Tomorrow is the anniversary of the night my mom died. January 22nd. What do you do on an anniversary like that? I've tried eating foods she liked. Ruebens and french onion soup. Putting pictures of her out. Lighting a candle. Buying flowers. Going out. Staying in. Calling Maureen and Howie. Calling my sister. Waiting for 7:30, hoping a book will fall off the shelf or the clock will stop. Nothing ever happens. It's just another day. But it's a day I dread anyway. I feel anxious as it approaches and nervous when the day arrives.
Joseph always asks if I want to do anything special. He always lights a candle. This year he has decided to make pizza and invited some friends over. I just want ice cream. I guess if I drank I might drink myself into a stupor. Maybe I should buy some Oreos. I can have a cup of tension tamer tea with my ice cream.
It is a day I leave empty on the calender, like her birthday. Her birthday is June 18th, an easier day to find something to do. I've taken to making that day a gardening day, buying a new flowering plant for the yard, spending part of the day with my hands in the dirt, being outside.
I wonder where she is. When she died I asked everyone what they thought happens when someone dies. Where do they go? I read some books. I went to go see a terrible medium who told me that my mom loved cut flowers and always had them around the house. Who doesn't love cut flowers? She didn't always have them around but I told the medium she was right anyway. I left and cried in my car.
The greatest thing anyone said to me about death was my boyfriend, Brad. He had recently graduated from Cooper Union's architecture program. His mind worked in this really beautiful way that was sort of abstract and concrete at the same time. Like an abstract structure built in concrete. Everything was spiritual and solid at the same time. When I asked him what he thought happens when you die, he thought about it for a second and then said, "I don't know but I know there is a lot of death in life so I think there must be a lot of life in death." This made a great deal of sense to me. It was an idea I could believe in without understanding. And it comforted me.
It just about drove me crazy trying to figure out life and death. A year after she died, I had moved to Long Beach on Long Island and lived a couple of blocks from the ocean. One night I walked to the beach, it was cold, I had a jacket on and long pants. I lay down in the sand and looked up at the stars in the sky, miserable, wishing a meteor would fall out of the sky and flatten me. A piece of sand got in my eye and I couldn't get it out. I was so angry, I had to get up and go home to try to deal with this sand in my eye. As I stomped through the dunes, back to the street, a thought came into my mind that was not my own. "You're not supposed to know." And all that turmoil that came along with trying to find an answer fell away like a heavy coat I had slipped off. And I let it go.
But I haven't stopped wondering.
I think that this life is like a train station. We arrive at the station from somewhere else, we meet people, we are reunited with people we love and haven't seen in a while, we do whatever it is we do and then our train comes and we have to get back on and go. Sometimes we hear our train announced and know it's coming, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we turn around and the person we were talking to is gone, aboard their train to wherever they are off to next.
I hope this is a small part of what it's all about. This life. I feel like my experience here is limited by my senses. That I am zoomed in so much that I can't see the big picture and if I could zoom out far enough, it would all make sense.
I haven't put out any pictures this year. I haven't done anything. I was too busy thinking about ice cream and writing this blog. I forgot to do anything. It's okay. I don't think she minds and if she does I'm sure I won't hear about it. Maybe tomorrow I'll pull out some pictures.
I don't want to. I really don't. I feel so tired of it. I think this year it is enough to be writing. Joseph will light a candle. I wish there was something that I could do that would feel "right". But nothing does. The whole day just feels wrong. I feel like kicking stones.
Joseph always asks if I want to do anything special. He always lights a candle. This year he has decided to make pizza and invited some friends over. I just want ice cream. I guess if I drank I might drink myself into a stupor. Maybe I should buy some Oreos. I can have a cup of tension tamer tea with my ice cream.
It is a day I leave empty on the calender, like her birthday. Her birthday is June 18th, an easier day to find something to do. I've taken to making that day a gardening day, buying a new flowering plant for the yard, spending part of the day with my hands in the dirt, being outside.
I wonder where she is. When she died I asked everyone what they thought happens when someone dies. Where do they go? I read some books. I went to go see a terrible medium who told me that my mom loved cut flowers and always had them around the house. Who doesn't love cut flowers? She didn't always have them around but I told the medium she was right anyway. I left and cried in my car.
The greatest thing anyone said to me about death was my boyfriend, Brad. He had recently graduated from Cooper Union's architecture program. His mind worked in this really beautiful way that was sort of abstract and concrete at the same time. Like an abstract structure built in concrete. Everything was spiritual and solid at the same time. When I asked him what he thought happens when you die, he thought about it for a second and then said, "I don't know but I know there is a lot of death in life so I think there must be a lot of life in death." This made a great deal of sense to me. It was an idea I could believe in without understanding. And it comforted me.
It just about drove me crazy trying to figure out life and death. A year after she died, I had moved to Long Beach on Long Island and lived a couple of blocks from the ocean. One night I walked to the beach, it was cold, I had a jacket on and long pants. I lay down in the sand and looked up at the stars in the sky, miserable, wishing a meteor would fall out of the sky and flatten me. A piece of sand got in my eye and I couldn't get it out. I was so angry, I had to get up and go home to try to deal with this sand in my eye. As I stomped through the dunes, back to the street, a thought came into my mind that was not my own. "You're not supposed to know." And all that turmoil that came along with trying to find an answer fell away like a heavy coat I had slipped off. And I let it go.
But I haven't stopped wondering.
I think that this life is like a train station. We arrive at the station from somewhere else, we meet people, we are reunited with people we love and haven't seen in a while, we do whatever it is we do and then our train comes and we have to get back on and go. Sometimes we hear our train announced and know it's coming, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we turn around and the person we were talking to is gone, aboard their train to wherever they are off to next.
I hope this is a small part of what it's all about. This life. I feel like my experience here is limited by my senses. That I am zoomed in so much that I can't see the big picture and if I could zoom out far enough, it would all make sense.
I haven't put out any pictures this year. I haven't done anything. I was too busy thinking about ice cream and writing this blog. I forgot to do anything. It's okay. I don't think she minds and if she does I'm sure I won't hear about it. Maybe tomorrow I'll pull out some pictures.
I don't want to. I really don't. I feel so tired of it. I think this year it is enough to be writing. Joseph will light a candle. I wish there was something that I could do that would feel "right". But nothing does. The whole day just feels wrong. I feel like kicking stones.
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