I wrote this three weeks after Sally passed. It’s poignant to me, maybe the most poingnant. Reading and doing some editing today I can sense my immaturity or maybe rawness is a better word. When I talk about the questions and the contradictions of the finite-ness of being alive and present and the infiniti of loss I look back today and have a more full experience of the questions and the contradiction. Today was a profound day of writing for me and I will take it. It is one of the gifts of my path and I’m grateful. I hope you feel it too.
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Chapter 10.1
2/8/23The Guilt
I have a thought and a belief that it’s possible to relieve the pain of death, more specifically, the pain of the living over the dying of a loved one.
I think that if we could have shared one more kiss, one more embrace, one more look…the final look, somehow, something would be different…better? It’s really an insane feeling. After all, we had a final look, and said goodbye so many times, we said it to each other, in the most loving way, many times.
But I didn’t spend every minute of every hour of the last year with her.
I left her…to go to basketball games, to go to lunch, to play video games. I left her to go to sleep. I left her to go for a walk or a meeting. And it feels like I did something wrong.
“If only” …I find myself thinking… “if only”.
If only I had spent a little more time, if I had climbed into bed or not removed the breathing mask, or not stopped antibiotics or moved her to the ICU, or, maybe if I had only hugged her a little tighter, told her I loved her a little more, touched her soft skin with just a bit more caring or love…maybe then, just maybe then she would have been…saved.
I am alive and typing this and crying and all along, really for months, maybe years, been feeling this pain like a bottomless pit but I am not falling there is no relief. What is it about life? Is it a greediness for life or is it a greediness to not die?
There’s something that’s not making sense. It’s something that says, “you could have done something more”…to change things, to cure her, to save her. She could still be here if you’d done it differently.
This “something” lives inside me in the form of guilt and a puzzled, active mind, like a truck spinning its wheels in the mud, body not moving but the engine revving in vain. On one entire side of my being, I stand in acceptance of mortality and the inevitability of death. I believe we all die, have been dying and will continue to die, forever, no matter what we think or do. On the other side, death is a failure, the ultimate failure and like all failure, it can be avoided. It could have been avoided. Why couldn’t I help her avoid it. Why did she have to die? This is my internal reality.
How is it possible to make sense of the fact that, yes…she had to die. How does that make sense, how is that fair, how is that right? I must know the answers to these questions because I have the questions. The questions are here, with me, so there must be answers. My mind revs and revs and revs.
I remember a time when Sally and I were young together and we were looking for something to do, together, something to build together, like a business. We had a little bit of resources, we had our youth and our enjoyment of each other, and we found an old barn for sale, in Williston. It was on the back property of a little shop on the main road. We looked at it, we thought…Ice Cream stand, Little League, kids, sugar and cream, community, we saw ourselves arm in arm. We would call it “Sunshine Sally’s” because that was my name for her. But we needed a place to live, the barn was perfect but we’d have to do a lot work, zoning, construction, money…and after a few rounds, a couple phone calls, neither one of us pushed through and so it became a memory of an innocent time, a happy time that we let go of, we let go of the happiness and pursued something else.
The weight of desperation and the addictive nature of self-punishment makes a formidable foe in life and now I can feel it, clawing at me, convinced “If only” is the proper question, no matter the impossibility of any answer. The hardest thing is that the question is relevant, but it may not be right.
This is where Sally comes in, where the sun begins to shine through grey clouds; being right has very little to do with having a good life. And somewhere in the depths of my limited mind I must learn about this.
What is beauty and how does it relate to pain?
What joy is and how does it relate to loss?
What is life and how does it relate to death?
I know that Sally would not want me to feel desperation, guilt, or despair about her life, she would never, ever want that, she wouldn’t want that for anyone.
And so that’s where I’ll be, that’s where I am, confused and heartbroken, slowly allowing myself to process through all my feelings, slowly building my own sunshine. That’s what Sally would have wanted, I believe, to build her own sunshine, that’s what she did, she always tried to build her own sunshine. But it’s strange, now…because she never needed to build anything. To me, she was sunshine without ever trying.
1/31/23
3/9/24