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September 28, 2007
This morning I was sweeping my kitchen floor
And thinking about John the Big Dawg, and missing him, as I have been, but also meditating about loss. Its been on my mind a lot since the anniversaries of both his birth and death are coming up, November is the first anniversary of his passing. Sometimes I am ok with it. Other times it rushes back to me in a flood- the cab ride over here (his landlady- now my landlady- called me because she was worried) where I knew something was terribly wrong. The early evening darkness in November, when I scanned the streets for people walking, searching for anyone who looked like John, and a sinking feeling in my chest knowing he had been missing for 3 days. Coming up the stairs to the apartment where it was quiet, so absolutely quiet, and finding Marcel, confused, happy to see anybody but also quiet because he new something was wrong.
The movie plays in my head a lot still, of saying to Marcel, "where is the Big Dawg?" and seeing him glance across the room to the crumpled figure on the floor, then glance silently back at me. At that point my heart stopped, and I whispered John's name, twice, hoping for a miracle when I could see his hands, which looked small like a child's, and I could see his shoulders and I could tell that there was no sound and no motion. He was so still.
One year later I still can't write a memorial issue of my magazine for him, because I sit down to do it and dissolve into a pool of tears.
Sorry if this brings people down, it is Fall and leaves are starting to turn and I am remembering the dead, (as is traditional in many ways) and feeling the loss in a renewed way. It has changed, of course.
This morning as I was sweeping the kitchen floor (this is the beauty part of sweeping- the meditation part- like knitting) I was thinking of the ghost bike sign I need to be making, it is for an installation of a bike for a young woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it is not my place to mourn for a woman I didn't know, but I feel this need to do what I can. I didn't even know her family, and never would have. This is what is kind of beautiful about mourning, and this is the potential of public mourning to heal the world, I think. We need to explore it. It exposes our vulnerabilities and our humanity. It binds us together as human beings and as a community.
It is a human experience which is persistent, beautiful in many ways,
and can make us see a lot of things more clearly.
One thing I've noticed, too, about grief, and about mourning, is that things slip away and things come back. When you least expect it some little thing will come to you, even as you try to trap everything you knew and loved, knowing that you can't.
Posted by at September 28, 2007 06:15 AM
Comments
Thanks for posting this. Stay strong.
Posted by: rob helpy-chalk at September 28, 2007 02:24 PM
The thing about all this greif and mourning business is that you shouldnt try to trap anything. All you need is already there, waiting for when you need it. Which is, as you say, when you least expect it. The rest of the time, im sure, the dead want you to be happy.
Posted by: nobody really at September 29, 2007 12:49 AM