(Out of respect for my grieving friend that I mention in this letter, I held off publishing it for a few months.)Dear ones,
I rarely think about dying in a concrete way. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I only think about it concretely, speculatively. It's not something I contemplate doing. But sometimes I think about it happening, as in, What if I had severed an artery when I was moving that wall-length mirror that shattered over me in Austin? Or, Is my house far enough from the railroad tracks? Could a train derail and end up crashing into my house? And flights of course. Now that I fly so much, it's become a given that I'll think about crashing each time I fly. There has been so much death in the last year, deaths that have affected those close to me.
This week is the first funeral I've been able to go to, for my friend’s husband. I don't know that a funeral or memorial service has ever affected me like this one. Part of that was that it was a small service, and everything about it seemed honest. I know that religious people must see their services as honest, but I always feel like the discussion of God gets in the way of the actual person who has gone from us. And there is the need to only say good things about the person. This service was truthful. He was a troubled person who was intense and shy, but who was a loved and loving father. They played songs he loved, read poems that were touching, played a video tribute/slideshow. It was the way I would want to be remembered. I would appreciate someone saying about me: She was fucking complicated, and so literal sometimes that it was frustrating, and I wish she would have spent less time as a corner person.
The whole time, I kept watching my friend’s son and thinking how life would never be the same for him. They passed around his stuffed dog for everyone in the room to hug and imbue with love so they could return it to him, and he would know that he was supported. During the slideshow, there was a video of him with his father, and his dad was trying to balance on a hover board. And on the video, he kept laughing at his dad. And after about 10 seconds, the sound of the laugh doubled. Because the boy was laughing again, in the present, at what had happened. And many of us joined in laughing, to hear his laugh echoing over the video. But immediately after, I had to stifle myself from sobbing. Because his loss was suddenly so palpable. Literally up on the screen, and in the space beside him, and in the laughs filling the hall.
As he walked out at the end with his mother, I saw that he was wearing two watches, and I think one of them was his father’s. I don't know that for sure; I only know that he had two on, and one of them was enormous and too big for his small wrist, and even that made me ache at the discord in what he was going through. “Let it go” was playing, and the boy was wearing his Harry Potter tie, and clutching the dog, and everyone who wasn't family just sat there after they'd walked out and listened to the song.
The tightness in my throat didn't go away for the rest of the day. And truthfully it still hasn't left. I saw two old friends today and yesterday, and catching up with them wasn't hard at all. But after not seeing someone for years, people you really care about, there's another kind of mourning. Mourning for these dear people who are not really in your life anymore.
It is April again, which is fitting given that it's almost the anniversary of Craig disappearing. It will have been seven years. The other day I had some Jameson’s after not drinking any for years, and I thought of Craig. The whiskey was sweeter than I remembered. I thought of toasting him at AWP with fellow poet friends in 2010 and the way the liquor burned going down my throat. But I needed it to burn. He too left behind a son, similarly precocious and creative. Someday I think they will find Craig’s bones. A hiker will stumble upon them on the steep mountainside, and he will finally be put to rest. Until then, I imagine him on that mountain, lava flowing, and I hope that one of these years, I'll get April back. For so much of my life, it was my favorite month. It was filled with hope and promise, and it was something that Craig and I once talked about, that sense of eternity in April that I so desperately need in my life again. I hope it returns to me. That the good and the smell of flowers in the air and the storms and friends will overwhelm the sense of mourning that now pervades this month.
Yours,
Lost in April
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