Continuous and discrete
I am seeing through a strobe. The sky has darkened and I am looking at the pattern of street lights trying to determine if I see the city grid, the subdivision curls, the city park regularity. I can feel that we are getting close to the moment I am supposed to lunge through Hyde Park and call Ethan for my ride home but I can see nothing through the black shapes of the southbound freight train, blocking everything of sight and sound. A flash - is that the Harper on the Midway? We flash - more brick buildings - another and another flash and then the Coop parking lot and I am sure. The tiny fractions of light as we jump from point to point, linearity gone. I feel discrete, and thereby alone.
We flash and I think of calling Cheryl to ask how things are, to ask if I can help. I am still wondering when, how she cries. Can she tamp it down in front of the children, the cousins, her mother still and forever? Or was I just absent on those days when the tears poured down, lamenting, with no accompanying laughter. We flash. Or should we have laughed, to see suffering defeated after so many months? I hadn't seen him since the summer, when my parents were in. I missed Thanksgiving to go home and see my nephew, pink and furrowed, staring at Christmas. And in July he was so thin, finally losing weight for all the wrong reasons. We flash and I see the furry stripes of brown and mud coming down to the orange-tan belly. Also not eating. I haven't held him, petted him properly in years, too afraid of allergies, of feeling sick for days after but I always crack at least once per visit, put on an old, long-sleeved shirt, and relive the past for a minute or two. We flash and my mother is calling in tears to tell me stories of old towels, the Humane Society, and collars. And I wonder how she can do this, three days after a different funeral. And I wonder how can my father bear to comfort her when his brother has just died.
We flash and am in Panera, with tea and a bagel, sitting next to someone I didn't realize I knew, keeping warm and reading Homer, trying to get ahead because I know that sometime, sometime soon it will be no time for homework and I will slowly creep behind in all my classes and will stay that way through the semester. So I work, I try to get ahead recognizing the futility. I can't concentrate well even with my tea and I can feel the still-healing cold trying to be difficult. I give up late afternoon, decide to see Juno, and let myself sink into the obscurity of that false night, let the darkness cover over me, veiling and separating. I come out with a message and I don't want to hear it but I hide behind the ticket counter and listen to my mother. Any moment now. Not more than a day or two. Thought you should know. I close the phone, try to close my face to the world and carry myself out the car. Sitting in the dark, not yet running, hands in my pockets to keep warm, looking at the falling snow and trying not to lose control, not yet, not before the end. But I lose the battle and wait, wait until I'm safe for driving again, sitting in that parking lot, in the darkness. I can't bear to tell anyone, not Professors, not friends, not Ethan. If I don't say the words it's not true. But I walk around telling myself over and over again. My uncle is dying my uncle is dying. On campus, at the store, driving, Dying. I keep my phone off Monday. I need the whole day to get through classes, meet the job candidate, have one last day of normal. At the 2pm I see the 4 voice mails and ignore them until 6 when it's all over and I'm done packing and about to get in the car to drive through the snow to Ethan and the family. Ethan calls, my parents are on a plane, I strap on the seatbelt and take deep breaths. He doesn't understand, ever, the purpose of popular music, but I look for the dance stations, the top 40, unfamiliar songs that I know will fail to touch any part of me the way that Radiohead can. I can't drive and cry at the same time.
We flash and my mother is trying to manage three spadefuls of earth and I can see her control and spirit crumble as mine has already crumbled. And neither of us can hide the wail that is within but we try, in turns, for the other. My father is impassive but we know he can't be, that's just how he acts. Laura forces an extra package of kleenex upon us: the cousins have rallied. The house is filled with desserts and food, as always, and children playing games and chatter, as always, but we don't go upstairs to see the empty hospital bed and by the front door is a collage of pictures. I can't say the ritual words of mourning but I read them and hold back all sound. I remember that mourning is a construct for the living but cynicism never really helps. We flash, another night, another chant. Ethan tells me this lasts for seven days, and then you have to put off your sorrow and rejoin society. I give myself six and I'm back in Urbana, hoping no one will ask.
We flash and I have gone through the week of school and Ethan is calling from the train station for a ride. We flash to the next week of school and I am almost not behind anymore, though scarcely ahead. No one talks about it to me. I tell myself that things are fine, that I've gotten through it that it's important to remember but move on. We flash and I wake up, again, from another dream. Gary Porton tonight, little kittens the night before, I can't remember the night before that. It strikes when I can't defend myself, when all I have is my own thoughts for comfort. I wake up after Ethan has left for class, fix some tea, try to write something. The flowers he bought yesterday try to pop joy into me from their bright, shining center nobs in the middle of petals, shields from sadness, proofs of affection. I sit and stare at them and behind me, I can hear the train.
We flash and I think of calling Cheryl to ask how things are, to ask if I can help. I am still wondering when, how she cries. Can she tamp it down in front of the children, the cousins, her mother still and forever? Or was I just absent on those days when the tears poured down, lamenting, with no accompanying laughter. We flash. Or should we have laughed, to see suffering defeated after so many months? I hadn't seen him since the summer, when my parents were in. I missed Thanksgiving to go home and see my nephew, pink and furrowed, staring at Christmas. And in July he was so thin, finally losing weight for all the wrong reasons. We flash and I see the furry stripes of brown and mud coming down to the orange-tan belly. Also not eating. I haven't held him, petted him properly in years, too afraid of allergies, of feeling sick for days after but I always crack at least once per visit, put on an old, long-sleeved shirt, and relive the past for a minute or two. We flash and my mother is calling in tears to tell me stories of old towels, the Humane Society, and collars. And I wonder how she can do this, three days after a different funeral. And I wonder how can my father bear to comfort her when his brother has just died.
We flash and am in Panera, with tea and a bagel, sitting next to someone I didn't realize I knew, keeping warm and reading Homer, trying to get ahead because I know that sometime, sometime soon it will be no time for homework and I will slowly creep behind in all my classes and will stay that way through the semester. So I work, I try to get ahead recognizing the futility. I can't concentrate well even with my tea and I can feel the still-healing cold trying to be difficult. I give up late afternoon, decide to see Juno, and let myself sink into the obscurity of that false night, let the darkness cover over me, veiling and separating. I come out with a message and I don't want to hear it but I hide behind the ticket counter and listen to my mother. Any moment now. Not more than a day or two. Thought you should know. I close the phone, try to close my face to the world and carry myself out the car. Sitting in the dark, not yet running, hands in my pockets to keep warm, looking at the falling snow and trying not to lose control, not yet, not before the end. But I lose the battle and wait, wait until I'm safe for driving again, sitting in that parking lot, in the darkness. I can't bear to tell anyone, not Professors, not friends, not Ethan. If I don't say the words it's not true. But I walk around telling myself over and over again. My uncle is dying my uncle is dying. On campus, at the store, driving, Dying. I keep my phone off Monday. I need the whole day to get through classes, meet the job candidate, have one last day of normal. At the 2pm I see the 4 voice mails and ignore them until 6 when it's all over and I'm done packing and about to get in the car to drive through the snow to Ethan and the family. Ethan calls, my parents are on a plane, I strap on the seatbelt and take deep breaths. He doesn't understand, ever, the purpose of popular music, but I look for the dance stations, the top 40, unfamiliar songs that I know will fail to touch any part of me the way that Radiohead can. I can't drive and cry at the same time.
We flash and my mother is trying to manage three spadefuls of earth and I can see her control and spirit crumble as mine has already crumbled. And neither of us can hide the wail that is within but we try, in turns, for the other. My father is impassive but we know he can't be, that's just how he acts. Laura forces an extra package of kleenex upon us: the cousins have rallied. The house is filled with desserts and food, as always, and children playing games and chatter, as always, but we don't go upstairs to see the empty hospital bed and by the front door is a collage of pictures. I can't say the ritual words of mourning but I read them and hold back all sound. I remember that mourning is a construct for the living but cynicism never really helps. We flash, another night, another chant. Ethan tells me this lasts for seven days, and then you have to put off your sorrow and rejoin society. I give myself six and I'm back in Urbana, hoping no one will ask.
We flash and I have gone through the week of school and Ethan is calling from the train station for a ride. We flash to the next week of school and I am almost not behind anymore, though scarcely ahead. No one talks about it to me. I tell myself that things are fine, that I've gotten through it that it's important to remember but move on. We flash and I wake up, again, from another dream. Gary Porton tonight, little kittens the night before, I can't remember the night before that. It strikes when I can't defend myself, when all I have is my own thoughts for comfort. I wake up after Ethan has left for class, fix some tea, try to write something. The flowers he bought yesterday try to pop joy into me from their bright, shining center nobs in the middle of petals, shields from sadness, proofs of affection. I sit and stare at them and behind me, I can hear the train.
posted by trophywife at 8:59 AM
0 comments
