Recently I read the phrase "resurrect by recitation" to describe that frantic task, the collecting of memories and evidence of existence that all those who grieve perform. I spent the initial few weeks doing that. I dug out every scrap of paper and gift of handwriting that I could find and replayed his happy voice mail at least 200 times. What I have amounts to 3 blue mercury glass candlesticks, one book (Swamplandia which really is a good read), a Tiffany ice bucket he thought for some reason that I must have, some pictures, a few cards and a student newspaper article which he authored. It would all fit in the Tiffany blue box probably.
Collection complete, I told everyone who would listen all the best parts of my friend. This year I thought a lot about what any of us might have done or said that would have bought a few more days at least with my funniest, smartest, friend, the one who read presidential biographies, took me to my first Gay Pride parade and imitated Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island in a swim shirt 3 sizes too small when we went sailing. I unearthed memories from college, wrote emails to his nieces and sister about them, might have engaged in some criminal breaking and entering to understand the situation better and then played Tim Chaisson's tune "The Healing" on repeat in my car whenever the waves of grief hit me until I was all cried out.
Mostly, and very importantly, I spent a lot of time blaming. I blamed anyone - from all the people who injured my darling friend in even the slightest of ways to the one closest to him who caused him to feel abandoned and rejected after years of selfless support and encouragement. I blamed drugs and alcohol and the devil called Addiction. I blamed a cultural intolerance for homosexuality. No person was spared from blame. I blamed myself for not being enough, for not seeing things clearly, for not being there when he needed to be rescued. My fury was a hot venom I spewed on anyone who could suffer through a conversation with a devastated, left behind person and I knew it. But it felt good. It felt better sometimes than getting better would have.
I know the way that I write sometimes sounds like I know more than other people about how to live well, but if you absorb nothing else, hear me when I say I have no better idea about how to move through loss than anyone else. I'm willing though, to show you my despair (as Mary Oliver would say) in hopes that you could show me yours when you need to. And maybe it will help somehow to do this together.
It's possible that my own despair had reached it's limits when I finally dreamed of my friend Brad. I'd spent days in an untethered sort of state with the phrase, "where are you where are you where are you" running through my mind and maybe my subconscious synapses finally decided to relieve me or maybe something more ethereal occurred - whatever the source, I'm grateful. The only way to describe my state on that night is to say that the weight of Brad's absence in my dream was an unbearable and writhing agony, an hours long wrestling with despair in the darkness. This heaviness of loss sat on my chest and my keening took all of my breath until he simply appeared in his red, cashmere sweater. Smiling, with no trace of the anxiety and discomfort he'd lived with all the years I'd known him, he opened his arms and held me as I wept. He didn't speak, but his embrace warmed me with the assurance that he was near, safe, and finally at peace and that I would be okay soon enough. I could still feel the warmth of his sweater when I awoke. I've seen a new day about 300 more times since that dream and I still hate that he's gone, but that assurance I felt was as real as my misery and as true as my friendship with him and since then I've had no other inclination but to sit and wait as many seasons as it takes for the healing.
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