(60) keeping time (tw: self-unaliving, m)
the ides of august come and go, come and go. tension builds throughout the summer, and i dread this seasonal change, the new school year. my sister m’s birthday is always inextricably linked with the anniversary of the last time we saw each other. it was the day before her 20th, which was the family party we hosted that inaugurated our home. it was the first and only time you’d ever be here.
things were starting to look brighter that second tuesday of september, seven years ago. after my annus horribilis, falling to the deepest pits of depression and SA and SI, surrendering myself completely since leaving big law that fateful may, there was the faintest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. we had just moved and settled, we had news of having perhaps received our scholarships to study abroad. but little did we know what lay ahead.
it was the morning of september 12th, and by then you were already dead. the first rain broke the summer heat, that morning, and i remember dancing barefoot in the kitchen in my pajamas, blasting antony & the johnsons with the windows open, smelling wet grass, holding a cup of lukewarm oolong tea in one hand, filming a silly instagram reel, while the dogs twirled by my side.
i went upstairs to change and the phone rang. and i remember the stupid little smile that i had on my stupid little face, maybe the first real smile in months, when i picked up and it was j.
“m died”
and i didn’t even feel a pit in my stomach, as the denial was so great that i just corrected j, nonchalant, and informed that i was surprised there had been an attempt, and asked at what hospital he was in
and j repeated himself
and i couldn’t come to terms with it, couldn’t convince myself of it, couldn’t, wouldn’t
and j droned on, explained how he had come to learn of the news, what were the plans for the terrible, immediate now, in that robotic voice of pain and shock and horror and grief yet to come, and i paid all the attention i could muster but didn’t register a hint of it, but proceeded to act
i got undressed and showered, i asked for a ride because although the grief hadn’t hit me and i felt enclosed in deep thick fog that muffled sound and emotion, and sometimes to this day i still find myself in that specific moment, that particular shower post-knowing — dumbfounded, stupid, shocked, and also naked, soapy, flat, fat, slippery, deflated, defeated, feeling physically as ridiculous as i felt inside, suds running through my body and droplets mixing with senseless tears in my face because i couldn’t feel my face, i didn’t feel anything at all save for overall stupidity, no, i didn’t feel or think anything at all
and then my ride came, since i was in no fit state to drive, and as i made my way to that equally dumb and stupid vigil at the doorstep of your building in that accursed lisbon apartment, in the street that i can longer drive through, while we stood as shomers, guarding your body until legal medicine would be so kind as to cut you down and take you, almost a whole day after having been found, i remember and also don’t remember the two long distance calls that i made to our dear friends who loved you, whose calls changed their lives just as much as j’s call changed mine.
and i got there and don’t remember much at all of the days of the week that came until services either, shrowded in a curtain of grief, made hazy by blessed weed that probably rolled me over and pulled me through until i was able to face the music, grapple mourning by the horns, a month or so later. and i remember at one point during that initial week of disbelief and coming to terms, sitting outside staring at the ocean, chain smoking with a, jc, and j, and jc put on sufjan stevens and it was the first time i listened to it and i broke down crying in a’s embrace
and then came the first terrible day of the wake, and getting stuck in traffick in lisbon after deciding to buy black sunglasses because everything j and i had felt improper, too sunny and lighthearted for the moment, and i had a nasty case of road rage and climbed out of our compact and physically whacked the hood of an expensive car in the opposite lane, and us getting lost on the way,
and i remember my right hand shook and trembled and i was unable to write that i loved you, always have, always will on that stupid flower card, on the stupid note that found its way to your coat, the stupid white bouquet of flowers that mingled with so many others and left that sweet decaying flower water smell mingling with the smell of what was left of you
and cigarettes at the front of the funeral home, saying stupid jokes, stupidly trying to comfort our friends for whom comfort was not possible, and the failed morning of your final services where murphy’s law won and everything that could happen happened, and j couldn’t iron his shirt, and jc got there late, and then we got lost, again, and when we arrived we were too late to spend a minute alone with what was left of you
and my heart breaking as i witnessed j and your friends being pallbearers of the cart from the eternal rest chapel to the church, deadly serious and somber, holding the bars as if holding for dear life, the final duty of love, and not hearing the service but crying snot and shooting tears, and gently but desperately holding your coffin and kissing the wood and whispering sweet nothings while you were being pushed away, and being flung to the arms of my current phd supervisor and decorating his coat with so much snot and tears, and being passed from one person to the next person, and being held together by so many friends
and getting your ashes that wintry cold sunday morning, and how horrified we were when your parents decided to pour them down the communal ash deposit, and how stupid we felt for not saying anything before, and your friends looking at me like i should have said something — but what could i do, scream? while they were whacking cinder and bones from the oversized urn, gritty, rasping and rattling the ceramic down to the place of final rest of what was left of you
and all of it feels stupid, and meagre, and dumb, and superficial, flaky and small. like cleaning your apartment, sorting through your belongings, putting clothes in a donation pile, and scavenging, pillaging, trying to safe-keep anything of significance that would mean saving a piece of you. finding hints and clues of your final moments, reading the final words you wrote. feeling your desperation, your dark. cursing you for not having called. cursing me for not having answered.
and another year turns to a close, the end of summer, august leaves me melancholic, now there are almost as many years of you as years without you, and you’ve made and ruined so many things for me, for us, and the grief we hold is a quintessential part of who i am and will always be, even if it doesn’t hurt as sharply or weigh as heavily now (we’ve grown strong around it), and sometimes it pains me to see we’ve grown past you, through you, beyond having and losing you
and if not long after i could still feel you, substantial, tangible, tactile, corporeal almost in reality, now you’ve definitely left and i can’t feel you at all, and i only sense what is left of you in me, in j, in our friends, in your family, in the memories, in the loss we share
and if there is a sense of duty in keeping time, bound to the sacred task of grief, it feels so stupid and dumb and ridiculous 7 years later to still be recanting and reliving the memories of your loss, of those fragile, fuzzy and crisp initial days, and yet they are fundamental, and guide me through so many decisions and processes, and i believe that they have saved me and so many others from the darkness that took you
(thank you)
and i am older now than you ever were or will be, and it feels like schroedinger’s truth sometimes: m died, we live, and the universe is the box that holds both these facts true
and also necessarily false at the same time, because there is another universe not that far from this one where i died and you lived, and that brings me some comfort to bear survivor’s guilt, the anchor and the buoy of my moral compass
how can this be?
f.