anger and bargaining – lashing out is a common form of attempting to release all unspoken emotions. this is the stage where the “why why why?” questioning comes in.
the pleas for returned love run rapid, trying to bargain with fate or with the person who was just lost.
my face in both hands tearbrushing with her thumbs. “close your eyes”
soft breath disappears the rest (for now). doubled over all hours, infla-
med and bleeding. quiet knock “do you need me? i’ll pick the lock if
you can’t get up”.
moving her stiff-forever arm with my stiff-for now one, carefully steering
her last coat of nail polish through a sleeve of pale yellow silk.
new scabs ripped, lips illicit on his throat, muscles melted then igniting.
grasping, cramping, regressing, repenting, reliving, resenting, silent.
spent.
come to me and i will tell you and show you how beautiful
and loved you are.you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the
mirror and truly believe it.
[...]
the last time my colitis flared and my weight plummeted, my mother made me one of her old indian recipes: a delicately creamy, gently-spiced mix of rice and split lentils. upon hearing it was the only food (besides premium plus crackers and low-acid applesauce) that agreed with my deviant intestinal tract she made and delivered a continual supply until my colitis went into remission.
three weeks ago, after returning from 3 months in india, my mother complained to me of intermittent stomach problems she had developed. last week, when i told my mother i had broken my arm she arrived with 6 large shopping bags of food that could be easily opened, prepared and consumed with one hand. one shopping bag contained a large batch of rice and split lentils (in her Good Tupperware no less). she told me it was half the batch she had made for herself to soothe her own stomach. knowing her she had made a new, larger batch for me, or given me all of hers and gone without.
last night when she went to sleep my mother wore flannel pyjamas that are identical to a pair she bought for me (that i received with lukewarm thanks tempered by my strongly-felt suspicion that my mother’s inappropriate gifts bespoke a general indifference to who i am). when she woke up this morning my mother told my father her stomach wasn’t feeling well, that she would like to sleep in, and asked him to wake her in a couple of hours. he returned to their room two hours later, carrying fresh tea and dry toast, and found her dead.
this evening, my father divided the cup of tea he made for his wife of 45 years into 6 equal portions. with hollow eyes he lead a toast “to the one we will never stop loving”. with hollow eyes he, my sister, her husband, my brother, his wife and i drank to her.
as i write this i am eating a tiny bowl of rice with split lentils (tiny because i can’t comprehend what happens when there is no more). i’m wearing the pyjamas she wore the last night she went to sleep. i’m smelling her and wondering why i can’t process that my mother will never again wake up, never again irritate me with inappropriate gifts, never again use home-cooked food to demonstrate the love she had for me, the love i couldn’t recognize until today, the day my mother died.
after forest fires, ash enriches the soil and helps create optimal conditions for
regrowth. small plants take root and sprout, attracting insects and birds. trees
grow, creating homes and cover for larger animals. underbrush thickens, foliage
decays and then a spark ignites and razes everything to the ground again.
in 2011 i achieved my best physical condition in 15 years (maybe better). i
mastered advanced bikram yoga poses, regularly did hundreds of pushups and
situps and reverse lunges, i cardio-kickboxed and cycled all over our hilly city
(sometimes on a one-speed bike). my arms, my legs, my core – they looked
strong, they were strong. my heart was strong, it pounded when i ran and it
loved fiercely.
after, yoga became too intimate for my headspace and i stopped eating. i
alternated between not sleeping for days to neo citran’ing or ativan’ing myself
into long stretches of oblivion. i drank too much when i couldn’t stop my
thoughts. my body shrank, my arms withered into twigs.
today’s green shoots:
- appropriately prescribed arm strengthening exercises (that still hurt like hell)
- 250 reverse lunges
- washed every one of my dishes that has accumulated since i broke my arm
- reached out
- didn’t reach out (to him).
green shoots might not seem impressive when compared to the redwoods that
once towered in their place. but when compared to plains of ash? wish me luck.
backed up photos from my last 6 months. they divided themselves naturally into: life with him 1 (portland, thanksgiving, bridges), life with him 2 (family bbq, railtown), life after him (port at all hours, railyard at all hours, seawall at all hours). i removed from my special hidden box the keepsakes that no longer held significance.
replaced them with the discs, stubs from our train tickets (him, me, bike), the key from our hotel room, the list of memories i wrote frantically october 30, my ticket from our trip to science world and the business card given to me by the photographer i watched while waiting for him on the seawall before we picked up some things from granville island and then met my friends at turk-off. the card isn’t special, the feelings it evokes are: anticipation and butterflies waiting to see my baby.
i have more to pack up when i’m stronger: the one image in which our faces coexist (taken after it was over, with my face emitting desperate hope and his, quiet concern). the cuff he got me for my birthday that i sleep with under my pillow and wear on dark days. my purple friend, whose death the day before our final talk-in-a-park was surely an omen. the modest beginnings of our tickletrunk. my questions.
i don’t expect to blog much here anymore. one-handed typing is a pain. i see no magic in words. i physically can’t pick up either of my cameras. and really, i got nuthin these days. thanks for reading. if you have love hold on to it tightly. if you don’t, just hold on.
at lost lagoon beside the underpass where we stopped to admire the guerilla backlit photos one day a lifetime ago. sun setting now, mentally calculating how dark it would become while trekking around stanley park. realizing i would pass the cliffs, recalling another cliff, me on top of you protecting your head from rocks with my hand, feeling magic and the breeze and you inside me. now face to the sky whispering ‘i love you’ towards the purple clouds as though they would protect it and bring it to you so far away. as if it would mean something to you now.
sobs as the memoryconfusion cocktail sets in, chest-heaving ugly sobs attracting startled glances at the woman who looks as though she has It All Going For Her. feeling i should go home but not wanting to retreat in tears, deciding to set off around the park to keep occupied, to keep myself from being alone there (where you slept and cooked and made love with me). setting off, wobbling and sobbing watching them approaching looking confused by the tears on my face. staring.
gasp. crunch. anhh-hh. footsteps.
3:20ish of this harmonizing the hiss of gas and my laugh that wasn’t my laugh in my ears. metallic. flat. head buzzing teeth chattering your name repeated like self-inflicted cuts disguised as an ommm. “do you want me to call him?” silence. “he’s gone”.
2011 heard i was talkin smack about her and apparently decided she wasn’t quite done with me. as a result i’ll cap this hellish/magical year off in a tylenol-3 haze with a fractured left forearm (radial head to be exact) and torn muscles and tendons in my left hand. yep – i fell off my bike (beloved grace jones) and onto the unforgiving ground (the bi*ch that always wins).
recap: huffing paramedic-issued giggly-gas, preventing the lovely and well-intentioned marta from cutting my favourite jacket off of my jacket-loving person with some yoga-enabled jacket-removing contortions (made possible by aforementioned gas), the movie star-handsome doctor whose first words upon viewing my x-rays were “well firstly i’d say you need to eat a sandwich. now here’s the bad news…”. best of all, not one pin inserted into any of my environs, and nary a drop of blood shed. the upcoming, freakishly strange part: i have to begin moving my broken bone next week…intentionally. while it’s still broken. shudder.
i wish i had a fantastically entertaining and dramatic warstory to share here. the truth is tame yet amusingly appropriate considering the patterns of my year to date. this time like so many others: shoulda bobbed, but instead i weaved.
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