Why is it harder than I thought? It's not what it looks like.
I feel at peace.
Reasonably happy.
I look forward to the day and the people it will bring.
This means I find it hard to remember.
(There are days when remembering is not a choice I have to make: such as when it was S's birthday and I thought of last year when we took the last photographs of Appa. Later that evening, when S, his father and I drove back my car from the service station, I cried all the way back because this was what Appa used to do with me - bring his car so I didn't have to take an auto or walk, wait until I got my car and drive back behind me.)
How does it matter? Forgetting is good, right? If the details are getting blurred it means that time is doing its famous healing job (why does time not heal the old when they are still alive?) and I have nothing to do but wait.
I don't see it like that. I see this one year as the last time it will ever be the first time without Appa. Once we've crossed this line, what else is there but repetition and the boredom of it? If there is an edge left, it is now and if I don't keep it next to my skin I must be doing Appa a disservice.
I feel pulled apart in several different directions. There's no time left. At least, not much of it.
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5 comments:
Have you read Joan Didion's book,
The Year of Magical Thinking? This first year with each significant day without the loved one- it is so hard to get through.
'If only time could heal the old while they are still alive'- such a huge 'if only'. I see myself as so helpless in the face of time vis a vis my parents.
Perhaps the greatest gift you can give your son, your mother, your father's memory and yourself is to allow yourself to heal, somehow.
Let this terrible year get over.
Much love.
Once we've crossed this line, what else is there but repetition and the boredom of it?
You will be surprised. And you are doing no disservice. Trust me.
(I am almost frightened to read that Didion book. It's been sitting there in my collection for more than a year, but I somehow feel reading it will corrupt my thoughts and emotions with more borrowed ideas...)
Dipali: I got it and started to read it a year ago but then I abandoned it. It was too painful, too soon. Someday perhaps, I will read it but not now.
(My mother did and she fell and stayed ill for at least ten days after it. It was too soon.)
km: Yes, I guess I will find out. About the Didion: I think once one has taken the time to figure out what one's own idea really are, it is no longer a question of borrowing. More a dialogue of ideas.
Of course, that sounds remarkably like another trap.
I'm so sorry to hear that reading that book made your mother ill.
I read it several months after losing my brother, on my sister-in-law's recommendation.
There is so much I'd like to share about my brother's death, but I cannot bring myself to write about it on my blog. Maybe a private space. I don't know.
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