the rejection. I've tried. I've rationalized, I've forgiven. But, it's seared into me in a place that is so deep that I'll forever send lovers packing long before they want to leave.

The Finish Line

I think about all of the conventions that human beings have created to complicate life - definitions of success, dichotomies of winning and losing, strength and weakness, masculine and feminine. I find ways to limit my participation in that wherever I can. I indulge in the essential things, the real things - my experience here. Life is enhanced by feelings. And really, your feelings are the only ones that will matter to you when you cross the finish line. You will not care that you were successful in business, that you stayed in the world's finest resorts, consumed only organic food, only had sex with conventionally attractive women. You will only care that you experienced things that excited you, shook you, changed you. Everything else is stuff we've contrived to convince ourselves that we're better. That's about as hokey as it gets, but emotion is the only thing you were born with - you came into the world screaming for what you craved - and emotion is all you will carry with you on the way out. May we leave this world satisfied that we got what we craved. No one ever died pleased that they followed the rules.