Day 19: Visiting the Place Where It Happened

March 19, 2014

Here's an interesting thing. (To me, anyway.) When I woke up this morning, I didn't want to get out of bed and get ready for work. I just didn't want to do it. I wanted to stay home, but I got up and did what I needed to get to class. Now I'm at work, and have been done for about 3 hours, but I don't want to go home. I want to just stay in the office. It's like wherever I am is the safest place and I can't imagine going somewhere else.

Part of me feels like if I just stay in one place, if I don't move, I can somehow reverse and freeze time. I can make it so this didn't happen.

I went to the apartment where it happened yesterday. I met with the sweet girl who lives there, who's become like a little sister to me. I went to see what Gareth saw. I went to clean the black police fingerprinting dust from the windowsill. His fingerprints. From the window frame. From the wall. I slid the window open in the same way he would have and looked down to the street below. 

I looked down to see what he would have seen. I tried to imagine what he could have been thinking. Here are his prints. His hands were here. And here. And here. Gareth was here. Gareth was last here. In this very spot. I am where Gareth last was.

I looked out of that window with this sweet girl and we smoked a cigarette. I smoked a cigarette. Two, actually. And I'm not even a smoker. We blew smoke out of the window where he climbed out and fell. We hung our heads out of the window and looked out and blew our smoke there. I blew smoke out into the space where he was. We smoked and we talked about that night and I told her that we were putting good mojo into that space.

I told her it was the sister smoking stoop, and when I'm there, it's what we'll do. We'll open the window and stick our heads out into the fresh air and blow out smoke like we're trying to keep it from our parents. I will do this each time I visit her. And I don't even smoke.

It felt good to be in that space. His space. It felt like a missing piece for me. The family and I saw some pretty horrific things in the week they were here- some we were expecting, and some we weren't. But it's been important for me to bear witness to all of it. All of it. And that will all get rolled into the grief, I'm sure.

I feel selfish posting like this. I feel like in some way it takes away from or negates the grief and trauma that others who knew Gareth are certainly experiencing. And that's not my intent, at all. I'm guessing we're all doing what we need to do in the way we need to do it, and having this virtual space for me to process seems to be the most healing thing I can do right now. It seems to be who I am.

Please let me know privately if you don't wish to read posts like this and I'll make sure to customize it so that you don't have to. I won't be put off by that at all. I'd rather honor where you are.