A Natalie Observed

Tag: Loss

  • In the Shadow of Your Cypress

    I have been avoiding you. I do not want to write. I unpinned your text conversation so I do not see your face every time I open my messages. I removed the rotating photo widget on my home screen. I want to share pictures of Dottie on Instagram so you are not immediately visible in my feed. I started watching Southern Cham from the very beginning. I would rather watch overprivileged adults from Charleston fight with each other than be confronted with how much I do not want this to be my life. I am analyzing who has what personality disorder (most/many), who has a substance use disorder (most), who would have gone to FYRE festival (Craig and Shep), and who comes from families that owned slaves (several). I would rather waste my brain on reality tv than remember I cannot discern if I lost my way because of you, or if I have actually been lost my entire life.

    Losing you has allowed me to connect with a part of myself that I am confident has always been broken. There is a part of me who comfortably and whole-heartedly gaslights myself into believing things will improve. This part fights with another part of me who knows things absolutely will not. Sometimes I wonder if you died so I could finally admit that I really have no confidence in my ability to make decisions for myself, that I worry I wasted my life hoping I could have the fairytale despite never actually having the skills to obtain it. I keep trying to learn, to apply what I gained from last time, and yet I consistently return to the same pattern. I see it. I repeat it. I break. I try not to repeat it. I see it. I repeat it. I break. It is crazy-making.

    I know all the things to say to myself for comfort. Natalie, you did the best you could, and you are doing the best you can. You are getting help. You are smart. You are a good therapist. You have a big heart that believes what people say. You also struggle to understand when behavior does not match someone’s word becuase you were not taught that skill. It is okay it feels like attempting to learn a foreign language to learn how to discern a liar. You were gaslit and chaos created isolation and confusion. Mental illness and alcoholism were not your fault. Falling in love with someone who hurt you does not make you incompetent. It is okay to feel shame. This is all normal. You are normal.

    I talk to myself the way I would a client. I do not understand why my ability to have compassion for others is stunted when it comes to the compassion I have for myself. I say the things and even know the things, but I never believe them. Trauma is the splitting of an experience and sometimes, as a result, of identity and emotions. I know the dichotomy of what I am experiencing is trauma. But which trauma? My parents divorce? The boyfriend who became a heroin addict? The spouse who came out trans? The partner with a mental illness who lied about his alcoholism and then died? None of these situations were things I asked for. And yet Part of Me assesses that I am the common denominator. It is very hard to not feel like I am doing this (motions to life) all wrong. That I missed a turn somewhere. Sitting in that feeling, the one that feels responsible, shatters me.

    The mental gymnastics I am doing to get through every single moment of every single day are completely exhausting. I am so tired of feeling tired. Of wanting an escape but never finding one. Right now, I wish I could completely delete you so that I do not have to constantly talk myself into the narrative that believes my life will improve, that it will not always be this way. I want to plan my entire life so I know there is something to look forward to, but I am scared if I keep not thinking about you, you will haunt me. I feel haunted enough. I am stuck. Who wants to write and reflect when they are stuck. I am avoiding you.

    A few weeks ago, Dad and I went to watch the Oscar-nominated short films at The Pageant. You would have loved The Pageant. It is cash-only, no reservations, and just about as Chico an activity as you can get. You would love the weird, indie movies they show, the way the audience interacts with each other, the Godzilla mural, and that you always see one person you know. The second short film by an Iranian director brought me to tears. It depicted a couple who spotted a whale on the beach. She starts to take a bucket of water to try and save the whale, but he returns to the ship offshore, leaving her. We then alternate between her and him as he proceeds to go in and out of PTSD flashbacks from the Iranian war. We see her struggle to keep the whale healthy while worrying about him. You see him feel shame and embarrassment at not being able to help her. I felt like I was watching a movie about us, a story about two people so lost in his trauma, she almost drowned.

    Watching In the Shadow of the Cypress is the first time I experienced with what it felt like to be in a relationship with you since you died. I am so curious what you would have thought of it. I think you would have liked it as much as I did because it showed how I imagine things felt for you. I think you would have liked the artwork. I learned later it depicts a father/daughter, not a couple and I feel a bit silly for not realizing. Also, I cannot find it to watch online so I am confident I misremembered the plot. It won best Animated Short and I whole-heartedly agree with that choice, as magical as the other films were.

    There. I did it. I faced the reality of you dying again. I am going to go back to avoiding you now and watch who does not get married on Love is Blind. I have been in the shadow of your cypress long enough.

  • Party Tricks and a Birthday

    My latest party trick is having a panic attack when I am surprised by the sound of sirens or see a gurney. I have you to thank for that. Last week, I was in the nail salon when a patron lost consciousness and hit their head. I did not see what happened but heard the thud of an untethered head hit the floor. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance came. No sirens alerted me to anything going on, so it was business as usual for me as the technician buffed and shined my destroyed nail beds. Then I watched them roll the gurney in and I felt my chest tighten as images of you on a gurney flashed into my mind. Do I take my backpack with me? When do I call your dad? Who is going to clean up all the medical supplies strewn all over our apartment? Your vomit is still on the floor by the dining room chair where I found you. They said they got a heartbeat, which is good, right? The image of the banana bag hanging from the hook in our living room ceiling flashed in my brain as I watched two EMTs help a young woman onto the gurney. Tears welled, pooled, and fell down my face.  I just need to make it through this appointment. Box breath, Natalie. You cannot hyperventilate and have a visible panic attack in public. Is this really happening? Fuck. I did not know I would have PTSD flashbacks like this.  I called my mom afterwards because I needed someone to know I had a panic attack when a woman needed medical attention at the nail salon.

    The next day, I explained to my dad what happened over lunch at Burger’s and Brews. We sat outside as the temperature hovered around 64 degrees Fahrenheit making Spring feel touchable. Not five minutes after I explained the panic attack, do I hear the sound of sirens coming from behind me. Chest tightened, heart raced, tears poured out of my eyes. The image of me talking to the ambulance driver as I sat in the front seat about how strange this all was. People really do pull over when the lights and sounds are on. I have always wondered. I said that to the ambulance driver and explained to him that I am a therapist, that I understand what I am going through would come back to haunt me. Dad held my hand as I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Picture the box, Natalie. Out, …2…3…4… Hold, … 2… 3… 4… Inhale… 2… 3… 4… and so on. I think it lasted five minutes. Part of me feels validated that my dad witnessed it. I am not being dramatic or making my situation worse through a story. I hear sirens from behind me and have a panic attack. That happened. It happened a couple weeks ago while on a walk with mom and was happening again at lunch. I have data to validate an experience. I am not crazy.

    Tomorrow you would have turned 42. 42. I always felt a tremendous responsibility and honor in making your birthdays a big deal. We took trips or had nice dinners because I think it mattered that you knew how much I loved that you were born. That you came into my life. That you existed. And then there is this year, the first time I mark your birthday after you died. I do not know what to do. It feels too soon to have composed some poetic idea for how to mark the day.  I researched beach vacations because we loved the beach together and I would love to have an experience of my anxiety melting into the rhythm of ocean waves. I pondered Disneyland because you would have wanted me to experience that kind of adrenaline joy. Financially none of that made sense. I cannot afford the time off given the six weeks I have missed since you died. I ordered a carrot cake from Mim’s Bakery. I Googled “what to put on a dead person’s cake” because I do not know what to say. Heather suggested a quote from your favorite author, so I looked up Gabriel García Márquez quotes as I know he was one of your favorites. There is always something left to love. I feel like a fraud because I have not read the book. I am terrified of discovering it has some meaning that is not what I am making of it. Also, only having the wherewithal for a cake feels substandard. This is not representative of how I feel about you, but then again, nothing right now feels adequate. You are having panic attacks multiple days in a row, Natalie. A Cake is enough. He would have loved a cake.

    That said, for you there is always something left to love. Even in the darkest moments of this experience, there is something left. Parts of you are here with me still as I wrestle with how to be a human in the wake of your absence. I know it is because of you I will learn the depths of what I am capable. What a gift you were and are to me. For all the complications of this story, at least that piece I know is real and true. I am not crazy. You existed and mattered. 42 years later and you still matter a great deal. I wish you were here so I could tell you all this, but you are not because you died. Tomorrow is your birthday, and we are not going to dinner or having a celebration because you died.

    What the fuck?

  • A Bird Without Song

    I wore your shirt today. The one I bought you before you died. We were in University Village and decided to treat ourselves to a nice article of clothing as part of our effort to look toward a different future. I received several compliments from strangers, from a client, and from my mother on this shirt, the shirt I bought you, the shirt that is yours. I cannot stop crying because you should be the one wearing it. But you are not here. You died. You will never wear any of your clothes again. I am not borrowing them. You do not get to see what I look like wearing them. They are remnants of you I claimed. I feel like I stole them but there is no one to steal them from. You died.

    You wore this shirt the weekend before you died. We went to Pacific Science Center on a date to celebrate our 4-year anniversary. We completely enjoyed ourselves, navigating from dinosaur fact to funhouse mirrors to science experiments to butterfly exhibit to the movie about blue whales. I agreed to go into the butterfly exhibit despite my strong aversion to the idea of bugs landing on me. I knew you would want to go inside and that you would hold my hand if I got anxious. You explained the different kinds of butterflies and where they were from. You told me how many days they spend in a cocoon and stood in awe next to me as we admired the largest butterfly in the world. At one point, something touched my head and I looked to you for reassurance that a butterfly had not landed. You assured me one had not, that it was the tree branch just above. I let out a sigh of relief and we quickly exited. Later in the evening when we were home you confessed that a butterfly did indeed land on my head, that you felt it best to lie to protect me from being scared. I kissed you. It was exactly the right thing to do. Four years of looking out for each other.

    Five days later, you died. A fact I still feel so stunned by 104 days later.

    In the month after you died, I dreamt about butterflies landing on me. I could not control it. They kept landing on me over and over and it was so stressful. I woke up in a panic, crying, not able to catch my breath. The following morning, when I went to get in the shower, a moth the size of my hand flew towards my face. I had to ask Phil to get rid of it because I could not.

    So I guess you are in the butterflies now. In the eery, uncomfortable feeling of wings against my skin. I am not sure it is cruel or poetic. Either way, you are not here to tell me the tiny lie that will make me feel safe enough to keep going. And I am trying so hard to hold on long enough to find a reason on my own.

  • 100 Days

    This past weekend, I bailed on social plans which was and still is a conundrum. I moved back to my hometown, but I have not lived here in almost 20 years. My social connections to this place are pale shadows of an adolescence riddled with anxiety, family of origin trauma, and a lack of confidence. I did not move out of Chico, I ran away from it. I am scared moving back here was a mistake I made in the shock of your death. I am scared I will wake up amidst this time stollen by Grief and not only not know myself, not have my life with you, but lack the social foundation to help me find who I am. This all touches into the deeper fears that I am a person who has had too much pain, that no one can help me hold it, and I will be alone forever. I digress.

    Part of bailing on social plans this past weekend was my failure to gain the momentum necessary to shower and get ready for the public consumption of my presence. I feel embarrassed to admit how hard it is to leave my home, to pretend like I care about what I look like, to prepare for the small talk that happens when people dance around knowing I am barely holding it together. So much of my life is spent in the chokehold of avoiding and then confronting Grief that I feel like I lost the ability to create small talk. The idea of pulling myself together on top of having to find parking on a Saturday night was too much. Instead, I planned to have an edible, take a bath, and watch the SNL 50th Anniversary Concert. As I told Heather, I did not go to the in-person show (Sorry, Deep Cuts and Lishbills), but I was attending a show in my living room… and in my heart. [insert winking emoji and laughing emoji here:_________].

    I really cannot digest how much delight watching that program brought me. I even watched it sober the next day with my dad to get a sense of “was it that good or was it the edible?”. Conclusion: it really was that good. I knew the words to every song. I have core memories associated to my parents teaching me via osmosis every artist. Dad listening to Nirvana and David Bowie. Mom exposing me to Lauren Hill, Devo and Cher. I can still see the endless piles of cds in and out of their cases (and sometimes in the wrong cases entirely) as they rotated in and out of the 6-cd changer in our living room. I made you listen to Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolfe once, do you remember? That cd was a consistent rotation for me.

    It is through music that I learned the complexity of living, of a shared language that articulates culture, history, politics, and art. It is also through music that I found you. One of our first conversations was about how beautiful Matt Berninger’s voice was. Music ties all of our happy memories together. Memories of you and I dancing to Robyn in your living room when we first met. Of listening to the Classic Road Trip Playlist on our way to the beach. Of me teaching you about David Bowie, Prince, Broken Social Scene, and Beyonce while you taught me about The Boss, Billy Joel, Bon Iver, and where you were when you first heard Ghostland Observatory. Of you walking out to greet me in the morning with a pump-up song as if making some grand entrance, just to see me laugh. Of the moment the week before you died when I faked indignation when you could not name Bonnie Raitt as she prompted us to give them something to talk about.

    Music created shared space for us in a life that really only seemed to narrow for you. I soaked in the bath on Saturday night while Snoop lit joints on the stage at Radio City Music Hall. I felt a sense of awe that this particular group of artists was performing the music that punctuated my life, but I never experienced live in person. I had a moment of feeling deeply relaxed and connected with a part of myself I have not seen in so long: Joy. I started crying not because I was sad, but because I was relieved to know Joy was still in this shell of a human somewhere. Then Bonnie Raitt sang about making people love her when they do not, and I felt a little too Bridget Jones to stay in the bath. Joy is fleeting.

    This weekend marked 100 days since you died. All I want to do is talk to you about what I thought of this anniversary special, of realizing Joy was missing all this time. But you are not here. I have an event in my calendar for this coming weekend called Nacho Bowl. You accepted the invite. I suggested last year that we make the anniversary of your suicide attempt and resultant spinal cord injury have a different meaning, one steeped in something more joyful than all the pain it really represented. You liked the suggestion and, as we pulled apart some nachos made in our air fryer, Nacho Bowl was born. I cannot believe you are not here to do this with me, but I guess that is what my life is now. Shock that you are not here and my feeble attempts to continue trying to leave my house anyway.

    This picture popped up on my phone today. Your hair looks WILD and I think that must be why I took it. Taken on 2/17/23.

  • Death is Death

    I noticed my brain is not functioning well. Multiple times a day I ask myself if I ate a meal or drank water. Did I actually take out the trash? I called to cancel my medical insurance twice. I keep forgetting I already asked and answered these questions. I feel scattered. I ordered a habit tracker because I am worried about functioning. I feel like I forgot how. I did not consider how hard it would be to live alone. I have somehow managed to eat three meals every day, shower, make my bed, work, and walk Dottie enough there are no accidents in the house. I feel accomplished and barely able to do anything else.

    I downloaded a cleaning checklist that organizes various tasks over the course of a month to keep your home clean. I need things to help me stay organized. Tuesdays are for vacuuming the sofa, although I do not think I need to do that weekly as it seems excessive. I was too tired on Tuesday to complete this task, so I did it yesterday. As I vacuumed, I watched strands of your coarse, dirty-blonde hair succumb to the Dyson pull. I cannot stop thinking about it. Your hair. Should I have kept some? How do I live in a world where I will never touch it again? At the hospital, I kept running my fingers through it, feeling the spaces between curls, identifying all the grey you pretended was not there. As I find fragments of you in my new life here, I feel like I am getting rid of you and I feel guilty. There will be a time where I never vacuum your hair again and I do not understand how to fit that into this version of my world. I feel ridiculous for crying about it, but here I am. Crying about something as silly as your hair.

    I used to equate my divorce and all the events that created the divorce to feeling like a death. I hate myself for so naively writing about something I thought I understood. I look back at that person and feel sorry for how much she will learn about the true meaning of loss and pain. I wish I could tell her it only gets worse and that she really cannot imagine or prepare for it. That it will be hard to remember that she ate, drank water, and walked her dog. That she will cry over vacuuming hair. That she will wake up tomorrow and continue trying to do this all again despite a lot of evidence suggesting not to. The person I was had no idea about what she was talking. Divorce is not death, it is life. It is a beginning, a cleansing, a reason to vacuum. Death is death. It is forever. It is wondering if you should have vacuumed at all. It is not a new beginning and it totally fucking sucks.

  • Muscle Memory

    Last night, something funny and endearing happened on Big Bang Theory. I’m watching the series through because I have never seen it and I need dumb, low-stakes television. I turned to see if you also thought it was funny, my brain tricking me for a split second into thinking you were seated in your usual seat on the couch, but you were not there. You died. I lost language as I gasped for air between tears, attempting to recover from the impact of Grief Whiplash punching me in the gut. It took 93 days for me to look for you in the same room, a sadistic muscle memory and a refreshing reminder that I was not always devastated by you.

  • Bend

    When I cry, Dottie jumps into my lap and lays her chest on mine, her paws at the exact points where I imagine my lungs process oxygen and release carbon dioxide. This causes me to catch my breath, the pressure of her paws activating my Vagus nerve as tears fall on her tongue. It is never very long before my sobs stop. Dottie then moves off of me to sit guarding me diligently from a different angle of the room. I wish I could convey to Dottie how much it means to me that she is here dealing with me. Let this stand as an official note of my gratitude, not that she will ever know it.

    I canceled my workday on Tuesday because I could not stop crying. Before logging in for my own therapy, tears fell down my face. I knew at some point I would need to cancel work to cry, so I guess I have done that now. I described to my therapist how it felt to pack up mine and our life in five days. I explained how the sun was out for the entire trip until the last day. I expressed an incredible and inadequate amount of gratitude for my mom and Phil helping me. Then I sobbed as I described how stupid I felt finding the first, the second, the fifth, and the tenth bottle of vodka hidden in my home. Ten found in my home since the day you died. Ten. As I sit writing this in a new apartment in a new state, I still feel like I will find them and noticed I brace for impact when I open a drawer. I hope that stops.

    Yesterday, I had a massage with the masseuse who also does Reiki. She described feeling a lot of confusion as she focused on my heart chakra. “Yes, that’s about right” I muttered choking back tears. I am so confused. I feel like our relationship was not real. I can tell myself all the logic of why you hid so much alcohol in our home, of why you concealed it from me, from yourself, but I still feel like an idiot. While you lay unconscious in the hospital room, I told your family I thought things were getting better, but now I know just how much they were not. A bottle of vodka hit me in the face as your father and I pulled your clothes out of the closet to sort them. A bottle was hidden behind the recipe books. In a backpack. In a jacket. Under the bed. In a hat. In another hat. In the sock drawer. Your bedside table. Between couch cushions. I feel crazy. When was all of this happening while I lived and worked from our home?

    I am jealous of those who lose their loved ones, and they get to be angry because they died. Because the illness won. Because… insert any reason not related to killing yourself through alcohol overdose into the blank space here: _________________________. I hate myself for feeling jealous or admitting it. Loss is profound, unique, devastating, and breathtaking for everyone. I know that. I keep wondering if you even loved me or was I the gullible optimist who provided somewhere safe to stay? Would we ever have created our own family? Gotten married? Found happily ever after? I do not see how any of that would be possible with the secrets you kept and my senseless naivety. You died, and now I wonder these things. What would it be like to not have to wonder? I will never know. You will never ever be here to again reassure me the way you used to. Instead, I sit here with Dottie on my chest, trying to remember how to breath so I can mitigate another panic attack.

    I set aside your clothes I thought would make an interesting quilt. Your dad helped me go through your closet and told me stories about the memories he had with you in the clothes he knew. The bike race here. The camping trip there. A shirt from your mom’s race. A New Orleans Saints t-shirt. A Loyola sweatshirt. Shirts with bright bold patterns like you liked. Shirts I bought you. Shirts you kept that did not fit. They are sitting in a box marked “KLEENEX, SHEETS, ETC”. I am too angry and devastated to consider making something in your honor yet. I trust that this feeling will evolve, but right now, it is smothering me and I hate you for it.

    To quote Middle Kids song “Bend”:

    I am one bend away from a break

    I am one step away from the precipice of crazy

    I am holding all the pieces in place

    But maybe you’ve got to break me to see what I’m made of

  • Message Sent to Both Heather and Randy Separately on Wednesday:

    When Jeffrey and I first started dating, we got into a debate about the word ‘irregardless’. Jeffrey insisted it was not a word, that its meaning is duplicative of ‘regardless’ and that it’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘irregardless’. I googled it and found ‘irregardless’ in the Oxford English dictionary, among others. It does look like the word was added to the dictionary more recently because people say it so much. It’s considered a word even though irregardless and regardless have the same meaning. I loved that conversation so much. It was debate and learning and everything I love so much about what would become our relationship.

    My therapist said ‘irregardless’ during our session yesterday and I immediately thought of that memory. I couldn’t tell them because you look like an asshole if you point out something like a grammar error to another person Jeffrey worried he looked like an asshole when he pointed it out to me. But he didn’t. I like learning and I want to do things correctly. I asked Jeffrey what words meant all the time because I knew he would know and I could validate “that word means what I think it means”.

    I really feel like I’m never going to have that ever again. And it is suffocating.

  • Grief Makes New Sounds

    Yesterday during therapy I sobbed so intensely I heard a sound I never heard come out of my body. It was somewhere between the pitch a hiccup and hyperventilating. I do not know how to describe it. 

    Mom said I need to talk in therapy about what is going to happen next week, about walking into the home we shared, the home where I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. “It’s too soon in the grief process for you to have to be doing this”. As if I did not know. I knew my mom was right because the thought I had the two times she brought it up was, “why are you focusing on this? I don’t have a choice but to go there and pack up our things and pointing out what’s hard about it isn’t going to get all this stuff done.” Defensiveness is always holding up a mirror. 

    I am overwhelmed. There really is so much to do. I need to sort through your shirts and select the ones I want to keep so someone can help me make a quilt. I need to donate your wheel chair and other medical supplies to the organization who helped you get a wheel chair at no cost after your injury. I need to donate your Trike to the organization that helps folks with disabilities get outside, that helped you test ride different bikes to figure out which one was best for your accessibility needs. I could sell the Trike, it’s worth a lot of money, but that feels wrong when a grant helped you buy it. I need to give your dad space and time to identify what he wants from your things. I need to figure out what I can sell or give away as quickly as possible so I do not have to pack more than necessary. I need to coordinate for a junk person to take the things we cannot haul or donate ourselves. I need to clean and remove my existence from the home I lived in for 8 years, 1 spouse’s gender transition, 1 divorce, 1 pandemic, 1 graduate school degree, 1 engagement, 1 career ending and another starting, and 1 fiancé death. I need to decide what of your things I am not sure I will regret giving away. I plan to box them and write your name on the boxes with a Sharpie. Do I store those boxes in the new apartment or a storage unit? Do I want reminders of this confronting me daily or do I need to put them somewhere? 

    These questions feel impossible to answer. My mom is right, it is too soon. But I am not getting a choice in making decisions about my timeline for grief. I have to do all of this next week. I did not ask to or sign up for it, but this is happening. When I let in what I feel about being in our home, new noises reverberate through and out of my body. You died when I was not ready and now I have to participate in the next chapter of the trauma triggered by the worst day of my life, the day you died. I am not ready. It is too soon.

    I cannot decide if I want to sleep in the apartment or even be in there alone. My parents got a hotel room because eventually there will not be a bed in the place I am trying to remove my existence from. I cannot decide if I will regret not giving myself the time to be in our home, my home, the home the holds so much of my life, of who I am. The apartment holds every painful moment of my life and there are so many of them. It holds my survival and my accomplishments. How do I decide if I can handle being in there? How do I look at your jackets, fold them, and give them away? Will I miss the dumb dice you bought too many of? The coffee mug with yours and your uncle’s name on it? The duvets and bedding we picked out together. You used to sit in the green chair in the office and read a book while I worked. But I do not need the chair. The blankets hold your smell. They hold us. All of these things hold us. Hold a lifetime no longer happening. A dream that is a nightmare I cannot and will not ever wake up from.

    I told Heather I keep waiting for my life to get bigger than this grief, but that is not happening. The grief is everywhere I go. It is reflected on the face of everyone who sees me. Everything I do, I’m doing while Grief is sitting on my chest, punching me in the throat, mocking me.

    We leave on Friday morning. An 11 hour drive to the guillotine. I feel like I am preparing to stare down the sun. I know I will lose eyesight, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I need to get used to looking at this duller version of the world, but its sepia tones are so muted and dystopian.

    What the fuck?

  • 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.