Jan. 31st, 2018 03:12 pm
At the shore
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muckefuckOvernight my work machine was upgraded to Windows 10 and only after changing the date display did I take note of the fact that this is the last day of January. About fucking time. It's been a rough month, despite starting out well with a corker of a New Year's party.
Some people think of grief as wave that washes over you and slowly recedes, but it isn't. Even the model of concentric waves radiating outwards, as from the casting of a stone, fails to capture the effect because the crests don't diminish continually according to mathematical rules. I've been lucky enough not to have anything hit me so hard that I feel like I've been carried back to those first days, but it's been a close thing at times.
I hadn't even cried much until just this last week. Sunday night I had an exhausting bout, probably triggered by seeing "Call Me By Your Name" with my brother earlier in the day. Oddly, I left the film feeling elated; I called Nuphy afterwards and we had an animated discussion. But the horrible isolation of bedtime closed in around me and before I knew it I was weeping along to melancholy tunes.
Then came last night. I slept disturbed and the dreams seemed to come nonstop. Toward morning I was experiencing some strange vacation scenario that had Monshu and I on the beach together. He sat on the steep shore with his feet in the water and I plopped down on the sand next to him so I take up one of his feet and start massaging it.
I did this a lot for him during his last weeks, when his skin was so dry and his legs twitchy. As I pressed the balls of his feet, I thought about how nice it was that we were able to visit the beach on his last day alive. (We didn't; it was December at the time.) Then I had a confused series of thought where I simultaneously both knew that he was dead and this wasn't really happening and I was thankful that this was really happening and not just another deluded dream where I think he's with me and he's not.
I try not to have regrets. If I start, I remind myself how lovely that last day really was (aside from the usual hassles, minor in retrospect). If I find myself wishing we'd talked more, I remind myself how unnecessary it would have been. What would he have told me that I didn't know already? That I was the best thing that had ever happened to him? That he didn't know what he would have done without me? That he loved me as strongly as ever but he was suffering too much to want to stick around any longer?
But things do nag at me. Like I remember how, if not for an idle suggest of my mother's, I never would have learned that he remembered playing in the waters of Lake Michigan as a small child in Frankfort. What else didn't I know about his life that would have enriched my understanding of him? What questions didn't I ask because I didn't know there was any reason to ask them?
And so it was that I woke up with tears in my eyes again, thinking for the umpteenth time how whatever he told will have to suffice for the rest of my life because there's no way of ever getting more.
Some people think of grief as wave that washes over you and slowly recedes, but it isn't. Even the model of concentric waves radiating outwards, as from the casting of a stone, fails to capture the effect because the crests don't diminish continually according to mathematical rules. I've been lucky enough not to have anything hit me so hard that I feel like I've been carried back to those first days, but it's been a close thing at times.
I hadn't even cried much until just this last week. Sunday night I had an exhausting bout, probably triggered by seeing "Call Me By Your Name" with my brother earlier in the day. Oddly, I left the film feeling elated; I called Nuphy afterwards and we had an animated discussion. But the horrible isolation of bedtime closed in around me and before I knew it I was weeping along to melancholy tunes.
Then came last night. I slept disturbed and the dreams seemed to come nonstop. Toward morning I was experiencing some strange vacation scenario that had Monshu and I on the beach together. He sat on the steep shore with his feet in the water and I plopped down on the sand next to him so I take up one of his feet and start massaging it.
I did this a lot for him during his last weeks, when his skin was so dry and his legs twitchy. As I pressed the balls of his feet, I thought about how nice it was that we were able to visit the beach on his last day alive. (We didn't; it was December at the time.) Then I had a confused series of thought where I simultaneously both knew that he was dead and this wasn't really happening and I was thankful that this was really happening and not just another deluded dream where I think he's with me and he's not.
I try not to have regrets. If I start, I remind myself how lovely that last day really was (aside from the usual hassles, minor in retrospect). If I find myself wishing we'd talked more, I remind myself how unnecessary it would have been. What would he have told me that I didn't know already? That I was the best thing that had ever happened to him? That he didn't know what he would have done without me? That he loved me as strongly as ever but he was suffering too much to want to stick around any longer?
But things do nag at me. Like I remember how, if not for an idle suggest of my mother's, I never would have learned that he remembered playing in the waters of Lake Michigan as a small child in Frankfort. What else didn't I know about his life that would have enriched my understanding of him? What questions didn't I ask because I didn't know there was any reason to ask them?
And so it was that I woke up with tears in my eyes again, thinking for the umpteenth time how whatever he told will have to suffice for the rest of my life because there's no way of ever getting more.
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