Mourning and how we live it.

 It would be  nice to think we aren't really gone when we go.

It's interesting to me how different cultures approach my grieving. I don't really mean "culture" so much as the microculture of the individual, however it is informed by their past, their beliefs, what they've learned or taught themselves.  There is of course, a general summary macroculture that identifiably differs among groups, or countries, or religions, and it does inform the beliefs of people who are raised in it. But it only serves as a foundation for what each person chooses to accept as part of their philosophy of mortality. And that philosophy, if you were able to really see it, is as different from person to person as fingerprints. One time when you see it most clearly, is when people speak to you of your own grief. It's easier for them to lay it out there when they think it will help you.

Everyone has a theory of mind, of course (what they think people think), but we all also each have a theory of soul, whether we recognize as that or not. A lot of what people tell me, when I'm mourning Jesse, is like prayer -- in the sense that it's something intimately theirs, that comforts them, that touches on their deepest sense of what life actually is, but buffers them from it, too. Like when one toddler sees another cry and hands him her teddy bear because it's what would make her feel better if she were crying.

 I don't think it really matters what anyone says, ultimately -- we feel what we feel. There really is no consolation for it, you just learn to accept it.

I like what Khalil Gibran said of children, that they  come through us but not from us. We are the bow, they are the arrow aimed at eternity. I tell my remaining son that he is my emissary to the future. But he is his own, even as his gestures, words and choices reflect something of me.

....and then I lose my job. I got a call today that I'm being laid off in a little less than a month. It seems I'm one of the few in this rash of layoffs who's being asked to stay on past today. I suppose that's a small success. I've never told anyone at this company what this next few weeks means for me. It would be somewhat pointless now, anyway.

Here it comes

January 6th- that's when he told a friend he felt "paranoid" about a cut that wouldn't heal. If he'd gone to the doctor that day, he would most likely have survived. There are other days and events I know but won't disclose here, because other people's hearts are involved, but I feel these past events move through me physically,  displace me as they move the way a stone might sink through jelly. Events that, had they been slightly modified, if they'd happened a little earlier, or later, or differently, might have changed something. If someone had said or not said something. If he had let himself think about this or that, or stopped thinking about another thing.  So many small moments leading always to the same place, a dark, depressing hospital room that couldn't be helped.

Life takes everything from you, but  it's given you everything in the first place.

Most likely

After he left with the box of old records, she opened the photo book to the shot he'd admired, and laid it on the floor, in the halo of light from her dresser lamp. Can you make me a copy of that one, he'd asked...She angled her phone so its shadow didn't obscure the shot, and zoomed in to the center of her own face. There was a bit of reflection from the floor lamp, but that couldn't be helped, she thought, and snapped the photo. Hit send.

The townhouse was quiet, all the lights were out except the lamp. Mutt had fallen asleep on the crumple of sheets and bedcover. She'd have to wake him when she climbed in herself. The papers she'd decided to keep, to take with them to Colorado, and the artworks she'd just shown J were still spread on the floor and chair; J said he'd straighten it out for her, since she had to go in to work so early tomorrow. Sunday. Last minute full day of work. She like the bridal shop. So many happy brides to be, and now she was one. Had been for almost a year. Brides would email her boss and praise her for her help. It would be a great job, if only the pay were better. But so was the art supply shop. The schedules could be weird, trying to juggle that and school and J, but it was worth it. Except it was exhausting. She could nod off at either job, or in class-- but then she couldn't fall asleep at home. Too quiet since Dad moved out. Thank God for Mutt, that pain in the butt little monster.


The photo was still uploading? Then Message Delivery Failed. Damn. She'd been laughing to herself at her little joke photo, but now she was irked. A storm was kicking up outside, maybe if she went downstairs to the patio it would go through. It wasn't quite raining so she just stepped outside with the phone and hit send again, watched the screen as the photo slowly churned through space to reach his phone. Why did it take this long? She smiled involuntarily, thinking of his expression when he got it. He might not see it till tomorrow, but that would be fine.

Ghost

Today is warm (60F) and I go out for my daily walk from mom's place, picking a new route that avoids the main streets to her north and south. As I walk I realize I am very near the school I attended in second grade, then the street where our family's lawyer lives, which is also where I met my first real boyfriend. A little further on I pass the street with the name I can never get out of my head, but not sure why. Sometimes I forget who lived there. It's not till I see the dark clouds building on my left, the west, that I remember Michael Ruppert.
He was close friends with the lawyer's family, whose son had introduced me to that first boyfriend.
And what I remember is the two of us at a teen retreat my church gave, and we are sitting in front of a fire place in the main hall, everyone else is gone and we're just two lonely geeky kids happy to have someone to talk with. We really had so little in common, but we did, we were Catholic kids and it was the Midwest in the early 70s, after all. We talked for hours.

A few months later he's dead. Not just him, his whole family, shot on Easter day. We found out when we got home from a drive to my grandparents' farm in Indiana. My dad turned on the 11 oclock news, and there it was. I dont' think I quite believed it at first. But over the next months every newspaper had the Ruppert story on the front page, nearly every day. Go out to get the paper, see Mike's family sprawled dead on the floor of their grandmother's tiny house. Or the photos of his uncle, the killer.

But this is not what I was thinking as I got to Vinnedge. If I was thinking at all of anything except the weirdness of this Ohio town. I wasn't thinking about Michael at all at first. By the time I turned home I was talking to his ghost. He was surprised to see me. The rest is between me and Mike. But I was crying by the time I got to my mom's. The wind had kicked up. It was just about to rain.