The Return

It’s Monday morning at zero dark thirty. I’m already at the Pittsburgh airport having spent the night at the WONDERFUL airport hotel. Christ almighty, I love this hotel (The Hyatt).

My flight, theoretically, leaves at 5:50 AM and gets into Boston at 7:30-ish. Yes, I’ve checked the Jet Blue website a zillion and one half times. It’s still listed as on time. Fingers fiercely crossed.

By the by, best way to make sure you wake and get to the airport by 3:50 (for the security shoe doffing and frisk)? Don't sleep. I arranged a thousand wake up calls and went to bed with my hearing aid on, in hopes I'd hear the phone jangle. If not, maybe I'd feel my cell's vibrations. Dunno if I'd have heard or felt anything though since I was already in the shower at 3AM having given up on glorious coma time at a quarter of. Ah well.

This molto stressful trip has reminded me, yet again, that I am a stunningly lucky broad to have Helen, Jen and Oni in my life. Mind you, there’s a fuck-ton of other brilliantly caring, giving people in my life (Michal, Jenny and my pal Joe, just ferinstance and shit) too. I can’t imagine (don’t want to imagine) how I would’ve gotten through this year (almost a year) of Amazing Bob-lessness without them.

While in my father’s wee hamlet, my older sister slipped C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed into my purse. Being a rock solid agnostic with wicked pagan leanings, as you may’ve already noted,  I was all Oh puhLEEZE and then opened the book. Skipping over all the god talk, I found that he says a mega ton of shit that I can SO relate to (and says them with such graceful eloquence).

Like:

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

Oh, fuck yeah – tell it brother!

I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.

This doesn’t happen QUITE as much now that it’s almost a year since my beloved’s horrible croakage. I suppose, in many people’s minds, his death is so past tense. Understandable – this amputation didn't happen to them.  Also, so much other awfulness (the Cheeto Dictator Manqué!) has happened since last July 4rth – there's a giant shitstorm raining down every day. For me though, the big bad awful, this chasm of heinousness is very much RIGHT HERE NOW, front and center. Every day.

It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

That is – grief is with me no matter what I do. The act of metaphorical chair gripping, (travel for me) can be a brief distraction but not more than that. Still, more travel might be helpful. I do believe that I need Coco to come with me though. Not just a simple cat – she’s my therapy grimalkin, my four footed, sentient weed!

Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.

I don’t smoke but I’m sure as hell fidgeting nearly non-stop. Having Coco napping, purring up a storm whilst laying across my chest and neck is, yes – physically uncomfortable at first but she helps me Be Here Now. When she’s napping all over me, I can focus a tiny bit on, if nothing else, her awesome vibrations.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Yes. I’m sure many of my chums, over this past year, have heard me say that “TAB was perfect!” No one is perfect. I know that. I’m sure as hell nowhere close. The point is that TAB was perfect FOR ME. Yes, there was a missing piece or two but those bits were readily work around-able. I still wonder how I'm even able to breathe without him.

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

There’s a shit-ton in this slim volume that I’m skipping past but there are many passages that make me shout (only inside my head – really hate to scare fellow fliers and shit) YES! EXACTLY.

'scuse me – gonna dive back into Mr. Lewis' world now.