Author: ferylfiles

I was asked to do a reading at my friend Lori’s wedding to her husband Josh many years ago. I searched for something fitting for quite a while and loved best Kahlil Gibran’s poetic words in The Prophet about friendship. It was fitting for her and Josh. It’s fitting for Bryan and me. And it’s fitting for Lori and me, too:

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
    And he answered, saying:
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him always with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

This past week has been medicine and my heart has been refreshed. In so many ways since Bryan passed I have felt like an untethered boat in a big storm with no oars, no sails. The friends and family who have been surrounding me, comforting me, reminding me of myself have been tugboats pulling me through this storm. I am incredibly fortunate to have people who sit in silence with me and my grief and sometimes they turn that silence into laughter or music.

There have been moments that I’ve really detested about this week and I’m glad I didn’t have to face them alone. I had to go to the funeral home to collect a sheet and sign a final “goods and services” form. Lord have mercy. Then I had to take the sharps from all the insulin I was giving Bryan (steroids cause high blood sugar) to the county health department so they can dispose of them appropriately. Yesterday, I made my way to the walk-in clinic for a minor health concern (please don’t worry) and in filling out the paperwork had to mark marital status as “widowed.” Not sure why that was entirely necessary, but damn, something so benign took my breath like I’d been punched.

So to balance these moments of sorrow, we’ve enjoyed delicious meals at a variety of places in town, went for a drive up into the Blues, hiked around Bennington, did some wine-tasting, played all kinds of music, I danced while Lori made inciteful commentary about my sign-language-adjacent style (laugh with me), we played Bananagrams (PEEL!), and watched comedy. I’m so fortunate to have her here and sad that she’s leaving already. We always say at the end of our visits that they go by too quickly. And they do. They really do.

-B

Nighttime is the worst. The cats or nature insist I get up more than once or twice each night. And each time I wake up, the dawning realization of this new way of being smacks me in the face. He’s not here. I sobbed and sobbed last night. These thunder showers come quickly, are intense, and leave me so tired. Grief is exhausting. This heartache is mixed with the most confusing swirl of emotions–a demand for life and living. I want to taste food and dance and sing and connect with friends and loved ones and see the beauty of nature and create and basically shake the ever living tar out of this life because he did. I think maybe it’s a very human reaction to witnessing death.

This morning, Lori and I took turns listening to music from our youth. I danced and laughed. House of Pain, Joshua Kadison, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Pebbles, Sophie B. Hawkins, Mr. Big, Boyz2Men, Lauryn Hill, and so many others. I remembered things long forgotten. What a gift. I’ve also been encouraged to listen to music I’ve never heard before and it’s breathtaking and haunting. I’ve played Sara Bareilles “You Matter To Me” a couple of times at least.

Bryan, Mary, and I used to spend evenings taking turns playing songs we loved, sharing with each other, finding overlap in our tastes. The past few days has been a revisiting of that for me, for which I’m so grateful. It’s easy to find moments of joy every single day. It’s also easy to be shattered that I can’t share those with him.

One thing is for certain, tragedy doesn’t make a person either a saint or a martyr. We all go through heartache and tragedy. That’s the human experience. That process doesn’t ascribe any particular goodness. I am very human. It was my honor and privilege to walk beside Bryan in our very best of times and those most recent, worst of times. And while this has changed me, my perceptions, the way I prefer to cling to gratitude, and joy, and humor like life rafts even more than ever before, it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily better. Sadder? Sure. Deeper empathy for others experiencing grief? Absolutely. But I still say more curse-y words in traffic than appropriate or healthy. I still make snap judgments and not always with kindness. I still have a temper and get hangry. We’re all works in progress and I’m not exempt.

It is good to laugh. We laughed a lot yesterday, a couple of times were jeopardy-of-an-accident laughs, and it felt really good. I don’t want to paint a picture that there wasn’t laughter during the past several months, because there absolutely was. Exchanged memes, terrible jokes (my favorite), pet videos, comedian clips, Bryan and my communication foibles were all part of the survival kit.

But now in this next phase of things, laughter is even more critical. Mary has a saying she’s stated and I’ve borrowed a lot: “Are you okay? No, but I’m funny.” She and I have often coped with a special humor that we’ve honed together since she was 15. Appropriate? Not really. Dark? A little. Guaranteed to crack us up when we need it most? Absolutely. Craig, my big brother, is also incredibly funny. He’s a great story-teller and shared many funny anecdotes. We also watched a lot of stand-up specials while he was here, a thing we’ve done since my teenage years. He and I still quote some of our favorites from long ago–“I can’t eat cheese…” Lori, my bestie, can find the humor any time, any where and then make references to it periodically to bring us back to that exact moment. It’s a tremendous gift. We heard some live music in town yesterday, young college-aged fellas, some on instruments, and one singer, very earnest. As we turned the corner off of Main Street, we heard a rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely” that I’m not sure my words could adequately describe. Let’s just say, every time I got a sad, far-off look in my eye, she’d replicate what we heard and have me in stitches all over again.

There is still joy in this world. There are still moments of laughter. I catch myself so wanting to share those with my person and tell him all the funny things so I can hear him laugh too. I suspect that will always be a part of my life going forward. Bryan often described how he wished he could ask and share things with his parents. I feel that too with mine and my oldest brother, Todd, and now Bryan. This is how we keep our loved ones alive in our hearts, I suppose, imagining them in on the jokes we so desperately wish we could share in person.

In this tiny little corner of this tiny blue dot, I find it remarkable how necessary it has been to create visual shifts. I bought a new shower curtain and bathroom rug, a new tablecloth. Today I got a haircut. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything drastic. Orlando is protective and kind, so just a nice trim and refresh. These are modest and superficial changes, but the impact on my heart and mind are pretty intense. These are the pleasant versions of the story. The less-than-pleasant versions are returning the seldom-used, tags-still-on walker back to Norco or packaging up the Optune device that was described as the best FDA approved post-radiation therapy available for glioglastoma patients. It also took up a lot of real estate in our home and emotional and mental energy. Did it even help? I start down those paths and find them incredibly unproductive, but the act of taking the boxes to the UPS store and shipping them back felt right.

I look inside kitchen cabinets where I had just shoved items, no time to organize or plan. Unpacking and sorting those seems much more manageable than some of the other tasks ahead of me. The fridge needs another culling. Can you hear the beginnings of shoulding on myself? All in due time, right? “Baby steps, Bob.”

My bestie arrived from Fort Wayne this evening. We have a whole week. I’m so glad she’s here. I’m glad for the company and the calm.