Just stopping by to record a passage from Joan Dideon's The Year of Magical Thinking page 74-75. I was reading it last night and this particular page struck me, felt relative.
"People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them. On the night John died we were thirty-one days short of our fortieth anniversary. You will have by now divined that the "hard sweet wisdom" in the last two lines of "Rose Aylmer" was lost on me.
I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted him back."
And for those who have not read "Rose Alymer" (for I had not), here it is:
"Rose Alymer" by Walter Savage Landor
Ah what avails the sceptred reace,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Alymer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
Anyhow. The truth is. I want nothing more than to talk to Zachary. Right now that is my biggest desire. I want to ask him all sorts of questions, like usual. There's nothing abnormal about that. I want to listen to his voice, that voice of playful wisdom. I want to know how he feels, what he thinks about all of this. I want him to tell me he's so sorry that our life took this turn. I want him to tell me he's so angry his life took that turn. I just want his humanness, his physicality. I want to feel my head against his chest in the most encompassing hugs I'd ever received. Hugs that made me feel like the world's, life's cruelty, unkindness, anything negative could not touch me. Safe. I want to be safe again.
Oh sigh, that's all we have isn't it? Nights of memories and sighs. Nights & days, too. Zach, I miss being able to make up incredibly, cloyingly, sweet nicknames with you. I want to call you all sorts of those nicknames, but feel silly doing it. It's no fun if there's no one around to appreciate them. And it's not fun when there's no reciprocal names to be had. Your spirit is not nearly as satisfying as your corporeal being. It doesn't talk to me. It doesn't comfort me. If anything, I feel ignored by it.
Moving forward, it was not my intention to write today other than Dideon's passage. So there you have some impromptu musings. I've been stringently avoiding the idea of Zach's passing. It's a difficult thing to do here. It's easy to ignore his missing presence, but sometimes my brain feels that idea lapping at it's heels and before you know it, I'm sucked into a terribly stoic realization that just makes me feel like my soul has been sucked from my chest. Because to me, that is where my soul resides. And it's sucked from my chest in order to hide itself from those thoughts.
I saw a V formation of geese this morning. I shouted "hello" to them and after I did so, they stopped squawking. I wonder if they were reacting to me or just decided to be quiet in that moment? I also collected more seeds this morning from the flowers I used to grow on my and Zach's patio. Seeds of happier days.
There's an Architecture and Helsinki song I've been randomly finding myself shouting/singing throughout the day. It's "Need to Shout". I like it for it's chorus, "When you need to shout, no one's ever listening." And for the line "All that's left is hesitations from your previous life." I often feel those hesitations. They have a large effect in my life.
Here, listen to it. It's really quite a happy sounding song. And fun to shout "when you need to shout" along to. Shouting. The vocal equivalent of sprinting. And man, does it feel good. Architecture in Helsinki: Need To Shout
And with that gift, I'm off to feel this beautiful day. Clouds happened yesterday. It had been four days of no clouds and I found some last night. But this morning, the sky is yet again cloudless. So bring on the sunshine. Today I say farewell to some of the boys. They move to Chicago! It's exciting, but goodness, does it tug at my heart. I will so so miss them. But I'm going to enjoy every last minute I get. And I'm going to indulge in the world, natural world, around me. And my kaleidoscope and comfort stones, my pacifiers. Ciao for now. <3
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