All Hallows Eve

I haven’t written a post since January. In thinking about this return, my first post since my brother’s death, I thought: it can’t be too sad. I don’t want to scare anyone. I haven’t been scary before. I’ve written about reading, mostly. Reading isn’t scary!  I don’t want anyone’s heart breaking, for god’s sake.

In truth I’ve been unable to put a coherent sentence together in the four weeks since his death. I’ve got a notebook full of phrases; it’s all I can do to have an idea, let alone express it. This past weekend I was knitting—I’ve been knitting so much my fingers are stiff—and I had two ideas. I thought: Yes, that’s how I feel. I’m going to tell that to my husband. That’s how we become less alone, right?  We share ideas. We speak. In sentences. An idea is transferred from one mind to another and we are understood. It took me twenty-four hours to work up the courage to try, and once I’d said it, I felt stupid. The words were so small! My sentiments sounded ridiculous. The ideas were simplistic and self-absorbed. And maudlin. I was depressed. I am depressed—aw fuck it. I began to cry.

Blubbering has its uses. Honestly, in that moment with my husband, and in plenty of other moments, blubbering has been the only way to express what I feel. No words, no paintings, nothing I can do with my hands comes close to getting what is in me, out. In the first two weeks after he died, one activity made the horror of it all less bad. I want to say reading. That would fit with the theme here. It wasn’t reading. I couldn’t bear the stillness required. It was walking. Miles and miles of it. Over twelve thousand steps a day, preferably up hill. The dumb, mindless simplicity of one foot in front of the other was all that made sense to me. It still helps, though other parts of my life (planning dinner, shuttling children, buying toilet paper) have shouldered their way in.

Every morning my first conscious thought is: It’s over. I will never talk to my brother again. I’ve learned from grief books, support groups and therapy that this is normal, a need to continuously re-orient oneself to the new terrain after loss, especially sudden loss. Jim’s death wasn’t sudden. He struggled with this disease for sixteen months. In preparing this post, I looked over my last entry and saw that on January 9 at nearly seven in the evening, my brother wrote a comment. He was able to sit up and think, in words, and type them. About poetry. To me, his sister, the writer. That particular date is significant because it was a year after his craniotomy, which removed 93% of the glioblastoma that would eventually kill him. Again, we knew it was coming. I knew. From the first, way back in January 2017 when I spoke to the neurosurgeon and asked point-blank: is it a glio? He said he wouldn’t know for sure till the pathology report. But it looked like a glio. I knew. And guess what? Knowing didn’t make it any easier. Every morning I go through the shock as if I never a knew thing.

It wasn’t quick, but my god that disease shut him down. His absence is just as massive as his presence, his booming baritone voice, his infectious, full-body laugh, his lively eyes, his quick wit and his towering height. There is the shock of his vulnerability. That the disease was not beatable, even by someone so willing to try, courageous enough to take the ridiculous cocktail of meds that kept seizures and swelling under control, that kept him awake for hours every night.

I have a playlist he made during those nighttime hours. He called it “Halloween” and it’s the spookiest collection of songs I’ve ever encountered, everything from Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” to Dick Van Dyke singing “Chim-chim-i-ney.” I almost hate listening to it, imagining him awake on any given night in 2017. What was the thinking of? What did he see? I know he contemplated death. He wrote about it on his blog, FS43.com. He wrote:

I have realized that I now live in two worlds, that of the living and that of the dead. Everyone lives like this, no one realizes this until they understand mortality. We all die, but most of us have no need to contemplate this until old age. The realm of the dead (my knowledge is limited to Greek classics) is where power and knowledge reside. Raids across the river Styx, brave the guardian ( a multi headed dog named Cerberus) enter Hades, escape with knowledge. What a powerful and ancient human legend. And I do feel Powerful with the knowledge of living in two worlds. Death is friendly. Its part of us as much as breathing and eating. Its ones closest spiritual guide because it’s inevitable. It’s a constant force.

This idea is resonating with me and I don’t find it morbid in the least. This idea has brought me great peace and power. I am excited about learning the great mystery. The Secret revealed. I am excited about seeing life from the other side. Sure, I will miss things from the world of the living but who is to say I won’t see them in the world of the dead?

He had a foot in both worlds. What else are the terminally ill if not living in the in-between for the remainder of their life? The Celts had celebrations of such ideas; these are the origins of our modern Halloween. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, which for them was November first, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. The Druids, or Celtic priests, could more easily predict the future on this night. My brother, way back in high school, studied the Druids. I don’t recall what led him to the subject, but these ancient cultures and their beliefs appealed to him early in his life. He drew a lot as a kid. I remember elaborate castles and dragons, detailed, incredible stuff. The fact that he made a playlist of spooky music, which he called “Halloween,” during a time when he was thinking about his own death—I think he was making connections, dreaming, wondering. And knowing that he’d had such thoughts, and still managed to fiddle with his truck engine, mail packages to me, send me a birthday gift card—well. I’m back to no words again. That lump in my throat. The need to pound my way up a trail .

Reader, thank you. Reading is the most solitary, focused form of listening a person can offer. It helps me, thinking of you in front of a device, your eyes moving over every word I put together, for you. From my mind to yours. A little maudlin, a little grim. But necessary. This transfer of energy, from the ripple of sensation, to language, to written words, from my mind to yours. Thank you.