I wake in the middle of the night. I'm searching for you. Again.
I know not to give in to the compulsion, but I do.
I know not to let myself jump up as I did two nights ago and search frantically through photo albums, boxes of loose photos, and envelopes of negatives, determined to find physical evidence of your existence, substantiation of the vivid images of you in my mind's eye.
I was not rewarded with even a single physical artifact.
This pain in my chest, this outpouring of grief must be heard.
I try blogging.
~
When I read of your passing, my breathing stopped. I felt a tight pain in my chest. Salt water arrived in flash flood fashion, a torrential downpour of Biblical proportions.
I felt confused.
I told myself this loss was not mine to grieve with such fervor.
But grief knows no reason.
Perhaps more accurately put, the body knows what the mind cannot grasp nor control.
My homework is to feel my feelings. Let them be, allow them expression.
Still ... there were no warning signs.
No stinging, or itchiness behind the eyes.
No opportunity to try tilting my head upwards, balancing grief on my lower eyelids, put in a waiting room, destination and departure time not yet assigned.
No.
Tears came so fast and furious that they were dripping off my chin like something I had hung on the line forgetting to run the item first through the wringer of the wringer washer.
My lap was wet with the tears when my son walked into the room. I could name his feeling before I even had a chance to name mine, feel mine.
So there we were.
He couldn't mask the joy in his step. I couldn't mask my sadness.
He had come into the room already anticipating own shared enjoyment of his joke and gift.
An exchange was made. He gave me a chocolate bar he didn't like with one bite taken out of it. I gave him the chance to hear Clyde play.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=281099508712955
We treated the listening as a 6 minute memorial service.
The music is beautiful.
The title of the piece seems fitting and not fitting, just like Clyde:. "So what."
~~
You're not gone after all. I found you. You are in the interweb.
https://youtu.be/94EXgNQEj7A
It is you, but it is not my memory of you.
I return to the thoughts of the photos I couldn't find.
~~
[Insert photo 1. Title: Kohl, Spring, and Clyde circa 1981]
I'm on the lawn at your home. You are showing something you've built, or are still in the process of building. The picture is too blurry. I can't make out the nature of what you are creating, but it is big enough that it's construction cannot be contained indoors. It might be a piece of furniture for Kohl.
I hear my father's voice. The audio track of this memory is too full of static. All I can catch is the tone of admiration and wonder in my father's voice as he speaks with you about your carpentry. You are soaking up his fatherly love and attention with such vulnerability it hurts to watch.
I want to speak to my father, tell him to move his hand out of the way so to that I can more accurately pull forth this image from my mind's eye. But even if I could shout loud enough to be heard across the 40 years distance, I know he still couldn't hear me. You have his full attention.
His hand hovers in the air obstructing my view, not touching the materialization of your dreams, but hovering close, exposing his own vulnerability: the desire to commune with your creation, feel it in his bones, battling with his desire to keep himself separate, not stain the unfinished wood with the oils in his own skin.
~~
This pain in my chest. It is driving me to keep digging, keep searching for you, for what I have lost.
