As it rains, for whatever reason, a moment of melancholy crosses my mind. I know, crazy, right? Me? But I roll with it, and sitting in this space, physically and emotionally, I reflect on how Linda died in a manner she dreaded, directly on multiple occasions, ever possibly having to endure.
And yet, it happened. Or... and then, it happened.
It makes me pause and wonder, as I have before, how might I go? Suddenly, without warning, perhaps with a debilitating pain of unimaginable intensity, or maybe gently succumbing to the sense of fainting without the couscous realization that there will be no return, at least not in this realm. Or diminishing gradually over months, if not years?
That this even crosses my mind is no surprise; it's been an aspect of my character for decades, primarily due to fear-based anxiety, until shortly before receiving that fateful phone call, setting Linda's countdown into motion as quickly as it did my response to the circumstances.
Sitting here in what was our house, yet never our shared vision of a home, I can't help but recall my struggles through the years to find a place and space amongst the wreckage where acceptance and agreement might have had a chance to take root.
In so many moments, typically while feeling my worst, immersed in an imposed sense of failure, abject guilt, and undue ownership of our combined disillusion, I'd have my dread, too. Dread that a day would come when she'd be gone without closure while I would forever regret not having succeeded in achieving that elusive peace between us I long believed possible.
And then her sister called. And then she was mentally gone for about 6 days post-op, while I gradually considered that dread was manifesting in real-time. And then she came back, briefly relatively in full, then diminishing gradually over the months that became the year followed. And then she was gone.
Did I get that resolution? That closure?
I don't know.
I know what I felt, what I did, what I gave, what I intended, and to a modest degree, that she did feel the love and value she held in my life, regardless of the wreckage that was left from a round hole battered and maligned by a square peg and a rubber mallet.
That wreckage was never cleared. It was pushed aside to carve a makeshift ramshackle path between us for the remaining time. And maybe that is the most I could have hoped for. Had she been gone overnight, I would carry deep angst about that dreaded scenario becoming a reality just like her dread did.
What can our thoughts manifest? Can you actually bring about what you think about and dwell on? How much of my head-first, full-on need to be as involved in her last year as possible was due to that brush with dread that I had feared? Conservatively, I'd say around 100%.
It was a blessing in disguise to have had the dynamic change enough to allow that door to reopen, and I will always see it as such. Yet, with this lingering regret that it took something that substantial, a terminal diagnosis, for both of us to rethink our relative obstinance.
So I sit here now, in melancholy gratitude, far more aware of the momentary joy of being alive to listen to music on a rainy day, Surrounded by several lives of history while they intersect, merging with my present, to become history tomorrow, while richly representing the influences of what was, on what is, and what remains.
I promise you will get old
I promised you everything
To protect you wherever you go
I'll give you this diamond ringJust promise you will rememberA promise should last foreverRight up to the dying embersOf a fire that burns so slowIt's a different day everydayDon't want you to walk aloneBut how long can we carry onWhen all of these things have goneJust promise you will rememberA promise should last foreverIt's the last of the dying embersOf a fire that burns so slowIt's a beautiful thing to doSometimes you just have to walk awayRemember I do love youHave courage in what you say- Promises : Badly Drawn Boy