Real

I live inside my head a lot. I don’t know if that’s a result of being the youngest of four by a large margin and having a lot of time to myself. Maybe it’s the side-effect of being creative. Living alone with three cats ensures that I spend a lot of time inside my head, too. Reading, gardening, painting, baking, walking in nature give me a chance to live outside of my head for a little bit, but even then the ruminations creep in. The last several days and yesterday in particular had me deep in thoughts. The most significant was the question “was any of it real?”

Memory and imagination are tricky bastards. Memory isn’t the brain’s archives where we can pull a reel or microfilm off the shelf and play it back. It’s more like photocopies of photocopies couched in emotions and accumulation of experiences. In many ways our memories and our imagination overlap. Humans make terrible eye-witnesses because we see things filtered and we remember them filtered even more.

A few weeks ago, I was walking home from my friends’ place. Coming up the back alleyway into the backyard, I remembered Bryan and I often walked this together, holding hands, laughing about our conversations, appreciating time with friends. And I could feel myself saying out loud trying to convince myself of a truth. “It was real. It was real. It was real.” Yesterday, while painting little watercolors at my dining room table, my memory thought of times Bryan and I would stop in Hood River for a meal and a beer on our way to and from Portland. This time I said, “Was it real? It was real. Surely, it was real.” And then the crying jag started in again.

I cried a lot yesterday. I’m crying this morning. The heartache is real. The longing is real. The boxes of tissue I search for in every room are real. The swollen eyes are real.

Yesterday afternoon, I planted some mums and did some pruning and weeding in the backyard garden. I found a little anchor to hold onto. Becci, sometimes we can’t see something or someone, but we can see the effects. I know it was real because I am changed. I know to my bones what it feels like to be loved for exactly who I am, flat sides and all. I live in a house that has a front porch that my husband made sure got built because he felt like we had a responsibilty to make our neighborhood and community more cohesive. This plot of earth at 707 Newell Street has twelve trees–10 Bryan planted and two that volunteered. I have friendships with people I may not have ever met had it not been for Bryan. I live in a neighborhood with neighbors that are like family because Bryan wanted to live in a space where he built durable relationships. And above all, I have Mary. And she’s the most real of any of it.

Loss is such a trip. I think it’s very human to mull over all these things, to feel them. My eyes are protesting and telling me, “could you feel them a little less?” Sorry, little buddies. Nope.