Saturday, February 11, 2012

love letter(s)

Dear Tad

I miss you. No. Somehow that's not strong enough.

I MISS YOU!!

Of course I don't miss our fights, your stubbornness (not mine of course), our disagreements on what to buy or not to buy, your determination that you couldn't live without a new truck. I miss the loving you. I miss the part of you that is perfect.

I miss the calmness I feel when you are around.

I miss loving myself the way I do when you are around.

Oh Tad - I wish I could love me as much as you loved me.

I am about to leave our house for a month and I am not sure it's the right thing to do.

I have been running around a lot lately - trying to numb the pain I feel from your absence. I know it's not the anti-dote. I've got pretty good evidence that in the long run it just makes things worse. Yet I persist.

In the desert there is no place to run. Picking myself up every morning, rolling up my sleeping bag and walking another 20 kilometers in silence will keep me from escaping. Or so I imagine.

I was going to take your ashes with me. But once I got them to slip into the backpack I realized I was just trying to take them as far away from here as possible. The same way I have put all our pictures in boxes stored deep underneath other boxes.

I don't really need to do that - it's just more escaping. So I left some yesterday on that beautiful beach north of town with the crazy crashing waves and the sheer cliffs. Of course the Pacific breeze blew them all back into my face.

I walked back through the hills my boots and jeans covered in minuscule bits of you my beloved and the cardboard box they burned you in. Tomorrow I will put the rest in our beautiful garden with the dahlias, the fuchsias and the cat poop.

I sent myself two Valentine's Day cards. I tried to trick my brain into forgetting Valentine's Day by being on a trans-Atlantic flight all day but a friend nudged me lovingly.

In them I wrote deep words of encouragement, I thanked me for being such a loving, courageous man walking around with a brilliantly shining broken heart.

Of course when the cards arrived and I read them at breakfast, your cat sitting on my lap, it was your voice; your voice coming back from the dead to thank me for all the ways I showed up for you, for us. Who knew I was still yearning for you to thank me?

Tad - cancer was easier than this. We had a goal, a battle. Mostly we had each other. This part of the battle is a lonely one - and I don't do lonely very well.


One silent step at a time.

With deep gurgling fountains of love,
Greg

PS Thank you for having been such an avid hiker - I found all the equipment I need for my trip tucked away in your shed.

2 comments:

  1. I don't know how much of life is driven by fate and how much is opportunities offered by design from a higher power. I do know that your instincts are sharp, grief clouding your ability to see that. I have no doubt that this trip is the next perfect experience in your life. Remember that discomfort usually accompanies great learning experience. Bring the shoes with the widest soles. It keeps you from sinking. Bon voyage!

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  2. "Recovery is a misleading and empty expectation. We recover from broken limbs, not amputations. Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but we will never be the same. There is no going back to the past which is gone forever, only going ahead . . . Whatever the future is, it will, and must, contain the pain of the past with it. Sorrow never entirely leaves the soul of those who have suffered a severe loss . . . this depth of sorrow is the sign of a healthy soul . . . it enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world's pain and hoping for the world's healing at the same time." - Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised

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