Denial is new for me. I've dealt with grief before, been no stranger to death, but every time it seems like I find something new to stumble over. With him it's denial.
When mom died we had so much to do and then I settled nice and easy into anger. Anger is great, you can use that energy to get things done, and when you're done with it you can let it go. Oh I felt sad, too, felt guilt and loss and wanted so badly to have more chances to make up to her the years she took care of me. There was the chaos of the wake and service, the week in the hospital as we rapidly adjusted to the fact that only a series of miracles would save her, and only a few of them came through. We were never in any doubt of the reality of the thing, of the severity of it. We moved from hoping and praying and working towards saving her to honoring whatever we could of what we knew her wishes were. Sometimes it's easier mourning the opinionated. We took care of ourselves and each other, because we know the living have to live with the consequences, and the dead can deal with it.
For three weeks I've been writing, I've been researching, connecting to people who knew him and planning on how to save as much of him as we can, whatever's left. We're talking about his projects, talking about his story. There's a folder on my machine now of the photos I can find so I don't forget his face, a link to his youtube so I can hear his voice. It's a mad scramble to get done before things start to fade. And I'm at the end of it now.
His projects aren't done and I'm sure to run into more things that will need to be packed away properly, protected from the memory hole, but the period in my life where that's my focus is over, and I'm looking out at the rest of my days. A life where he isn't.
I hate it.
A few years ago I went down to visit my brother in Delaware and learned at Slaughter Beach I cannot live by the sea. I'm used to seeing the ocean with some kind of framing usually from the Harbor Islands here but sometimes at protected beaches like Revere. That was the first time I looked out over the open water with nothing else in view. Something in me revolted at the enormity of it, wanted to run away. It's too much, to see the ocean stretch out into infinity on all sides. There's no naming that reaction or reasoning with it or even confronting it, it's at a level where words don't work. A visceral, implacable nope.
I thought denial would be an intellectual thing, or at least a thing that the intellect could interact with. I thought it would be delusions, that I'd be convinced he faked it or someone mistook another body for his. I thought there would be a story to it, something with a shape that could be heard and understood and gently rejected. No such luck, of course. When denial hit me, it hit me like the sea. "This is too big and I *can't*," it says. "This is unacceptable, I do not accept it. I reject this reality wholesale, return to sender, fuck you." There is no reasoning with it.
His sister has found her anger and I applaud and support her in that. I hope it gives her energy to do what needs doing and when it no longer serves I hope she can let it go. His mother is putting one foot in front of the other, still tender, still taking her time. It's right and good and I hope that her community continues to give her the space and support to navigate this. But here I am, without any anger, without any spite or defiance or work, running out of tears. Boneless as a toddler before the universe.
Nope.
