It all fell apart this year, the affected exoskeleton I’d thought of as my life: the garden and the art, the home, the writing. There was a moment this summer it all sank in. I had been Becky’s husband, the one who walked with Zeke out of the house painted orange with the agaves out front, the one who hiked in the East Bay hills and wrote facile snark and tossed-off poetry on his blog, and all of it gone.
All of it, and I spent the summer taking that in, cowering beneath the creosote, wincing at each incoming phone call.
Nabokov said that “transformation from larva to pupa or from pupa to butterfly is not a particularly pleasant process for the subject involved.” The caterpillar at least has the consolation of eventual flight.
It is not all bleakness, by any means. I am loved and I love. I have redressed past wrongs, made amends long overdue. And even in bleakness there is solace, the honesty of stony ground and cholla.
The problem is distinguishing between the honest bleak and the bleakness driven by inward illness, in me and in others. I have sought out those who would undermine my heart, found the ring of truth in their declarations of my worthlessness. It is a subtle distinction this year. This year I have improved the lives of some I love by leaving them.
This year I most desired solitude when others’ absence left me battered by ghosts. This year I felt desolate in close company, walked away from friends to seek the companionship of moss-covered stones.
I am getting too old for this.
A month before Zeke died, or two, I helped him up onto our bed and lay there with him drowsing for an afternoon. I dreamed that again the other day and woke disconcerted, two years downstream and his absence not at all assuaged by time’s flowing. I can layer it over with the new, but it has healed as much as it will, his grave still glaring in me though I have not laid eyes on it for months.
I probably haven’t left a comment here in awhile. In fact, I haven’t been leaving comments on most of my favourite blogs in quite some time.
My world also fell apart in 2008, when my much beloved husband and best friend of 34 years died of cancer on Sept. 6, following a pretty terribly year of illness.
I left my farm on October 13th, in my aging van, with my aging dog, who had practically wasted away during the final week’s of my husband’s life. We limped west across Canada, then turned south and spent a month traveling through 4 states before coming to our winter resting place in southeast Arizona. Now, we spend our days trying to heal and regain some of the strength we lost over the past year. I’m dubious of how successful we will be. The process is likely to take a long time - much more than either of us has to give. We’re both getting too old for this too.
I am getting too old for this.
I think the moon is a reminder that all things wax and wane and turn around and spiral one more time across the universe. And the longer i live (damn another capricorn birthday coming up on the full moon before the Year of the Yin Earth Ox), i discover that old is quite actually a state of mind; the attics of our mind more precisely. Life proceeds by its own design, much like trying to feel your way through heavy traffic, wondering if you had left sooner would it have made a difference (because you think you can control it??). It all deserves a huge hearty gut-wrenching, tear-producing laugh.
Wow, this post tore me open. It harmonizes beautifully with the tao te ching. Two hours later a mindworm, enriching and aerating my thoughts. I hope this one leaves a scar to remind me. Rock on, sir !
Oh, I hear you, Chris.
Some days I wake up to the wreckage of my former life, and it’s all so flimsy I have no idea how I ever made it fly. Or ever convincinced anyone that could fly. Yeats may be right, there may be “more enterprise in going naked, but one thing’s sure, it’s a damn sight colder, too.
(sorry about the typos. I was having to type under your blogrooll.)
Bev and Chris, maybe we’re going through this sort of thing precisely because we’ve been blessed to get this old, and we’re not “too old for this,” but “old enough for this to happen, pretty much inevitably.”
I can’t know what your losses mean for you at the marrow or at three in the morning, any more than you can know what my son’s loss means to me, but I can say this: I feel horrid at 3am, real time or metaphorical. And it doesn’t go away.
It’s been long enough since my boy’s death that I can pretty much see that “recovery”—if it’s thought of as a going back to a previous level of outlook and mindset—is a pretty much meaningless term. “Adjustment” is better, but still doesn’t quite get at it.
Our worlds are different now, as everyone’s ultimately gets to be. We ain’t gonna “recover,” but we’d damn’ well better persevere.
I’m reminded of an old geek joke:
Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to replace a lightbulb?
A: None. They just define darkness to be industry standard.
We gets new industry standards all the time, don’t we?
“The problem is distinguishing between the honest bleak and the bleakness driven by inward illness, in me and in others.”
I have trouble distinguishing between the big and the small. When I can’t distinguish between sadness over my mother’s death and getting depressed about a virus hitting our website, or not having enough stationery to send out member renewal letters, I know something’s wrong internally. Usually that leads me to retreat into a shell and not communicate in any way.
Which makes me think it’s amazing how much communication and expression you’ve managed here, through it all.
Some things in life leave a hole in the heart.
Sometimes we can sing through them, sometimes weep,
and sometimes it’s all we can do to keep breathing
through them, knowing that our own life is not endless.
Know that we’re thinking of you and hoping 2009 works out better. There’s never a day when your journey reaches a destination and you say, “I’m done.” When you are done, you’re not in a condition to say that or anything at all.
Bravo and thank you for your honest post.
No words of wisdom from here, Chris, but I hope things get better for for you in the New Year.