A Natalie Observed

Tag: faith

  • A Real Pain

    Last night I had my first night alone since you died. I walked all three dogs and did not trip on or lose any of them. I readied their dinner. I reheated leftovers for myself and watched the latest episode Traitors. I ate a small white chocolate cheesecake from Savor Ice Cream. I can confirm it is dangerous those tiny cakes are walking distance from my new apartment. I will be back. 

    I watched A Real Pain and felt like I was watching a movie about you. To be clear, it was not a movie about you at all. You are not Jewish, nor have Jewish family history in Poland. You also do not have a male cousin you would travel with in order to participate in a Polish Holocaust Tour because a grandmother left you money to visit her family home. But Kieran Culkin’s character felt like you, loving and suffering and entertaining and loathing. Caring for everyone and no one. Looking for meaning and finding a loss for words. Feeling everything and feeling numb to feeling at all. Having feelings so big, people turned away in discomfort. The film was brilliant in its complexity and artistry, in the acting and the writing. I wish you could see it to dissect it with me although I know it would be hard for you to watch. It was, true to its title, a real pain.

    Once again, I am struck by how close you feel and how far away you are. You are nowhere and everywhere. I did a Sound Bath on Friday and the image of you laying on the floor next to me resonated through my body. I imagined your breath on my neck, you were so close. Tears poured onto the weighted eye mask I borrowed from the studio. To prevent panic, my brain switched gears into wondering what instruments and tools created the sounds. How does thunder emanate from a bowl and rain fall from a stick? One moment we were surrounded by the lapping of waves on the shore which transitioned into the twinkling whimsy of chimes. What makes all of that happen? I miss our endless conversation about whatever we were curious about.

    I wish you could taste the cheesecake. It was airy and not too sweet. You always talked about a cheesecake you used to make and promised to make it for me one day. I wonder how this one compared. I guess that is another thing I can file into my mysteries folder. That and the circumstances that allowed someone to discover how to trap the sound of thunder in a bowl.

     

     

  • A Grief Observed

    Yesterday, I found myself with hours of free time and did not have the attention span for watching Housewives drama. I picked up the book my therapist suggested. I started it a week ago and put it down when I realized my thoughts were wandering and whole pages were turning without my knowing what was on them. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is an inside view of how he experienced his wife dying and his internal narrative that came with negotiating loss. I am not someone who finds comfort in the concept of God and it does not take a skilled analyst to see the religious undertones of Chronicles of Narnia. I started reading the book with skepticism as to how I can find kinship in this author’s experience. Kinship is what I’m hungry for. I need stories of other people examining their experience of loss, of grief, and of life after death.

    As I sat to read, the following passage literally took my breath away. Lewis is describing the inaccuracy of memory, and how our brains efficiently eliminate details of our loved ones because we grow so acclimated to their presence, we do not need to remember every line, color and shape of their physical being. We know our loved ones in our bodies, in our souls. Then Death begs the questions of what is real in our memory, and where do our loved ones go when they are gone from what we remember?

    “Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes – like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night – little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes – ten seconds – of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again.” – C.S. Lewis

    For a moment I imagined what it would be like to have 10 seconds with Jeffrey. 30 days after his death and the idea of having more time had not crossed my mind. He died. He is gone. That’s it. I started crying on the great expanse of my mother’s living room sofa. How had I not thought of this, of what it would be like to see him again? The comfort of his hug and hearing his voice feels so overwhelming. He was always so warm. I miss his presence and his love enveloping me. The closest I have come to feeling him is standing in the sun on these crisp Winter days. As I cried on the sofa, I felt embarrassed for not having thought of bargaining for time earlier in the 30 days since he died. Then I remembered that there is nothing to bargain for. Jeffrey died. He is not coming back. I will never ever receive a hug from him again.

    I am not sure how to make meaning of the feeling in my body that I can only describe as longing, emptiness, and weight. I feel heaviness in my bones and muscles. Loss is a stomachache, a panic attack, and the swelling under my eyelashes documenting the tears freshly leaked from my eyes.

    I wonder if Jeffrey read A Grief Observed or not. I wonder if he would have liked it. What would his critiques have been? So far, losing Jeffrey has meant having to come to terms with the fact that I will never ever know the answers to these questions.

    Fuck.