I came into being when I met Donna. We came into being every day of the 30 years together. When she died being was a mirage I'd walk toward yet never drank from and so began my grief journey. "Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss" took root in my grief isolation and examination. It became my new being. I know my heart is irrational but my memories have reason.
Random and unbearable waves of grief since her death punish me. Today those waves are leaves riding on the ripples of a pond. They wash up on a sandy beach drying in the sunlight reveling the intricate lattice of connections and memories. The gestalt of all those memories of us/her the life I reside in are the fire flies darting around me in random patterns. I can gather them in a jar. Still as calm as it feels ,waves of grief will always appear and remind me of what is not there.
I call my grief Donna. Donna is not the pain of grief. Donna is who she was and always will be and that is the bounty I find in my grief. That's why I've been dowsing my grief to divine the memories that sustain me. Memories that lift me and carry me to silent smiles alone in my isolation. They appear randomly and crash into my conciseness. Those are the whoa WTF she was amazing are my shouts and props in our empty home. Her huge yum smile while eating lobster in Maine. Holding hands as we walk to dinner. Donna reminding me to close the closet door at night because of closet monsters. Those and all the other memories are the sweet nectar of us they feed me.
I will look at an object, a piece of a thing in our home and hunger for her presence. For her to be here to fill that moment of loneliness of this inanimate object. Marie Kondo talks about objects and our relationship to them. Things in my home have agency. They have spirits. They are Donna. Isolated with these things I hunger to hear her voice. To feel the lyric quality of her voice dancing in my ears. Starving for her smile while she laughs at me. Reminding me to arrange the pillows on the sofa. Caught between the bounty and famine in my grief scented isolation is the pandemic isolation.
Dunked in this pandemic isolation I realized I entered a door into a room, a void that exacerbated my grief in new ways. In that room I spent time posting, sharing, writing, measuring, and living my grief. I was seeking meaning and purpose to blunt the isolation. There were delusional moments I believed what I was doing brought some understanding and comfort to others. Small shards of meaning and purpose for me. Yet, the emotional privation of grief and isolation that at one time I would've successfully battle with memories and sharing was fading.
Is there another door to exit or enter another room? Perhaps the reality there never were doors. I was just where I was meant to be. To do what I was meant to do. To feel what I was meant to feel. To do this grief work for me. That's the pollyanna of my mind. That mind says that one trick pony I ride needs to be put to pasture. Not forgotten or closed because that is denial of Donna. Just put into in a field. The two of us.
Gathering all the knowledge my journey has afforded me I run my fingers over my life. I feel the wrinkles and blemishes of who I am all I've shared etc. Have I ruined what is beautiful with repetitive exposures or poor execution of my memories? Has my grief journey captured and evoked Donna as she is worthy of? Do others see her and me and us? Do they understand? Do they accept? Do they care? And that right there is the compare and despair moment. The unfiltered light eliminating the shadows I hide in. My today reality.
When Donna died I flayed at finding meaning and purpose. I never gave up trying. At this moment it seems that I've lost agency too. Agency over myself and all that I am doing with regard to my work/journey. Not surprising perhaps I never had agency. I'm not gifted. I don't give up. I'm inpatient. I have the attention span of gnat. My grief memories are the surrogate markers of agency. My grief work was meaning and purpose. Those markers are eroding. Not eroding in my mind. Eroding in their utility, leaving me standing in a shallow bay of debris I call me.
In this current isolation my failed agency is becoming pronounced and visceral. It has seeped deeply into my being infecting my relationship with Donna before and after her death and the world at large. Loss of agency is pox. WhenI shared my vulnerability without censorship demonstrating courage of sorts. Courage to share pain it never rose agency and short lived meaning and purpose. It's more a measure of my life in millimeters. A journey of musings without witnesses. (that compare and despair again).
Perhaps the reality of this pandemic isolation is that my grief journey has sated me. It has come to an end of having meaning and purpose. It just is. Allow it to be feral within me.
It seems it's time to stay in my lane. Take what moments of agency I fool myself believing and weave the mundane of me into a paper mache ball of meaning and purpose so when I turn the light out at night I can lick the paste on my fingers and think I did something anything. Accept that my agency is making the bed. Doing the laundry. Volunteering. Do things without anyone seeing them. Do them for me, Donna, and us. Hold those moments close to me and allow the jagged sharp edged puzzle pieces in my mind to do what they do and simply allow my grief to freestyle. Abandon trying to have agency that creates meaning and purpose accept what I cannot change.
What do I want and why do I want it?