Rise Up

Grief. One would think that at some point it would be finished. Healed. Processed into wisdom. And yet, here I sit. Sobbing. He is off communing with a 30 year old, at 66. I can spiritualize that...he is recovering his passion, his muse. Should I not do the same? He is most certainly calling her "his angel" and tenderly caring about her thoughts and feelings. Afterall, it was I who left I, the fallen angel, the "psychotic b.", the one who left. I, who never let us run out of toilet paper, had dinner on the table every night, was the conduit for 2 beautiful children, and yes, I, who wanted a life of my own. Or at least to grow. Not by myself. I wanted 2 whole lives together-Not a half a life. To grow together would have been ideal, everything I ever dreamed of, but if not, how could I stop myself from becoming?

How did I get here? The beginning of the end. Walking my father to the end of his life. His long, beautiful life, that ended with the passage of his body long after his self seemed to have gone and yet, somehow he was there with us to the end. With parting wisdom, and awareness at key moments, and communication albeit cryptic and wordless and still very much him. After those last breaths. After we stared at each other wondering what to do. After the rose petal ceremony. After mom lay with him and said goodbye. After his body was taken from home. I was consumed. Consumed by a song we had shared since I was a child, both in the music, in the spirit in the music, and in the actual flight, that I still feel him in whenever I see it. O'er the canyons and up to the sky. I danced it. In those days following his leaving, I could not let him go until I embodied it. And I did, with no map or clear understanding, I embodied it and I released him.

And the man who professed to love me told me I was spoiled and it didn't mean anything. Perhaps the love was long gone. Already dried up. Perhaps it was never real in the first place. 28 years is an awfully long time for it not to have been real. Perhaps it was the all the secrets. All the young women. The doubt and jealousy. The inablity to ever speak my truth. To ever feel safe. To feel loved. To feel as if I wasn't about to be replaced. Always by someone younger. Someone less troublesome. He never knew me. He never knew the lengths to which I went. He didn't want to. He didn't notice. Waking up one morning, getting them all off to school and work and me to the clinic on a bus, where I felt treated like a widget in a factory. I lied on the guerney about to lose a piece of myself, a part of my future, of our future, refusing pain meds because if I was going to do this thing I was darn well going to feel it. Comforting my neighbor on her guerney, reassuring her that she would be ok, the universe blessed us with a song. A message. We were all held in the arms of the angel.

I had dinner on the table that night. He never noticed. Anything. How could I have done such a thing? How could anything be real after that? Perhaps that was the end and the ensuing decades were just sleepwalking. Sleepwalking. I would have layed down and died except that there were waking moments of where we started. Glimmers of what could have been, could be. The potential. Always there, sitting next to me. The thing to work for. To become. The healing that needed to happen. Within me. Always the work there was to do to make meaning of her loss. Of all of the loss. But it began with so much love, so much passion. How does it end this way? How does it go from heaven to hell in such a short amount of time. Time. Time is a riddle. Half a lifetime. Literally, half a lifetime. A slow slog. Why could I not see it at the beginning? Why could I not see that we were destined for agony? Heaven to hell. Angel to "psychotic b." How can what appears to be so perfect, when one is young and naive, end up so completely the polar opposite? So much yearning.

The song that didn't get sung at our wedding. Perhaps I should have known then. The journey was set. I was on the path, regardless of the red flags, and the clear signs that other paths would be easier and probably less painful, but even now, even now, I know I had to take it. The journey has made me who I am. Through all the insanity and all of the hard work to not get lost, feeling every feeling. Continuing to show up. Healing each wound, learning to love myself through it all, step by step, I have become the woman that I am. And that, my friend, is pretty remarkable.