December 23, 2011

This time of year, this now sad time when I find myself lamentingly thinking of you, I am yet again crying because I no longer can pick up the phone to hear you say “Hello?” as if you were asking a question and not answering a phone.

This time of year, Christmastime, when families gather, when friends laugh. Gifts are exchanged.  Hearts are warm.  The color red is all around and supposes to envelope all that it sees.  This a time when many people are kind to those that they would otherwise never think of, say perhaps on July 4th when the weather is balmy and fireworks flare.

You have been gone but days, however, it seems like years.  My days are consumed hoping that I might wake up from this dream, this nightmare really, that you somehow got better.  That I could wake up from this, though tears would be streaming, I would be thankful that you were still here, and I would immediately pick up the phone to hear that “Hello?”  You too would have been sleeping and you answer confused.  You ask me what is wrong.  I say, holding back the sobs as best I can, that I had a bad dream and I needed to hear your voice.  I am not waking though, this dream is now months old, it clings to me, feeding, biting deeper every day.  I am living this sad nightmare.

This is our, your family’s, your creation’s first Christmas without you.  With you, all those many years ago, the little gifts you gave, simply wrapped with a bow and names written on the wrapping paper, were all appreciated with eyes glowing.  With little you gave much.

I will get no more hugs from you.  This painful realization denies me much.  Hugs, for me, always meant that everything was well in the world.  Hugs have been taken, leaving me with but the memory that makes me write these words.  I will pause to remember these hugs not just at Christmastime but at every time of year – in the spring when the wind blows across the lake, over the sand of the beach and then over the trees and flowers, I will remember those hugs.  Little did I know that every hug gave me comfort that will last for the continuance of my life.  It’s a gift that I can open over and over.  Thank you – an eternal gift that you gave to all of us.

The magic of Christmas is not so powerful that it can give me the only gift that I want – more time with you.  One last Christmas, perhaps, with the family together, cooking and playing games.  All laughing with each other, loving each other, all while you rest in your recliner, gently rocking back and forth, with a look on your face that defines happy.  Your family, your blood, all near to you with happy smeared across our faces too.
  
Though, as I think about it, I don’t know that more time would prepare me any better.  I would still grieve as I never have.  I would still know the reality of your not being here along with my want to not accept that which is my reality.  

I think, question, why am I still here if you are gone?  This thought, though silly, is that I came from you, should I not go with you as you go?  I find myself seeking out ways to push it all away.  Strange thoughts, expressed here only that someone may look oddly in my direction if I spoke those words to them.

This year there is no snow.  It is fairly warm for this time of year.  Cloudless sky – allowing the sun to shine, warming the brick and mortar of all surrounding me.  If there were snow, I think it would remind me more that Christmas is here and we don’t have you or more so that Christmas itself, along with us, mourns, weeps that you and your sweet smile are no more.

This year I must start a new journey, one that has you with me – physically no, but with the warmth of your hugs.  Keeping me connected to you, still holding onto you with the deepest of love, not just this Christmas but all that shall follow.  And not just for me, but for us all.

A tradition starts this year.  In honor of you, I will burn a candle – perhaps one in your favorite color – periwinkle.  Every year that candle will burn, in a window so that you may angelically fly to see it. It will signify your perfection, your strength, and your love.  I will watch the flame burn.  I will watch it because in times past I’ve noticed that as a candle burns, at the tip, at the very top of the flame, if you watch closely, it looks as though there is someone reaching out of the flame, toward heaven.  I will honor your memory, watching the flame, the spirit therein dancing until it burns out and flies away.

I will think now and forever more that you are an angel now.  An angel at Christmas, watching over, whispering love.  True the world is a sadder place this year, but even in your absence, you comfort me.  At the end of writing this, yet another realization, and epiphany perhaps, we are not without you at Christmas.  You are everywhere.  You are in the tree ornaments of past.  You are in the photographs of us, as a family, standing by the tree.  You are in all that you’ve left behind, you are in your legacy.  You are here, right now and always – hugging and comforting, listening and loving.  

“Have yourself a Merry little Christmas, let your heart be light…”

Thomas

Surely if I had an ideal existence, I would not need these drugs that keep me alive.  I would not need the drugs that keep me from jumping out of my third story window.

Three stories.  Would I die?  Would I lie there, broken, head bashed in, but still able to think?

If I, in me, had all that the characters of the Wizard of Oz were seeking but had all along, would I be human enough to lift myself from the goo that keeps me stuck in this dank and awful place?

My heart stinks of rot and yet it feels.

My soul has holes that account for roughly forty percent of its entirety and yet there is still some of it left.

I want to be cleansed, purged, of all of the bad.  The things of my past that make me think of regret.  I want a chance to show the world of the brilliance that lives within me.  The brilliance that, may I add, blinds even me at times.

I hope to clear the cob-webs cluttering all of the corners of the creation that is me so that I may reach in and pull out the words to make you all cry.

All I have ever wanted was to make someone feel.  Ugly covered in syrup, with someone there to pick up the two and separate the ugly.  

Everything is better with something sweet.

I see this woman,

A small woman, asian, older maybe 60, gray hair at her temples.

She is wearing a tan short sleaved blouse, darker tan khaki’s to her knees and open toed sandals.

She is standing in the alley, by the utility pole with her hands cupped together below her *******.

I wonder about this woman.

I wonder if she has known pain, then I stop myself.  Of course she has known pain.  Then I wonder, is she loved?  I try to tell myself that everyone is loved by someone, but then I think, or rather I ask myself, is that true?  Is everyone loved?

In the alley by the utility pole, she looks around, her hands still cupped below her ******* and she begins to look around.  Side to side, to the north down the alley then to the south.  She then looks up into the hazy, warm sky.
She continues to stand there and I watch her from my third floor kitchen window.

I then think to myself that I need to think of this woman more often.  

I think of my own problems and punishments too often without ever thinking of the problems and punishments of others.

She has now folded her arms and is looking down at the ground, walking in small circles, as if she is contemplating something.  She has been lead to the alley by the utility pole by these thoughts.

I begin to think of the things that may have lead her here, right now, at this moment, right when I look out the window.  

Has she come out here after a heated argument in her own tongue (an assumption on my part, Chinese perhaps, Vietnamese.  This is my own idiocy locked in my own world.) with her partner, husband, love, significant other?  An argument over bills, money, a recipe perhaps.  

Then I think maybe she isn’t outside because of an argument at all.  Perhaps she needed some “me time.”  She needed a moment to breath air brought to her by the wind.  To take it in and have it heal her where she needed it to.

Then she drops her hands to her side and she begins to sob.  She leans against the utility pole and slowly slides down its splintery surface.  Her tan blouse snags on the pole but she continues to slide down the pole, her hands at her sides.

She is sitting on the ground, crying, needing someone to help her, needing the person to have caused this pain to cure it, to make it go away, to come to the alley, reach out with both of their hands and pull her up from the pain of the gravel on which she sits.

Then I thought, maybe they can’t.  

Maybe they can’t and that is why she is sitting in the alley by the utility pole, crying with her arms at her sides.  Perhaps she has lost someone she has loved and is regretful of the last thing she ever said to this person.

I recalled my earlier thought acknowledging that she has indeed known pain.  I was watching her experience it.  I was helpless to this woman in this moment.  If I were to ask her if she needed help I could be invading on what she thought was a private moment.  

She didn’t need the help of a strange man watching her from his third floor kitchen window.

She pulled a handkerchief from her right pocket and put it to her face, resting her elbow on her knee and looked down the alley again, still crying.

I felt bad.  I was standing watching this poor, and yet beautiful, woman cry in the alley thinking I couldn’t help her.

I was conflicted.

Do I go see if I can do something that will help ease her pain?  Will I make it worse if I infringe on this moment?

Something pushed me.  An impulse.  God’s whisper.

I put on my shoes and descended the three flights of stairs to aid this woman that I did not know.  What would I say?  Would she even understand my English words?  Could I understand her (assumed) Chinese words?  

Regardless, she needed help.

I opened the back door and stepped onto the sidewalk cautiously, as if it would give way and I would fall.  What am I going to say to this woman?

I looked up and my heart swelled, as did the tears in my eyes.  I saw what I had envisioned seconds before.  The person who had caused the pain came to her, both hands reaching for both of hers.  He reached for her and she reached back.

It was beautiful and I choked on my tears.

He lifted her up and they embraced saying words I did not understand but I thought that perhaps it may have been “Baby, I love you, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want them to know I had witnessed this, this pain, this loss, those tears, the love and the embrace.  I walked quickly past in a direction that I did not need to go with only one more quick glance so that I could remember this love that I had seen.

It made me think of all of the love that I don’t see, the moments that I don’t take to look at someone from my third floor kitchen window.

The love in my own life that I take for granted sometimes and that made me sob.

I think of my own love and I want him close.  No words, just an embrace, like theirs,

in the alley by the utility pole.

Today
is but a day
that I am looking at like
all the others
but somehow it’s different,

a small fiber of it breathes differently,

it moves in such a way
that lets me know that it is
somehow changed,
altered,
from what all
of the other
days have been.  

I am instantly in love
with this change.

Who am I in this, this world, this space in time…this lost hope,

Where is my place, my destiny, my beautiful violin solo?

It all seems so cluttered, chaotic and destined to be a deep sadness… sagging and weak… I know there is beauty, I see it… and I want to lose myself in it…with no hope of return….not to this dark place, the place that stinks of old and rot.

You were for me the most amazing love I have ever known and ever will know, I never knew I could, or would even want to love as much as I do love you.  I was transformed, I became someone different because you loved me.  I don’t know where it is that I became not enough, the instance in time when I was, simply put, no longer in your heart.

I digress.

I can’t control the impeding sadness, I am getting tired of the fight and I don’t feel the love from you that I once felt.  As I type them, I hate the very words I am using…sadness, dark place, chaotic.  I don’t want to be the bleeding heart, the wounded one.

Please God, let me be.  Let me not suffer like this.  My heart is in agony and my body is weak.  I feel as though I am a disappointment and I don’t know if I can do this much longer.

For today I will put on the face, the façade…the someone I am not, so that I may go out into the world and face the people that do not know my heart.

It is time to let it go.
It is time to watch it fly away.
So see it down the drain, distant and far.
Your hate,
Your rage,
Your intolerance,
Your racism.
Let it die,
Watch it whither and become dust.
Your depression,
Your mistrust,
Your curse,
Your sorrow.
I am beginning with me.  What about you?