I understand now why they say don't make any decisions in the first year after someone dies. I feel like I cannot make any effective decisions at all anymore... and this past year has been one of inertia for me.
You died 11 months ago, and again, today, tears rolled down my face for you. My roommate came home for lunch today while I was writing this, and when he asked what was wrong, I could not speak, other than to say "it's a cry day". He offered to cook dinner, saying food always makes us feel better. "No" I said, "I don't want food." "You should get out more" he said. "No", I explained to him, I've always been pretty self-contained, pretty much a loner.... that's my history. I'm great at amusing myself, I like my own company. Sometimes, I like it more than the company of others... "You can't fix me", is what I really wanted to say, but didn't want to appear ungrateful for his concern, so I let it pass.
I still have a 30 second clip of you on my ipod, sandwiched between Mother Madam and Lateralus. When I hear Mother Madam, I remind myself to move on, that that is all there is left to do. And then your song came on, Soul Meets Body. And I remember standing on top of the ravine trail with you, you insisting I listen to the lyrics.... and as I listen to the following refrain in the the song...
"And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too..."
and the tears come, tears because it wasn't suppose to be me that was left behind, it was suppose to be you, and this seems all so wrong, that I should be here, and you not. We use to laugh and joke about you hauling my ashes up those hills, and I gave you the precise location where I wanted them scattered, on the hill where I took the bobcat pic, overlooking the lake.... They'd make it to the top of the hill, you assured me, but they would be going in a gopher hole.... and then you'd pee on them you said, til they turned to concrete. "Oh really" I said, "so let me get this right, you shit on me in life, and then piss on me in death?... great, what a friend" .....and you laughed, that joyous, uproar of laughter that to me was always as beguiling as the Sirens of Greek mythology which caused so many to crash on the rocks. That was you.
Your Tucker Max ways appalled me, so I countered with what proved to be equally offensive to you. With that sugary, saccharin sweetness....I would respond to you with "hunny bunny", and you about gagged. You couldn't stand it. "No more hunny bunny" you would say. It became our inside joke.
"Love knows not it's own depth until the hour of separation".... somewhere in my deepest recesses, I knew we did not have forever, we did not have long.... only I thought it would be me who would leave first. You ridiculed my fear of surgery..... "Why" you asked "would God let you die when He can keep you around to bug me for the next 10 years.... you're gonna outlive all of us." You always had to be first in everything, but you were not suppose to be first in this.....you were so much younger than me.
"Steel sharpens steel" I said to you once, and you repeated it in that considered way of yours, "steel sharpens steel, huh", and the gauntlet was thrown down. Several years had passed when you asked me if we could start over, start with a clean slate. "Sure, I love you, I'd pretty much do anything you asked of me", but you already knew that without asking.
You counted on that... that last Saturday you called, when you knew how angry I was with you, we both know that call was like throwing your hat into the ring. If I answered, which I did, it signaled to you it was all still good. I always forgave you everything. I never wanted to waste what little time I had with you fighting, or arguing..... as I told you once, my world was a better place just knowing you were alive, out there somewhere, doing your thing. I didn't have to be with you.... just knowing you were out there in the world somewhere was enough. Like a mother with her child perhaps... as long as you were safe, everything was o.k.
And now you are not.
And I wonder, "where are you, why can't I reach you, why can't you reach me, how does empty space close in around where you once stood?" I'm suppose to know, understand, and accept this thing called death, but it is mystifying still. Emptiness surrounds where you were, how can that be, how can something become nothing, where did you go?
I remember waking up screaming in the middle of the night 6 days after you died...feeling as if I had been probed, a visceral feeling so unlike that of a dream state or dream symbolism. I remember screaming at you..."you can't stay here, you've already left". The next night, some of us met at the trailhead in your memory.... that night the ravine trail burnt... and no one could figure out why, what started the fire. The trail is so seldom used by anyone. I went there last week, and the upper trail that we used is entirely grown in now.... you would barely know there had been a trail there at all.
You died less than two weeks after my surgery.... I ran my first mile 3 weeks after, I didn't know what else to do, but to do what you taught me... run, move, run, move, don't stand still. I remember heading out on the trail head, and a stranger in front of me. He didn't look right for hiking, he was wearing jeans, not dressed right. He didn't fit. I didn't see his face. I barely noted that he headed down the side path you would head down, then disappeared. I headed up the ravine trail, and there he was, about 60 feet in front of me... he gave me a quick backwards glance, the way you use to. I still could not make out any features. I took the highest trail.... he took it also. I lost him at the top of the hill, and started out on my run..... and there he was on the singletrack below me..... I took the lower trail at the intersection, he moved up onto the fire road..... then we were both on the wooded trail.... he turned and glanced at me again...as we crossed the fire road, he finally cut off trail through the fields.... it was so strange, it was like a phantasm on the trail, and I couldn't be sure if it was real, or not.
The brass plaque for you still sits in my car, the bench Marie and Chris made still at their house. We never got them up to the meadow we picked out for you, the meadow on Right Hand Creek trail...... inertia...... us hauling a bench up for you, when it was suppose to be you hauling my ashes up.... inertia... it's been almost a year.... and I need to do it soon.... and let you go.... and hope that you have found a place for me on the other side..... a place where I will not fear those edge trails, a place of shimmering beauty, and green, and forests.....
I had only one other dream of you.... you called me on the phone, and I kept asking you "where are you"... and you repeatedly said "home". "You can't be home", I replied, "don't you know you are dead".... and your laughter, that joyous laughter enveloped me, and you simply said "you still believe in that stuff".
I so miss you.... but it is your spirit of adventure that I try to retain, your fearlessness with which I try to live.
When we truly touch someone, our lives are never left quite the same as they were before. It was, as I wrote someone, as if we were two people with very disparate worlds, two worlds where the initial response is to, at best, avoid the other, and at worst, annihilate the other; yet, we, you and I, built a bridge instead.
It endures.
