Life journeys

[dropcap custom_class="normal"]F[/dropcap]riday night my grandfather died. He was 92, and his passing was not unexpected, but every death takes its toll.

As I was searching around on the Interwebs yesterday morning for some solace, I found this quite amazing poem by Billy Collins, called "The Afterlife." It reminds me of my favorite part in the book The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, where "heaven" is each person's "simplest dreams." (And heaven changes and adapts as time passes.) I've always thought it was a beautiful idea.

Before heading home to be with my family, I will climb Pikes Peak tomorrow — the culmination of one small journey of my own. And I'll hike with Collins' words and my grandfather's legacy in mind.

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth, or riffling through a magazine in bed, the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They're moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. You go to the place you always thought you would go, the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors into a zone of light, white as a January sun. Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir and are singing as if they have been doing this forever, while the less inventive find themselves stuck in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God, a woman in her forties with short wiry hair and glasses hanging from her neck by a string. With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies of animals — eagles and leopards — and one trying on the skin of a monkey like a tight suit, ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness, little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves. He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins wishing they could return so they could learn Italian or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain. They wish they could wake in the morning like you and stand at a window examining the winter trees, every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

Paris, on hold

I had planned to come back to my blog after two weeks traveling in France and write about the trip. Post a few of the hundreds of photos I took. Share the total number of miles my husband and I walked (a lot). But I came back to the sad fact that my almost-18-year-old orange tabby cat Tai was dying — and so France, and the details of it, shall wait. My brain is not there.

I'm not sure where my brain is. Perhaps protecting itself? This morning I went to Target. I didn't take a written list, and in my grief, I spent an hour and half wandering every aisle of the store in the hopes that I would remember why I was there. Toilet paper. Check. Sponges. Check. Wrapping paper for a good friend's birthday gift. Check.

Paper towels? Nope. A card for the same birthday-celebrating friend? Nope.

Kleenex? Yes. I did remember the Kleenex. Thankfully, because we're completely out after days of crying.

Grief is a weird thing. It comes and goes. Sometimes like slow ocean waves. Sometimes like a flood. And the tears rush in and rush out the same such way. (Hence, the all-important extra-soft Kleenex.) Sometimes it pushes you forward to go, go, go. And sometimes, even standing up from the couch feels painful. Grief cares not where you are (in the car, at a party, in the shower) or what you are doing (wandering Target). It sets its own priorities for releasing itself.

And so, I know I cannot ignore the Tai-sized hole in my heart. But perhaps as the days pass, I can fill it with more memories than tears.

***

Below you'll find what I wrote earlier this morning to tell friends about my dear Tai. Rest in peace, my sweet baby.

Tai (June-ish 1996 to April 3, 2014)

Tai. My-Tai. Sweet Potato Tai. ’Tato-Tai. Punkin’. I can’t even list all the names our little Tai picked up over the years.

G and I adopted this sweet orange tabby from the former Humane Society facility in February of 1997. The vet thought she was about nine months then and she’s spent the last 17-some years growing old with us. She was my first cat ever, our first pet as a couple. And within a day or two of adopting her, she got really sick. Like slept-23-hours-a-day, we’re-not-sure-she’s-gonna-make-it sick. We tried numerous medicines. The third one finally kicked in, and neither one of us had ever seen so much snot come out of a tiny sneezing cat. (We’re pretty sure that the bathroom in our rental house never really recovered.)

Over the years, we learned that she loved cheese, any kind. Open the fridge and pull out a plastic bag of shredded cheese, and within seconds you had a cat next to you. She even somehow knew when we had a brick of cheddar or a plastic container of feta. She adored small squishy balls and fabric mice. She’d pick them up and wander around the house making squawking noises with them in her mouth. She also was particularly fond of chasing and pouncing on beams of light, dozing in sunspots, and snuggling under “Tai Tents” that we’d make by bending our knees up under the bed blankets.

She was never much of a lap-sitter until a few years ago; from then on, it was hard to keep her off of us. She was our first cat, and our oldest, but the third we’ve had to say goodbye to over the past two years. I can’t say how much I miss her already and I just hope she meets Lexi and Bailey somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge.

Grieving at the edges

In the past week, three people died in the periphery of my day-to-day life — and since mid-January, a total of five. Each person was someone who I was not directly connected to, but who was important to someone important to me. How do you grieve these types of losses when, in my opinion, our society does not even know how to support those individuals struggling with what would be considered direct loss? Hell, we don't even like to talk about death.

I feel my friends' pain. And I mean feel it.

I'm completely exhausted.

Achy from my neck all the way down my back.

There is a heavy weight on my chest.

My right eye has been twitching off and on.

I took two three-hour naps this weekend. And when I got up this morning, after a brief meditation and yoga asana practice, all I really wanted to do was crawl back into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep the rest of my Monday away.

And yet I struggle myself with the "properness" of my taking time to grieve, to cry, to throw a tantrum like a 2-year-old. (Which, I'm not doing, but I certainly feel like doing. Adults really should have the option to act like this every now and again. But I digress...)

I also struggle with wanting to be there for my friends. All-in to help them with their own grieving, which is more important to me then dealing with mine — no matter how much I know there's truth to be found in the airplane oxygen mask analogy, or the concept of "you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others."

I have no answers today. Just putting some words out there.

Of course, maybe I do have one answer. Maybe, for me, this opening up is part of the grieving/healing process. So, thank you, whoever you may be out there, for allowing me this space.