"There was more to consider. What where Mark and Donna to each other? What was the Venn of the two of them for 30 years? Does their Venn remain after her death?"
The above is from a long piece I’ve been working on for some time. Writing that piece has been an exercise in self-harm. I claw at my psyche with talons of grief. Each day I clutch bits of flesh called memories. These memories still pulse with life in my grasp. They are images of joy, pain, and realization that I'm not the sum of any parts. I'm just bits and pieces free floating in a world that has generously allowed me to rent time from.
When Donna died relentless waves of memories (aka grief) washed up on the beach and receded back to sea. Over and over surging on to land and receding back to sea. Each memory was a grain of sand. Each grain was a story that only I saw and felt. I grasp handfuls of sand only to see it fall between my fingers and wash back out. Over time new grains of memories are deposited on the beach. Then washed back out to sea. The beach is forever renewed. I continue to collect these stories to build a fragile sand castle of memories. Building my memory castle has been a motivation. A motivation to do, try, keep on keeping on.
If this was a Venn it's a Venn of two circles overlapping greatly. One circle was a widowed man of a certain age alone without meaning and purpose. The other circle was the grief community, my grief journey/work, memories, and my desire to bring meaning to my loss and others loss.
The overlapping section was me. Me as me, widowed doing what I wanted to do. To strive to be who Donna loved into being. To find what will continue to have meaning and purpose. To be something with meaning, purpose, and self-actualized. It was a noble endeavor filled with earnestness and hope. Shouting at all, “look at what I've done and am.” At times this intersection buoyed my life. At times just an intersection of nothing. Nothing matters. A blank 50 yard stare. I did not abandon that overlap. I continued though there were dark hard dangerous moments.
Today this Venn are two circles independent of each other. Planets orbiting each other. Planets with inhabitants of memories and emotions and thoughts. The intersection/overlap is gone for the most part. At times thin as a shadow. If one circle was blue. And the other circle yellow. The intersection is a thin green wedge. It appears as an oasis of calm. How much calm can you find in mm? Not much no matter how much you try.
Then the circles pull back. Orbit each other in a dance of never the twain shall meet. And here I sit lost in my own sense of failure or just too old to matter. To matter to me which is all that matters. I can't live for anyone else because that is unfair to them to me.
My growth in the shadow of Donna seems to have run its course. Come to an organic end. I still lack the ability to see myself to be myself without her ghost.