death

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The Dying Man Refuses Clothes / L’uomo In Fin Di Vita Rifiuta i Vestiti

A poem from Certain asAfternoon/Certa Come il Pomeriggio. First in English, following in Italian.  The sample copy of the book is here and is being edited now.  Watch for a live link this month.

The Dying Man Refuses Clothes

in this poem
the dying man
refuses clothes

we try to cover him
with a towel
a cloth

he pushes it
away
he wants
nothing

he is not ashamed
of dying
or being naked

the sisters-in-law
in the poem
turn away

the doctor comes
into the poem
to reason with him

the dying man
asks for
lemon ice cream
smiles with his
teeth and
deep dark eyes

 

L’uomo In Fin Di Vita Rifiuta i Vestiti

in questa poesia
l’uomo in fin di vita
rifiuta i vestiti

cerchiamo di coprirlo
primo con un asciugamano
poi con un lenzuolo

lui lo respinge
non vuole
niente

non si vergogna
né di morire
né di essere nudo

le cognate
nella poesia
voltano le loro facce

arriva il dottore
nella poesia per
ragionare con lui

l’uomo in fin di vita
chiede
gelato al limone
sorride con i suoi
denti e i suoi
occhi scuri profondi

 

Certain as Afternoon / Certa Come il Pomeriggio
coming without a doubt
in arrivo senza dubbio

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Whole Fennel/Finocchio Intero

This poem, from Certain as Afternoon, is a the story of a day.   I talk to myself in this poem, explaining to myself what happens on the day Pio is in the hospital for tests, and he calls me to tell me the bad news I have already intuited. Why must I tell myself about it? Because you have to explain things to yourself over and over as you try to understand, open, make room for everything.

In Certain as Afternoon, the voice in the poems moves around.  It switches between pages from first person to second and to third.  The voice speaks to me.  It speaks to you.  It speaks to the one who is dying.  Sometimes the voice speaks to the poem.  Sometimes the voice becomes the poem.  It sounds complicated, but really it isn’t.

First in English, dopo in Italiano.

 

Whole Fennel

when he calls you
on the phone
from the Policlinico to
tell you he is
dying, you say
alright
and
i’ll be there soon

then you go to the
park and walk,
order the trees
not to let you
cry. you don’t want
him to see you with
red eyes and
puffy lids

you stop at the
mercato for his favorites
prosciutto crudo and
whole fennel

it isn’t going to be today,
anyway

at the hospital you will
sit together at a
table in the sun
eat sandwiches

share fennel and
both wonder
if it is true

 

Finocchio Intero

quando lui ti chiama
al telefono
dal Policlinico per
dirti che sta
morendo, tu dici
va bene
e
arrivo subito

poi vai al
parco e cammini,
preghi agli alberi
di non farti
piangere. non vuoi che
lui ti veda con gli
occhi rossi e
gonfi

ti fermi al mercato a prendere
i suoi spuntini preferiti
prosciutto crudo e
finocchio intero

comunque
non sarà oggi

all’ospedale vi
siederete insieme ad un
tavolo al sole
mangerete dei panini

condividirete il finocchio e
vi chiederete
tutti e due
se è vero

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Los Robles Jalan Rayos

maybe gerardo was right.
maybe there is something sinister
after all about the robles,
those twisted branches
bewitched with luscious
humid blooms in the
driest sun of february’s
scalding curse

he always said
los robles jalan rayos and
i rolled my eyes
but now i wonder.
the robles were blooming their
wicked flowers
when i knew
something was wrong

you tried not to be sick
but i saw the night sweats.
i remembered jenna who had them
before she died
and your skin’s undertone
went from peach to blue.
i saw it,
while on the robles
impossible flowers surged from gnarled twigs
and fell
from the sapphire colored sky

 

 

 

 

 

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Not to Hide

Silence

This is the end of a year of silence. I didn’t set out to experience a year of silence, but I also promised not to require anything of myself other than keeping my job and feeding the cats. A year of of much silence is what came to me. It was necessary and beautiful in a fearsome way.

Walking out of it, I feel nothing like the person who walked into it. I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s true.

 

2017

In 2017, I lost everything. Not “lost” like I don’t know where I put it–“lost” as in my whole life lifted off the planet like water vapor and disappeared into the sky. You know that story already. Until the beginning of June 2017, I had one life. It vanished and was replaced, first by another completely different life in a country with a language I barely spoke, and then replaced again. Replaced the second time by a life back in my familiar country but in a strange house with a reconfigured job, and a new silence.

So. Very. Much. Silence.

I learned to inhabit it.

 

2018

2018 has been a quiet year. Very quiet. Everything happened. Nothing happened. I don’t really know. If I try to make a cohesive, sensible tale out of all of it, my head begins to split down the middle, so I stop. It’s alright. I just tell you true stories as they come to me–maybe someday one of us will be able to make sense out of it all. Or at least some of it.

I have literally written volumes. Notebook after notebook, obsessively as if my life depends upon it. Maybe it does. Some of it is good, some of it isn’t–it doesn’t matter. I have to do it to keep from going mad. There is so much noise in my head and so much silence all around. Sometimes I start to cry and I don’t even know why. Sometimes I feel unnervingly happy. There’s just so much. So much everything. So much that is so important and so impossible. It’s a very big wind and I attempt to simply stand still in it. To take all of it and not fall.

And yes there is a book coming. Poems for the brave-hearted. It’s called “Certain as Afternoon.” Because everything that will happen is.

 

Fear

I’m not afraid.
I don’t feel weak, either.
I feel inexplicably strong.
Like one of those giant cenizaros that hum with bees when they bloom.
Like that.
A blooming kind of “strong.”

I literally do not know what I want.
Maybe I am afraid to want anything for fear of losing it.
That would be a reasonable fear for me to have, all things considered.
But I just said I wasn’t afraid, so what is this confession?
Not afraid, perhaps, of anything that can come from the outside.
But raw as as a fresh wound on the inside.
Yes.
That.
I’m more afraid of me than I am of you.

 

Resolutions

I don’t do New Years resolutions any more. When I used to do them, I always resolved the same things: to write more, to eat less, to be kinder. I don’t have any other ideas. But if I wrote any more than I do right now, I’d have to quit my job. If I ate any less, I would blow away in the wind. If I was any kinder, I seriously hope someone would tie me to a tree and go get help.

But maybe I do have a resolution for 2019. I resolve not to hide. Why do I feel like bursting into tears when I write that? Because hiding is safe and I am good at it?

Well I won’t do it.

I’m not broken anymore. Not most days, anyway. But I’m not sure I’m the same species of creature that I used to be. Something in me feels like it has the coiled strength of a waiting tiger–motionless and not at all delicate. And I’m pretty sure I have butterfly wings, playful, bright, and fragile. I don’t know what you call a thing like that. I don’t know how you be a thing like that. What does it eat? Where does it sleep?  Will people be afraid of it?

 

Water

It’s like surfing. Everything is. Life is. Every day you paddle out into it, whatever it is. Some days you wait and wait for absolutely nothing. Some days you get cold and you want to go home. Some days the sets are so big and so terrible all you can do is paddle straight at them with all your might and pray to God that the hit, when it comes, won’t be as bad as it looks. Some days you ditch the board and dive for the bottom. And some days everything is right, including you, and it all comes together so perfectly you can’t decide if you more want to laugh or cry. I like those days. I have some like that. I have all the kinds. You don’t get to pick.

You pick whether or not to get in the water.

I’m in.

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Poem For the Cave

(A love poem for a dark place that ceases to be terrifying when it becomes familiar.  I call it The Cave.)

o deep black
space of silence,
place before time,
dark lung that
pulls us in with the air.
this is where we must
find our way
without sight,
the place where the eye
cannot speak and
only our crying echoes
to show us the
shape of our
sorrow.
the texture of air in our
clutching fingers
is so thin and strange.

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Dawning

Something is going on with me. After a year of what may have looked not-so-bad on the outside but was really deep mourning on the inside, something is happening. It is not something I am doing. I have done many things, but this one is not starting inside me and moving out. This one is coming to me from the outside in, and I am observing it, witnessing it.

To tell you you about it, here are 3 things as they were born from my pen into my journal on 3 separate days, all in the month of November. Turn off Grammar Correct. It’s choppy, but if you hold on, it will get you there.

 

ONE

I feel Pio. Calling me to be alright already. To be happy. To knock it off. To open and close and hold on and let go and be ok. To live. To open my closed hands. To honor him by being joyful and free and engaged with/in my life. With Life.

That is not coming from me. I want to hide and pine and ponder and pontificate and gestate and all. He says no. I am in between these two things, both pulling.

 

TWO

I went to an intense yoga class and then I laid on the floor and understood Everything.

Thankfulness. For Pio. For what we had. For what he was.

For Life that we have while we have it. And we all move into it and out of it, all of us. All. And it isn’t fair to sulk or to be bitter that someone moved out of it before we wanted, because we didn’t will them into it in the first place, and none of us belong to anything but Life.

Pio didn’t belong to me. He belonged to Life.

And when he is gone the world, the planet, cannot keep him. I cannot keep any more of him than what he has planted in me. When we are gone no one can keep us.

There is so much beauty moving in and out of our lives all the time. Pio wants me to experience the beautiful things and people that are with me now today in life, and not hate the space he isn’t filling.

It is inconceivable that he left his life and I am here, but I am because there are things I must do and be. In the end, no one remains unforgotten except Jesus and Shakespeare and Genghis Khan. So all of us–all of us–are like flowers and grass. We have to be beautiful while we can and that is our calling and our blessing.

And we must be open-hearted and open-handed and grateful for everything we have, and not expect not to lose things. Because everything is coming and going and only mountains remain to see it all.

I will never “find anyone like him” again because no one else is supposed to be like him. My beauty and happiness is mine, not created by him or by anyone else. It is mine and comes from me.

Things and people that I love and want may come to me. And go from me. Because my life is not The Main Storyline. The Main Storyline is so big and so long I cannot know it all.

 

THREE

I don’t want to call it a “rebirth” or “moving on” or any of the other words or phrases other people use. What is it? It’s like a fog lifting? No. The fog is there. It’s like developing a 7th sense to see/perceive through the fog.

Yes. Like developing a 7th sense. I guess that’s supposed to be 6th sense, ha ha!, but I think I already have #6. The 6th Sense is knowing on this plane, across time/space barriers. Maybe this really is Sense #7: a sense that can “see” through the fog and perceive the depth of time and space where you and the Lost One both are, but in different forms.

And this form is/was only temporary, anyway.

And no one ever really belongs to anyone else. All of us are Life’s gifts to itself. And where we came from and where we are going, who knows? But before our lives was Forever, and after is even longer, and this life was only ever going to be a flash in the pan for any of us. Whether it’s 100 days or 100 years.

This is dawning on me. That is all I can say. It is coming upon me slowly and silently out of out of deep night like a dawn. That none of us knew would come. Much less how or when.

But you have to Do All the Things during the night. You have to listen to the voice of the deep space and wait for the echo to tell you where the bottom of it is. The echo never comes, but you must wait. And while you wait comes the dawn.

I have a peace now and an understanding. It doesn’t wash away loneliness; it sits with it. This peace and this loneliness sit together. They form together in the dark like twins. There is no way to explain these things. The only thing to do is wait for them and when they come, take them in.

Walk. Stop eating. Watch the stars. Sleep with them. Pay attention. Do not stop crying.  Because you have to let go. Not of love or of pain. Of the illusion of belonging. You have to let go. Of ownership.  Nothing is yours. Nothing ever was. Even you are only being lent to your life for now.

He was never really mine. That much has always been clear if you dare to see it. He came to me to give me pizza and laughter and self-confidence and olive oil and the Italian language and 2 step-kids, a trip through the dark side and into the light, 5 years in Washington with my sister, and a motorcycle. But he would freaking kick my ass if he saw me sitting around crying for him now.

He would want me to have become more beautiful, stronger, more self-confident than ever before for having spent 14 years with him. That is what he would want. That’s what Life would want.

All of this is dawning on me. I am not doing this. I am passive; it is active. It is coming on its own over me. In the dark, I did The Work. Now it is dawning.

Yes I watched the tragedy of how he died. But if he was not angry and did not hold back from it, why should I? He told me he knew I would be alright. And I am. I feel in some ways ashamed to say it because I fear it might sound like I am falling out of love with him. I am not. But peace is coming to me like a slow dawn.

And we aren’t so far away from each other after all, are we, amore mio? Not really.

 

AFTERWARD

I stopped and cried a few times while I was writing that last one just the other day. They weren’t exactly sad tears, just the manifestation of tremendous amounts of emotion in the absence of adequate words.

The only reason I can think of that I should have been chosen for these things is because I am the one who will always bear witness, who will do The Work, tell the stories, carve the totem poles. For you. For the day a story will save your life.

Look, now. You see? The sky is beginning to lighten.

 

Pio in Mexico, on top of the world. Late 1990s.

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Slowly Like Snow

you said take me home
to the sea and
i promised
i would

neither of us imagined then
on those last days of
pain patches and tireless visitors
the weight
of a carry-on bag
with ashes

i tried to lift it
into the space above
my seat on the plane but
couldn’t
the gentleman who helped
eyed me strangely

when the plane took off pointing
toward the endless Atlantic, i
reached for your hand
i really did
but your hand wasn’t there
it was in tiny pieces in
the overhead compartment
and i had only air
to hold on to

i cried then
as we lifted
everyone could see me

you said take me home
to the sea
and i promised

i went down into the water
with your teeth and
your bones pressed into
my skin
and watched
as the tiny pieces
fell slowly like snow
around me

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Lambrate

Lambrate.

I find it on Google maps. It’s on the other side of Milan.

I’ve never been to a crematorium. The only picture I have in my mind of a crematorium is Auschwitz, and I know this is not going to be like that. But I know what happens in crematoriums and I know that my husband is there. His ashes are there. How is this possible?

I’ve waited for 29 days. 29 terrible days. First the sickness, over in 4 months. Then the death with the futile fight at the end. Then 29 days of waiting for ashes, for the legal papers that will release them to me for international travel. He told me and everyone that he wanted to go home to the ocean in Costa Rica after this was over, for the remains of his destroyed body to end in the ocean. So I wait.

I have an app on my phone that tells me how to get anywhere I want to go in Italy using public transportation. It tells me which buses and metros I need to take to get to Lambrate. The public transport system is easy. I’ve been in Italy now for 5 months–I’m not a beginner. I’m concerned about which side of the street to catch the bus on, but I have extra tickets so if I catch it going the wrong way, I can get off and wait for the same-numbered bus on the other side.  It would’t be the first time.  I am more worried about choosing the right stop to get off the bus. How will I know? And, provided I pick the right stop, how will I find the cemetery where the crematorium is located? I don’t expect giant signs to advertise it. Am I going to have to stop strangers to ask the way? What if I cannot speak?

I find the bus stop. It’s cold here on the shady side of the street. I’m early. I’m sick to my stomach–sick with fear that something will go wrong, that I’m supposed to bring some type of document that I don’t have. I have nothing in my hands except my passport. My brother-in-law told me that the funeral parlor said they have taken care of everything and all I need to do is go with my ID. Everything is ready. I do not have any faith that this is true. But I have nothing to bring. So I am empty-handed with an exploding heart and a knotted gut.

If they tell me I must leave without his ashes I will crumble to the floor and they will have to carry me out. I know it. I have nothing left. I can’t anymore.

My attention shifts back to the present. To the street corner I am standing on, to the thin stripe of sun I am trying to stand in, to the growing group of passengers around me waiting for the Lambrate bus.

Suddenly a chilly wave of relief sweeps over me, something warm like love kindles in the center of my frozen chest, and I know I am going to be alright. I will find the right bus and I will know the right stop to get off. I will find the cemetery and the crematorium.

I know this because I realize that I am standing in a growing cluster of old women. Furrowed faces, pea coats, gray hair, gnarled hands. In their arms, they carry flowers.

On this lost street corner in Milan on the last morning of October, my new tribe surrounds me. These are my people. Each of these grandmothers, one day, has done what I am doing–made her first trip to the cemetery at Lambrate. We are widows. We are waiting in the damp sun-striped shade to go to our husbands. I am the youngest, the newest. I have arrived earlier than usual to this place, to a bus stop on the route to Lambrate. There are men among us also, solemn-faced and wrapped in scarves, but largely, we are women.

The time is wrong. The place is right. I am in good company and will not be lost. I am not alone. My pain, perhaps fresher, belongs to all of us. I am home here in this unfamiliar place.

When the bus comes, I get on and stand in the aisle, allowing the seats for my elders. I stare out the window  at the ancient city as we travel, trying to breathe, envious of the serenity of the women and of the flowers. When the bus slows and the hunched passengers stand, I follow them out the door and down the street, through the gates of the cemetery at Lambrate, and follow signs to the crematorium.

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More di Gelso

i nonni stanno piantando
i fagiolini li
nei loro giardini al Parco
dei Fontanili
i pesci sono tornati
a nuotare nel fiumetto
sotto il ponte
la lavanda comincia a
fare i fiori violi, profumando
l’aria, chiamando gli appi
ma tu dove sei

eri qui, ne sono sicura
avevamo camminato qua
insieme a la mano
guardando i piccoli fiori del castagno
rubando le more di gelso

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Purple is Like That

I’m supposed to be shamelessly promoting my book that’s soon coming out, but this week it’s not going to happen.

Instead, it’s time for another letter from the road nobody wants to travel on. Nine months in. Yeah.  You say, “Oh that’s so fast. How can it be 9 months? It seems like yesterday!”  I say, “Lucky you.” It must be nice.

I don’t really like the word “Grief” because I don’t understand it.  Just the word sounds like throwing up.  It makes me picture someone crying so much they can’t move.  Which, for me, is not one of my choices.  It’s spoken of as if it were a sickness you come down with then get over, yet often referred to as a “journey.” Maybe it is like a sickness—I don’t know. I’ll let you know if I get over it. But it’s the only word we have for being really sad for a long time about something big, so I guess I’ll have to break down and use it.

This is what I want to tell you about Grief, in case you come down with it too, someday, or you have another, less-vocal, friend who gets bitten by the bug:

1. The “journey” metaphor does not work for me AT ALL.  At least not so far.

I love all trips categorically–heck, I even like getting on the bus–but I do not like this one bit.  Geez. If this reveals itself later to have been a journey, I’ll let you know, but for right now can we not refer to this as some type of trip or pilgrimage I have decided to take?  Pretty please?  It’s more like a case of malaria.  If this is a journey, it is The Trail of Tears.  It is a forced exodus from a war-torn country.  It does not feel like being on a journey. It feels like being suspended in time.

2. You get used to things.

I’ve said this already, but here it is again. You get used to things you cannot imagine you could get used to. You just do. Walking in the door and talking to an empty house. Doing absolutely everything for yourself. Eating by yourself. Taking up the whole bed. You get used to the person who’s not there being not-there. You get used to trying to remember what it was like when they were.

You also get used to doing whatever the hell you feel like whenever you feel like with or without a good reason. It’s very selfish. It might be the only perk. You never have to share anything or explain yourself. You just leave when you want to go home, buy something because you feel like it, pour another glass of wine or skip it entirely. Nobody asks you anything. You can go to bed ridiculously early if you haven’t got anything better to do.

3. Being around the wrong people is worse than not being around the right person.

Make no mistake: People in the middle of Grief are not necessarily desperate for company. Or maybe that’s just me being a Scorpio. I wouldn’t know. I’m just saying: being alone is not the worst thing. Not just any human being is a suitable replacement for the one who’s gone. A person experiencing grief may not want to be alone. Or they may prefer it to any other option they can think of. Don’t take it personally. If you propose something and your grieving friend gives a weird answer that sounds a little like they might be putting you off, they probably are. Maybe this is because we get used to being selfish.

You might need way more down time than before.  I can become thoroughly miserable if I give myself something to do every night of the week.  It’s too much.  I just need more space between things.  And at 9 months, I am WAY better at this than at first!  Oh man.  Way better.  At first, I needed a day of hibernation for every hour out of the house.  Emotional overload is like dengue fever–it takes a long time to get your strength back and it doesn’t come all at once.

4. You don’t want people to pity you.

I will say that I make/have made a concerted effort not to seem pathetic. Sometimes I feel pathetic, but It’s not ok with me to show it. I save pathetic moments for when it’s just me and the cats. I don’t mind appearing to be sad, but I don’t want to inspire pity for any reason. That bothers me.

5. You never mind talking about it.

I’m checking back in on this subject. I remember writing before that it doesn’t bother me to talk about Pio. I expect it never will. I don’t mind talking about him when he was healthy or telling you about when was sick. It’s not like I forget about it when I’m talking about something else, right?  And no, I’m not going to lose it on you.  I don’t want you to pity me, remember?

6. Your life does not go on. It stops and starts over.

Lots of people, when they want to be encouraging, say things like, “Life goes on,” or talk about “Getting on with life.” This, in the literal sense is true. Life on the planet does indeed go on no matter what happens to any of us—there’s no arguing that. But YOUR life–when your husband dies or some such thing–your life as you know it? It’s as over has his is. And it would be nice if somebody would warn you about this, that way you will know you’re not going crazy when that’s the way you feel. It doesn’t mean you’re going to die now, too. It means that life is over and whatever happens next is going to be part of a different one. How you feel about that—whether you like it or not—is irrelevant. It just is. You’re welcome.

7. It’s very hard to reach out, so you hope other people will.

This is another one I’m better at now than I was at first, but I’m including it in the list because it belongs here.  It takes more nerve to reach out to people than it did before, even for a extrovert like me.  A person in my shoes is probably not going to call you, ask you how you are, and see if you want to go out to lunch. Because you have a life, and what if you’re busy? I don’t want you to have to tell me no. Or say you’ll call me back and then you don’t. I would rather eat my sandwich in peace and not set myself up for disappointment. I’m not going to ask, and then ask again.

When your friend is having a time of Grief, it’s your turn, and it might be for a long time.  And if they make some lame-sounding excuse, it’s ok.  Try again later.  It might just not be the right day.  Or the right week.

8.  You get pretty good at the art of being happy and sad at the same time.

Maybe they’re opposites on the vocab test, but in real life, they’re not.  In real life, they’re like red and blue:  when you mix them, they make new color.   That’s the color of your new life.  Just because one day you’re happy doesn’t mean you’re “over it.”  And because two days later you’re having a complete and unexpected meltdown doesn’t mean you weren’t really happy, then.  Happy things can make you very sad.  Sad things can be very comforting.  It’s ok.  Purple is like that.

 

That’s what I can tell you from here, 9 months after my life stopped and started over.  And I have one last piece of advise for you when talking to your friend who has lost something immense:

Do not say “If you need anything let me know.” Have I mentioned this? Either offer something concrete, or say, “Have a nice day.” This invitation to “anything,” certainly stated with all benevolent intent, is SO ANNOYING. What exactly is it supposed to mean? It’s so open, it means nothing. Is it an offer of money? I don’t think so. You’ll drive me to the hospital if I get bitten by a snake? If I run out of milk or eggs you’ll be right over?  I should call you instead of the fire department if my house catches on fire? I don’t get it.

Try again.  You want to offer something? Offer it. Hey, do you need a ride to the grocery store? Wow, my lemon tree is loaded to the ground—want some? Want to have breakfast tomorrow morning? Need anything from the hardware store? Those offers I can manage. But that “ask me for anything” thing—it doesn’t work. At all. I will probably not ask you for anything, even when I need something. And you probably know that.  I will probably just figure it out on my own.  Which, unavoidably, is the New Normal.

 

 

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Watch the Horizon (A Picture of Time)

I go out surfing in the morning. The ocean is warm and crystal clear–so clear I can see the ripples in the sand two or three meters below my feet as I sit on my board. Waiting. All I do is wait. I wait and wait and wait. I had no idea you could wait so long and still have so much time left. To wait.

The sun climbs. Sets of waves come. When I’m surfing I’m thinking about surfing. That’s all. Watching the horizon for a movement or a slight change in color that means the next set it coming. No more, no less. Most of surfing is waiting. For waves. For the right wave. For the right moment to paddle and stand. At least when I’m surfing, I know what I’m waiting for. Maybe that’s why it’s so much of a relief. Sometimes I surf well, sometimes I don’t. Sooner or later I’m thinking about breakfast.

I ride back to the shore and lay on the sand. Above me in the blue are clouds. I think about water. So much water. In me, around me, above me. I think about Pio and how he filled up with water. I think about how ashes are what’s left of a person when all of the water is gone. I wish it would rain on me right now and the water would be him. The same molecules. I supposed it’s not impossible.

Everything aches. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little.

Eight months have gone by. Compared to the whole rest of my life, it’s nothing. It’s already been an eternity. I wait and wait and wait. As if, if I wait long enough… What? He will come back? I don’t think so. He’ll send me some kind of sign? For what? I’ll die too? Well there’s hardly any debating that. But is that what I’m waiting for? I don’t know. I’m waiting to find out what I’m waiting for. It’s taking such a long time.

I look at pictures of us and we have the same eyes. We have the same hair. I look at us and now I see why some said we looked like siblings. At the hospital in the last days, Pio’s roommate thought he was my father.

Time is not obeying the rules. Or maybe I’m finally learning to understand it. It doesn’t just go, it stands still, thick as giant waves of salt water. A friend tells me I seem to be moving forward. I say I don’t know about that, but thanks. I say thanks because I can tell it was a compliment. I don’t want to move forward. I want to move backward and I can’t. I don’t want to do anything. So I wait. It doesn’t feel to me like I’m moving any direction. It’s the same day over and over and over. I wait for a different day, but every day when I wake up, it’s the same one. So I wait.

Waiting is hard work. When you don’t know how long you will have to do it. How hard it will rain, how much the wind will blow. When you don’t know what you are waiting for. But it’s the only thing that seems possible, so you do it.

I don’t know what “grief” means, how it’s different than just being sad. What it looks like. How you do it. I don’t know what “healing” means either, how it’s different than “feeling better.” I don’t want to feel better. Except when I’m surfing. It doesn’t go away, but you learn to live with it, another friend says. Wise words. I don’t want it to go away. I want to live with it. If my sadness goes away from me, there will be nothing left of me. I will be water vapor like Pio. Clouds and ashes.

I sleep deeply. On cool or rainy nights, the cats cry to be let under the mosquito net with me. We have the whole bed. I eat. Don’t worry about that. Then the morning comes and it’s the same day again. I don’t mean to say that I am bored or depressed. I don’t think I am either one. I’m drawing you a picture of time. Eight months. Is that a long time? I don’t know. It’s the same as 10 years. Is ten years a long time? Not really. Eight months is much longer. There’s no use asking how long I have to wait. Waiting is just waiting. Watching the horizon for a movement or a slight change in color.

    Pio and a friend waiting for waves on a flat day in 2009.