The brain is a funny thing. As are the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), which don't appear to be actual stages at all. They're more like walls in a racketball court and you're the ball flying around making contact with different surfaces at different times.
Today I seemed to bounce from depression to denial and then clung on to that for a nice long while to get a break from feeling pretty crummy. In this denial, I entertain an improbable reality wherein certain things have changed, certain things have never happened at all, and low and behold, I'm just going about my business in my new town and Gareth and I have plans for the weekend. It's odd. I mean...I actually make plans in my head for what we're going to do. Lunch at Buy the Book. Cherry Blossoms are coming so that probably calls for a ride on his motorcycle around Gyeongju. Maybe we'll break out some Korean poems and work on translations. Rummy, to be sure. There's always rummy. Try a new restaurant? Or go to one of our favorites? La Luce. We should probably go to La Luce.
These thoughts, while I know aren't a healthy place to remain, feel like a moment of treading water calmly in an otherwise really turbulent fast-paced and disorienting out of control trip down a dangerous river. For the moment I'm in still water. I'm breathing. I'm imagining he's still alive.
I know it won't last, the relief these thoughts bring. And I don't want them to. I want to make my way through the grief and get to the other side. I really do. But, Lordy- it's been unrelenting. And for a few hours of one day I have him back. I can't call- because he's busy. Or I'm busy. Or we just got off the phone. But he's there. In Gyeongju. 30 minutes away. And I'm going to see him soon.
March 24, 2014
I do love this one. I really do. Tumuli Park. Gyeongju. Last March.
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