I’m off, people. I’m home but I’m gone. Researching, thinking trying to figure out what’s what now that I have outlived my immediate male relatives. Maybe this is a sabbatical? It feels more like a reckoning, honestly. I’m not sure with what. My dreams have featured a fat toddler kidnapped from his mother by a human trafficking ring, a secret lover who turned out to be a friend’s husband (ewww), and my attendance at a massive, foreign knitting festival where I knew no one and had no idea what to do. The recurring image of a hot air balloon.
What’s it all mean? I’m working on it.
Of course I’m not through with grief. Maybe you thought you’d get through a post without me mentioning it. Actually, if I hadn’t mentioned it, you might have thought, ‘Wonder where she is with all that?’ I hypothesize thus because I wonder the same thing when I see friends who’ve lost spouses, or parents or anyone. Even if I’ve only seen it on Facebook, I still know. And my knowledge is part of The Subject We Don’t Discuss. I agree with Megan Devine; our culture fails at grieving. Not that grieving can be graded; her point is that there’s no “right” way. It’s talking about it, sharing it and our ability to help one another through it that could stand some improvement.
Watching myself these past months I’m sure part of the trouble is an underlying resignation to the terrible fact that nothing can be done. Is it American to not discuss subjects about which nothing can be done? I associate this idea with my Midwestern roots, though honestly, it could just be me. I don’t discuss experiences, good or bad. Later this year, I’ll go to Costa Rica and when I return, no one will know. I’m not sure how to begin to talk about a trip, or an event, even a weekend. “We had fun!” That’s about it for me.
When I spend time with one of my energetic, outgoing friends, I feel invigorated. They draw me out by their inspiring, exhausting enthusiasm. How I enjoy that fiery plow through ideas, books we’ve read, current events, different perspectives, ways to be in the world! But it’s not my natural state. It’s work for me, good work. And like going to the gym, it’s gotta be done.
Now consider sorrow and sadness. A plod through a dark swamp. Nothing can be done, so bandage up and move on. But this feels lame. No, I can’t bring him back. I can’t make it untrue that he spent sixteen months waking up to whatever surprising limitation the disease threw at him. But writing about it does help. In fact, writing is one of the activities on the very short list of That Which Makes It Less Shitty (À la Megan Devine).
Remember A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? It’s a memoir in which Dave Eggers writes about the loss of both parents and becoming, at age eighteen, the legal guardian for his younger brother. His theory behind writing it was that sharing his pain would dilute it, and therefore lighten his load. Like everything in that book, this was written with some amount of irony, yet I think the idea is sound. You share experience—with a friend, a therapist, a group, a relative, a spouse, a reader–and the weight of it lessens. It just does. We’re social creatures after all. Our minds, or maybe our souls, are built to share, to connect. As much as I get from my alone time, even I can see and feel this to be true.
My sister and I drove away from Jim’s house last June in a rental van filled to the ceiling with handmade furniture, an old rocking chair, paintings and goodies he’d stored from our grandmother’s house, and the boxes he’d left labeled for each of us. I recall thinking, okay, this is it. I won’t be back. Ever. Yet even then, there was a niggling tap-tap: What about the truck?
In June, it wasn’t time to take the truck, the 1988 Toyota Land Cruiser that Jim rebuilt. Everyone agreed, early in the summer, we weren’t ready to do anything about the truck. It needed to stay with the house, inside the picture it had made for so long. But the season is shifting. The house is changing. The earth has turned. The time is right. Tomorrow, me and my husband are flying to Portland, back to that house I thought was in the past, to get the truck and drive it 750 miles to Montana. Jim left it to my son.
I’m worried about the drive. It’s a forty-year-old vehicle with no radio, no air conditioning, a broken odometer and multiple oil leaks. In my twenties I crossed the country by car a half-dozen times. But now my back hurts on long drives. My skin breaks out if I’m in the sun. Worse, my mind can hardly handle the empty miles the way it used to. It starts skipping and jitterbugging. The empty fields, the endless traffic. Jesus, where is everybody going? Where did they come from?
I don’t know if the truck will make it. It can’t travel over sixty-five miles per hour. I’m worried about where we’ll park it when we get it home. I won’t be able to care for it the way my brother did. How he loved rebuilding that engine! Even more, he loved packing his rig and taking it to the mountains.
I will do my best. I hereby vow. I’m fulfilling his wish: that my boy would have it, though he won’t drive for three more years. Until then, my daughter can give it a go. I like thinking of my brother imagining us in his joy-buggy. We’ll be living his dream. The trek is madness to me. Yet I can admit to a quiet understanding that some of it might be fun.
Dear Christy:
I hope your trip goes well–when my FIL died, we were supposed to get a car from him that my MIL used for a few years before she died 10 years earlier. Long story short–we couldn’t use it right away, another family member stored/used it, when my daughter finally went to pick it up, it had no brakes and it was 2000 miles from Bozeman. We moved a few mountains getting the brakes done, another relative had to go help her get it but she finally got it and used it for a few years. Whlie going through the ordeal, it seemed important to focus on my FIL’s intent in giving it to his granddaughter and not the hassle of getting the car. He wanted to show his love and care. If we had sold it on the spot after he died and given her the money, the love and care would have been no different. She knew he loved her–and that was what mattered more than the actual car. LOVE, that is what matters and I bet your both of your children know that already.
I loved this story so much. So many details and facts and sorrow and love in this one small paragraph. And that you so connected with the vehicle part of the story–I totally agree. Love is what matters.
Again another great read!
Thanks for reading, Aunt!
I’ve decided it’s ok to mourn, to tear and not share my thoughts because no one knows the history. Yesterday I saw BlacKkKlansman and tears flowed – the memories of my 54 yr old father laying in a coma after heart surgery at Billings (Univ of Chicago hospital) with me in a hospital in Elmhurst after delivering my 3rd child. My mother spent 10 days and nights with my dad. While napping one night my mom was inappropriately touched by a member of the Black P Stone Nation who was waiting for a friend to come out of surgery after getting shot. That boy took my mom’s radio. Nine days later my dad died, two months later my baby died from SIDS, a month later my mom had a breakdown and was hospitalized for several months.
The movie is great. No one could possibly understand all the feelings brought back from that 1969-1970 period in my life. But, that’s ok, it’s my life.
Today is another emotional day watching the funeral of Sen. McCain and thinking of your Jim.
Inhale the beautiful scenery on your ride home as Jim would. He’ll be a passenger.
Thoughts from your mom’s highschool friend, Sharon
I read this when we were en route to Portland, maybe as we just landed. I found it so powerful and raw and honest. I thought to myself, My God, how pain unites us. The losses we all carry. And I felt better. Not because of your sorrow and loss, those were just staggering. It was that you shared them, here, with me and on this public forum in response to my own sharing. And that’s what it is to express. Thank you so much.
Christy,
Thanks for sharing these posts. We haven’t talked in ages, but I’m so glad to hear how you are, and to know what you are going through…I’m sorry or all that your brother went through, and how the grief has been so heavy a load for you. It’s true, people can shut it down for so many reasons. My heart goes out to you, and please do keep writing through it and being generous enough to share it where it can also do some good for others.
<3
Cynthia SQ
Oh, thank you Cynthia Q. for this comment. I always keep an eye out for you on social media and it was very good to hear from you. When I read this from the road, I felt, and continue to feel, your support.
Christy…I’m not a writer, but I love to read…I have some moments of good writing, but I van say, thus won’t be one of them. I just want to say hello. I love that this truck is going to Crosby .and I love that its future is ambiguous. I love that your brother’s wishes are making a trip possible for you and Tim . You may have the time of your lives. Or at least some unadulterated laughter. I love (and hate) that your post makes me cry. My dads death anniversary us tomorrow. You would have liked him. He would have enjoyed seeing Crosby and Felix play together. There us do much they miss when they leave…and we miss them so much it’s hard to breathe. It’s so hard for mevto talk about because I LIKE being happy…I think to myself, it doesn’t help to talk about it. But it does ..I’m just afraid of the pain. Love to your family.
This was such a moving comment to read from the road. I could feel the emotion in it, and I missed your dad, and wished I’d known him. So many people were in that Land Cruiser with us as we drove eastward to its new home!
Ughh .Why can’t I edit my typos??
Your typos are endearing. I’m only responding now, but I read them from the road and smiled at them 🙂
Thank you for sharing Christy, beautifully written. I’m excited for your adventure. Sarah
Thank you Sarah. With an ‘h’
As usual so well written, Could you make your grieving into a short story?
Miss you! P.
Miss you too.
My Dear Christy,
People who have suffered loss understand; people who haven’t usually don’t. This is beautiful and so moving. I knew your brother as a small boy, and through your words. I’m heartbroken for you.
Kaylie
This means a lot to me, as I know you are grieving too. The Tribe of the After, as members of my grief group call themselves, and us. Its funny, we all end up in this tribe, sooner or later. It isn’t funny, actually.
I picture you driving Jim’s Land Cruiser those 750 miles with you and T sharing stories about him, or gazing in companionable silence out the windows, the landscape sliding by at 65 mph. You’re thinking of how Jim spent months tinkering on the engine, sat in the driver’s seat where you or T sit now, taking turns behind the wheel. Jim’s time in that car was joyful as he anticipated his time in the woods, the cool of the mountain air, the salty tang of the sea breeze. It was especially joyful because it was powered by the engine he made run again after hours multiplied by days and weeks where he stared down at the engine’s greasy mass from above, or up at it from underneath on one of those rolling “creepers” (had to look up that term), puzzled, perhaps cursing at times in frustration, then Ah-hah! So that’s where that part goes! Enlightenment! And over again with another part and another, until one day he turned the key and the engine came to life and he rejoiced.
yes, that is pretty much how it went on the first day of driving! Plus, his ghost riding with us, watching how we handled his beloved….
Such a good read, I can picture it all. Grief is so individual and personal, thank you for trusting us with a glimpse of yours. It helps to write/talk. Family reunions help too – it was wonderful to see you last weekend cousin. And to hear AK laugh …. until next time, hugs.
Amy
P. S. That’s a great pic of Jim and Crosby 💜