When my grandmother died, I was miserable. But she was in her 90s, and it wasn’t exactly unexpected. Losing her was, in a way, losing my childhood, my last safe place.
When my uncle died, I was heartbroken. I loved him so much, and I never knew how to be close to him.
When my other uncle died… honestly, I felt, right or wrong, that he’d abandoned me long ago. So on some level, I mourned that loss long before.
When my mother died, I was devastated. And disbelieving. And, more than anything, angry. I’m still angry.
This time around, I’m just numb. Numb with occasional spells of weeping.
I miss him. And I don’t. I wish it were one thing or the other. There’s not much of anything in the last year and a half that I miss. But I miss so much before that. Lying in bed playing Scrabble, doing crosswords, being silly with laughter, and just lying there holding his hand. Sleeping all night with our hands together. Talking and talking, when we used to talk about something besides disease and death. The jokes that only the two of us would ever understand. All the years and all the history. And the commitment.
But it all went so wrong. So wrong that I can mourn the beginning, the man, the love, but at the same time…
Michael, my love, I am not sorry that you are free. I am not sorry that I am free, even though I have no idea what to do with my freedom. You and I will never be free of each other, in a larger sense, and I would never want to be. But the things that we did to each other at the end. These things I cannot miss. I would never in a million years want to hurt you. I know that you would say the same thing. But I’ve never even imagined such constant pain.
I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to do it with anyone, ever again. I’m not sure that I’ll ever begin to get over it.
I want your arms around me. But on the other hand, I wanted that all the time when you were here, and mostly it didn’t happen then, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment