Morning

It's not spring yet but the birds think it is. Two of them pop out of a furled awning onto the yellow sun on the sidewalk, wrestling and chirping furiously. It's too damn early to care this much about anything, even sex and territory. Co-conspirators appear and join the fray. I exchange glances with a fellow pedestrian on the other side of what is rapidly becoming a sparrow gang brawl. Birds. You could hear us both thinking it. Yes, we are so much more evolved.

There is no right thing.

After I lost my dad, the thing I had to bite my tongue at were the number of people who asked, "were you close?" I mean, what? I'm sure the same thoughts are running through your head as ran through mine: was my grief less valuable if we hadn't been getting along? Do they mean if my parents divorced and my dad was homeless under a bridge, it wouldn't be so bad? It was made even more odd by the fact that so many people said it. My father was 46 when he died, and I was 21, home alone with him. I gave him CPR until the ambulance crew arrived. I don't think there is much greater intimacy in the world than being the pumping heart and breathing lungs of another human being. That's what I wanted to say to these well meaning folks. Imagine how that could have damaged a person (my friends were all college kids, mind you), had I painted the whole picture. The color of his face (blue), the way he sounded breathing the death rattle over and over because I couldn't allow myself to let him die once and for all.

But after losing my son, I felt buoyed by the generosity I felt in letting people say foolish things to try to comfort me. There they are, poor things who care about me, in my grief, wanting to say the right thing, but there is no right thing. Say any embarrassing thing you want to kick yourself for years later. (Mostly what they say is "I can't imagine what you're going through" -- and indeed, who could? Who would want to?) I'm not so absorbed in myself and my misery that I don't have room for you. In fact, it makes me feel better to know that by not snapping at you, I've eased your day a little, made grief seem less terrifying to you. That I've been able to give something, even at the very bottom of the pit of what I call my life. So thank you, well meaning person who has no idea how horrible my loss is. You don't have to say the right thing to me. I can see it in your eyes what you mean and that is all I need.

Surfing the blender 2

The blender is what sailors call the waters between St. John and St. Thomas, because the chop goes in all directions. It's essentially a big bowl where every wave bounces back on itself between the islands and cays that rim it. Imagine a cup of water on a speaker playing really loud rock and roll. Most of the time, the water's not rough enough to cancel out the effect of the wind, so you can manage ok in a decent size boat, if you know what you're doing. You won't find this definition online, I don't think the guys who make the tourist runs through that area spend a lot of time blogging it. They don't live in it.

surfing the blender

I'm almost afraid to write anything after the dream, to spoil the moments it gives me of peace, of feeling happy for a moment when I think of Jesse, instead of tipping toward tears. Maybe because I'm at the age when the hormones first shift from full blown woman toward, well, not so much. I get angry that people in my life ignore me now, I don't just let it slide. (I try to but) I hear a long-gone therapist telling me they don't respect me (he really did, in family counseling) and something just snaps. Listen. I can even fall asleep mad, when before, I'd have to force whoever I was mad at to resolve at least some of whatever it was before I could calm down. It's good to be able to ignore how I feel and get some rest. If I couldn't, I'd never sleep. I used to write things down if I couldn't speak to the person who'd made me sad or angry. I used to write down my dreams. Now I almost never do either. I'm not sure what I'm living for exactly. But I'm not going to live quietly.

And I almost forgot, a song that gets me through the cross currents today.

Last night

I dreamed that Jesse came back to visit. He stood at the foot of the bed, then sat down on it, smiling, looking like he did when he was 12, mischievously cherubic, his curly hair longer than he ever kept it again, and lightened by the sun. I told him I was glad he came to visit, and asked him if he was ok, and he said yes. We chatted a bit but I didn't even think to ask him if he had forgiven me, if he knew I had forgiven him, because I could see he was just happy to see me, had dropped in just to chat, and I knew by his obvious peacefulness that he wasn't angry any more. He couldn't have chosen a better year of his life to contrast with this happiness, he was so miserable at 12. I hardly saw him happy from that year until much later. It was good to hear Jesse's words, and not an echo of his father's hostility, coming from Jesse, even if it were only a dream. I think I'll choose to believe it wasn't.