April 3, 2014
Riding the Waves, Day 34:
I went under twice today. Beautiful weather. Cherry blossoms are in bloom everywhere. The windows of the office were open and a nice breeze was coming in. Some witty banter was being tossed about and when I caught the ball, I threw it right back. Everything felt momentarily...normal. And then I'm yanked under.
I'm sobbing at my desk. I could probably save saying "Don't mind me...this will pass. Just keep doing what you're doing." They know what to do by now. We go on. We go on about our business and I sob at my desk. Sometimes for a few brief minutes. Sometimes for painfully long periods of time. My coworker came in with a cold and asked if I had any tissues. "Are you KIDDING? Have you SEEN me?" I laugh. A bit.
I sit at my desk for ridiculously long periods of time. I am there long after my office hours are up and I'm technically allowed to go home. I've always been a hard worker and put a lot into planning lessons, but this is altogether something different. This is productivity on grief. Which is next to useless. Still, a lesson materializes in about 5 hours- one that would normally take me maybe 45 minutes to make. A lot of the extra time is because I find an almost constant need to go online and be reassured of peoples' existence. You are here. You are here. You are still here.
I made a commitment to myself to leave work at 3:00 and by 3:45 I closed up my books and laptop and headed out. I was determined to go on a run. A five hour nap after classes yesterday got in the way of previous plans to run. I came home, changed clothes, laced up, and headed out.
The first few miles is always a garbled mess of jumbled thoughts. Bits and pieces. Like multiple records playing at once and impatient children with their hands on the needles skipping about at random. After a while, most fade to at least mute and a single stream of thinking presents itself. Not long after that, I start dialoguing with God, and then I'm in the zone. The zone that makes running something necessary for me.
The run was great, if not a challenge. I'm not anywhere in the shape I was a month ago and exploratory routes brought me to an isolated path that wound me back and added a mile or so. At mile 5 I decided to quit, not without shaming myself for not getting out there and running a half-marathon on my second day back into running. I've always been too hard on myself. I heard Gareth praise me for a job well done. "I couldn't have done that, babe!" he'd say. "You'll get back into where you were in no time!" he'd say. "You're amazing." he'd say.
I felt him on my run. I felt him there with me. And this was a delight, as I haven't felt him really near since the first few nights in the hospital. I've been asking, begging, pleading for him to be with me and bring me some comfort. Each night before bed I talk to him. "Please, babe. Please. I need to feel you near." And I've felt...nothing.
When my grandmother died I felt her with me. Same for my Aunt Patty. But with Gareth, I've felt a painful void. Who knows why this is. Those who believe that our spirits continue on may say he's busy comforting others right now. Or busy healing. Or perhaps he died so unexpectedly that there will be some time before he's felt. Others who don't subscribe to that way of thinking may say the feeling of a presence is just our own memories, and that my grief or my guilt may be keeping me from feeling those moments of connection and peace with him. I don't know. I really don't. I just know I miss him.
The rest of the evening was scattered with gifts: walking a wooded path behind campus after my run, pine needles underfoot and birds actively announcing spring. A walk with a dog who seemed uninterested in me beyond the fact that I was giving it space to move about, but I didn't mind. A gift of carrot, ginger, coconut soup made by a friend. A hug from someone I haven't seen in a while. A ride when I needed one. All good and wonderful things.
So, why is it, after that last bite of soup, that I have this feeling: I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I question my ability to keep doing this, day after day. And yes, it's getting incrementally better. And yes, I know this won't last. But it's the doubt not too unlike the last few miles of a race, only I didn't sign up for this one. I don't think I trained properly for this. My speed sucks. This is going to hurt.
The deal is people in grief just keep doing. We keep doing. I keep washing my hair. I keep brushing my teeth. Contacts go in and contacts go out again. Bed is made and slept in and made again. Alarms are set and silenced and set and silenced. Dishes are eaten on and washed and eaten on again. Clothes are worn and washed and worn again. And I don't know how any of it's happening. I truly don't.
I'm trying to pinpoint for you exactly what and where the discomfort is, and I can't. It's just a general feeling that things aren't right. It's like how you feel when you're at home sick, really sick, and you see people on tv running around and doing things and hopping in and out of cars and you think, "How is that possible? I couldn't be doing any of that now to save my life!" And you have a brief moment of wondering if you'll ever feel healthy enough to do more than lay on the couch wrapped up in a cocoon of stink. It's like that. Only the pain isn't a sore throat and a fever and shakes and chills. It's a soul-sickness. It's a scooping out of what you knew to be right and comfortable and good and an awareness that you can't grab at the air to put things back in order.
"Your new tattoo is beautiful," he wrote. I had just gotten a tattoo on my trip in Thailand. A new swirled pattern adorned my left ankle. "Babe! Can you hear me? Your new tattoo is beautiful." This was after a string of bizarre and slightly incoherent messages. "I love your new tattoo," he wrote. (Why is he talking about my tattoo instead of acknowledging the issue at hand?) "Babe!' he pleaded. "I need you to say thanks. I need you to say thanks for noticing." I didn't. I pointed out that there was a real problem and instead of looking at it, he was sweeping it under the rug and talking about my new tattoo. I didn't want to hear about my tattoo. I wanted to hear that he would get help.
Why didn't I just thank him? I look at that tattoo now and I want it gone. I want to peel the lines from my skin and suck them in through my mouth like a smoker's inhale. I want to hold them in and move them around with my tongue, forming words with the lines instead of shapes. "Thank you, babe" is how they'd spill from my mouth. Thank you for noticing. I'm glad you like it.
Memories of Gareth and thoughts related to us and his death dot my day like some ridiculous Morse code spelling out my grief. Today I was drying my hands in the bathroom at school, happy for the blast of continuous warm air after scrubbing them in frigid water. I remembered how Gareth said he'd used to ride his bike to his middle school in Jeondo in the brutal Korean heat. He'd arrive perhaps 25 minutes after leaving home and he'd be drenched in sweat- his clothes sticking to his skin, his hair matted and beads of sweat dripping from the ends. He was a mess. He'd walk into the office and find his Korean coworkers, day after day, stunned at his appearance. He'd mumble something about how they'd look like him, too, if they had to ride a f-ing bike to school every day, and then he'd lock himself in the bathroom and strip.
There's Gareth. Butt-naked in the bathroom of his school, splashing water on himself and then using the hand dryer to dry himself off. He'd put his head in the sink and scrub the sweat out. He'd turn the nozzle of the dryer upside down and blow the water from his face and his neck. This was my guy. I adored stories like this.
Dashes and dots. Close together and spaced far apart. The codes come all throughout the day. On my run and thinking about how Gareth desperately wanted to do a 5K. That was his goal, seemingly made impossible by the fact that he didn't seem to enjoy running and he had trouble sticking with things. Still, he'd go on a short run with me after I completed a longer one. I'd coach him all the way through, feeding him compliments about his legs being strong and like pistons and all he had to do was let them do their job. I'd create scenarios where we were in police training or FBI training and I was crushing on him and would ask him out after the run was over. He'd be so proud when we'd finish. He'd high five me and lift me up and kiss me with salty lips.
Here the memories come throughout the day. A blossoming tree calls to mind pictures he'd send from Gyeongju. "Look at this, babe! Can't wait until you get here and we can take the motorbike out and ride under these." And we would. I want the blooms to shrink back into buds and disappear into stark branches in a frozen sky. I want it to go back and back and back to last spring when we were watching them bloom together. And the spring before that when we were holding hands and walking to a tea-house in Hadong, petals raining from above. A carpet of petals below our feet. These are the only springs I want. This one is a fake. I can't bear to witness it.
But I do. I stand directly below a flowering cherry tree. If I can't look, I close my eyes and take in its scent. And if I can't do that, I hold my breath and know that it's there. Above me. Petals falling around me. Spring is here. And we bloom. Dashes and dots the messages come. And...we...b-l-o-o-m.
April 3, 2014
Tonight I was coming home from Korean class, making my way down the stairs in Banwoldang Station to the subway, and I had a memory. Strange what pops into our heads.
This one was of removing Gareth's socks, and I thought to myself, "There is nothing more intimate than removing someone's socks." A gentleness and a magnitude of caring that goes beyond helping the one you love put their jacket on before leaving the house or straightening a tie or even unbuttoning a shirt before sliding your hands around their bare waist.
Removing the socks. Fingers slip under the cotton and meet his ankle. Had I known this memory would come back to greet me with such sweetness, I would have let them linger there at the time, taking in his shape, reading his bones like braille.
Removing the socks. Pulling them past the heel. Rounded. Rough and calloused. Riding briefly along the arch and down to where the toes hide. Those toes. The second one much shorter than the rest. Nails unattended to and a few hairs growing wildly from the tops. What is it about this that would call me to kiss them, each one? These were the toes of the man I loved.
Removing the socks. He is sleeping heavily after a long drive to come see me. He will wake in the middle of the night to remove his jeans and his shirt and fall back into a deeper slumber, but for now I will remove his socks and cover him with a blanket. I will set his socks on top of his bag and I will crawl into bed with him. He will, in his sleep, instinctively reach for me and wrap me up and I will fall asleep to the sound of his breathing and the feel of my bare toes finding his beneath the covers.
Removing the socks. Everyone deserves a good foot rub. Are your feet ticklish? No? Good. Seriously. You'll love this. I had this done in New York once at a spa and I couldn't believe how amazing it was. I don't really have any proper massage stuff, but here- let me take off your socks. Let me beg of my fingers to be strong and press deeply into the bottoms of your feet. I want to do this for you. An act of love.
Removing the socks in a swift act of passion. Clothes discarded across the floor. One sock would be found miles away from its mate the next morning. We'd laugh about seeing it and say we should really take a picture of the scene. I'm surprised we didn't, although you wrote a poem about it once. "Whaaaat happened in here?" he'd say, in an accusatory tone. "I have NO idea," I'd say. I'd look guilty. We'd laugh again.
In the hospital Gareth was wearing no socks that needed removing. His feet were tucked tightly beneath starched sheets faintly smelling of antiseptic. My hands first met his face. His nose. The top of his wrapped head. His neck. I kissed each part. I placed my palm across the surface of his skin and I kissed where my hand lifted. His shoulders. His chest. His arms. Each finger. The wide palms of his hands and the smooth backs. I touched his side. His legs. I wrapped my hands around his calves. His ankles. I lifted the sheet and found his feet.
I found a small bandaid on the bottom of his heel. I kissed it. One on the other heel. I kissed that one, too. Each toe was touched and kissed. I squeezed his foot in the same way I had after gently removing his socks bathed in afternoon light from my wide apartment window. "I know these feet," I thought. I have undressed them. I have taken them into my hands and loved them.
Rolling down the cotton. Peeling back the sheets. Hands on toes and warm skin and yes-this-is-the-last-time-I-wi
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