about grief

I got three magnetic picture frames for Christmas so I put a picture of Simon and Beatrice in one, a picture of me holding David when he was less than a year old in another, and a picture of David on his last Memorial Day at Ron, Laura and Ana's in the backyard. He was holding a Spiderman hover balloon, his favorite baseball cap, striped red shirt, and looking down with a sweet smile on his face. I put it on the refrigerator near the picture of him looking right at me while Rick holds him, and near the picture of Julia in her beautiful flowery dress and golden curls, looking so gorgeous and loving.

And it struck me yet again that David's not coming back. He will never see his sweet sister grow older. And as Alana says, I will never have any new memories of David. He's truly gone. The sobs come then. I've been waiting for them this Christmas. He loved Christmas. He loved presents and decorations and candy canes and bows and baking cookies and seeing all the Christmas lights. When I'm with Julia, sometimes I think of how like him she is and how I behave with her like I did with him, pointing out the houses with the lights and buying fun decorations for her. Is it fair that she reminds me of him? She's her own self. But sometimes she sounds just like him - when she growls especially.

I suppose Julia will always remind us of David, because she is his sister. Once she's past six, though, the memories will be in our minds only for she will be older than he ever had a chance to be. Alana's reminder that he had two years after diagnosis is what it is. I continue to wish he'd been cured. It's hard to be grateful for two years when I wish he had eighty-two more years at least. He should be here now. It's so incredibly sad.

So I think about grief. I've learned that grief is indescribable. It just is. There is no rhyme or reason or explanation or control for grief. It has its own path and timetable. It lives deep within until it creeps into consciousness and overtakes my heart to make tears. These tears are like steam escaping from a pressure cooker - they have to come out or I will explode. But there's no relief as I have known tears to give. It's just grief in another form. Sometimes it lurks as depression and no motivation. Or it's irritability and dropping things. Other times I withdraw from people and can barely talk to anyone. All I want to do is be with Julia. Or Ana, if she'd let me. I just want to be with the living, the loving people I already know and love.

One thing I'm learning about the depth of my grief: I have enough of it for a lifetime. I can't add much more. I have spent the past two years grieving constantly. On January 14, it will be two years since those shits at City Harvest stabbed me in the heart and betrayed me, cutting me off from my passion and lifework. I am still angry, yet somehow I'm too tired to be very angry anymore. The grief is exhausting. And then David got leukemia. And then David died. And then I got fired again. And David was still dead. And I still can't emerge from being frozen. How can I open my heart to anyone else when it's irreparably broken already? I am so damn sad every day. I don't cry every day anymore, but most days I have tears come to my eyes. And every day I look at David's picture and wonder why he is gone and I am still here. Why? Why? The question that has absolutely no answer. Never will have.

I get a little sick of all this grief. Is it possible to emerge from it? Or rather to live with it, meaning to live and go on, with it? I don't know how to do it.

That's the other thing I've learned about grief: it has its own timetable, its own rhythm and its own way of directing me. This has been the biggest lesson in letting go ever possible. How do I know what each day will bring? I don't.

I want to be grateful for every day I am alive, in David's honor. I'm not yet there. I can't imagine living without Julia, and I can't imagine Julia and Ana having to lose me. I know I am a very important person to both of them, a very important person. If I am having such a hard time with loss, they are having even harder times.

Julia was very sad tonight. I think she is sad that Mommy had a dream about David. I think she wishes she had a dream about him. She misses him a lot. I also think she hates hearing about Grandma and Grandpa moving. More loss for that little girl. And more loss for Ana. She misses Ana, too. I just want to spare them these feelings.

I remember being so carefree in my loving, so open and happy with people after I got sober. 1982. And then AIDS hit, and my friends died. One by one, my circle of friends got smaller. Bill Pflugradt died. Jose died. Steven Pender. The twins. Dennis. I pulled back. Stopped being able to be friends with gay men, because they would die. Then it got easier again, but when my friends moved out of NYC - Cynthia and Sydney, Barbara, Susan, Anna, Sue, Julie - I lost my capacity to love again. 9/11 really knocked it out for me, as did the whole A2H experience.

I am not who I thought I was, I am not as strong as I thought I was. I have not the resilience I thought I had. Nor yet the resilience others think I have.

So much is written to help people get stronger, to move past their insecurities and frailties, to seize the day and be their best selves, to follow their dreams and take positive action. I've read so much of it, and I've given much advice like it. I still do. Maybe it's necessary because otherwise it's hard to put one foot in front of the other and keep going every day. What's the point? Make a point, give life meaning by taking those steps, doing those things, changing those thoughts, trying those new things on, chasing and catching that dream. If life weren't so hard, we wouldn't need so much encouragement to live it fully. Or is it that it's hard to be conscious and life gets less hard when we are conscious? Blind I cannot feel, heart open I see clearly. Being at ease.

It's exhausting to always try my hardest. That's not being at ease. Being at ease, my being is at ease. And that means being as I am in each moment. If I am grieving and withdrawn, so be it. No urging or shoulds will change my inner being. My inner being will be harmed if I force my outside into a form of "should" or "ought to" or "make an effort."

So I want to say to people, let yourselves be! You are perfect as you are right now. Pay attention to how you feel, to what you think, to your random thoughts and stray wishes, to what you want, to your deepest truth. And speak it out loud, or write it to yourself. Witness your inner being. Allow it air to breathe, light to reveal, voice to be heard. Sad, glad, mad - it's all good for it's all you. No pretzels allowed. Just be.