Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Day 243: The Women He Held

October 29, 2014


The other night, I was falling asleep.

Or I was trying to.

Many nights, most nights since our last together, I've tossed about. Tried to train my body to sleep uncradled. Pulled my knees to my chest and backed up into the place where he once slept.

I used to be his little astronaut, he said. His star sailor. In our normal state of cuddle, if you were to place us upright, I would be sitting there, quite comfortably in Gareth's lap. At night, I would inch back into this seat, sweep my hair around the back of my neck to the side, and buckle myself in with one of his arms. Prepare to take off. Sleep coming in 10...9...8...7...

The other night, I was imagining such a comfort again. The clock was moving into the 3 a.m. hour, and I was thinking of how quickly I'd be able to fall asleep if he were here. With me. Holding me like he did.

Then an interesting thing happened.

But first I must write about it. That I was not the last.

That in cleaning out his apartment with his family I read in his notebook about the days before his death. His intense sadness. His heavy drinking. His inability to shake himself from the darkness. His missing of me. His remorse. And I read about his "falling into bed" with a new friend when they were both in a state of intoxication and each carrying grief of their own. This friend was new to town and we had not met. She had no way of knowing the whole story. She did not know what she was stepping into (or on) and I tried to keep this in mind as I sunk to the floor and sobbed. "I wanted to be the last one..." I cried into the shoulder of Gareth's mom. "He had every right...He did...but I wanted to be the last one..."

It's a silly request, really. And one way beyond my control. Even after reading on that for him this went no further than a drunken make-out session, one that he regretted days later for concern over hurting his friend's feelings, I still couldn't shake the crippling sickness that would come over me when I'd think about it. Picture it. My love. The lips of my love. Someone else inching back into that astronaut chair and being flown up and away to another place. That was my chair.

Or was it?

That fact of the matter is that it was not.

It was never mine to have alone, and I get that now.

What happened the other night in my severe missing of Gareth was a sudden understanding of what a gift it was to be in that seat. For me. For this friend of his. For the girlfriends that came before me. This woman needed comforting that night. And so did Gareth. And I can say without a doubt, having been there, that I know the comfort she felt in that moment of being held by him. I know what his arms felt like around her and I know what his lips felt like on the back of her head. I know how her hips would have been cradled and how she would have heard the sweet sound of his breathing. And I'm sure if it didn't take away her pain completely, it eased it for the moment.

And right there, any residual discomfort I had about not being the last to be held in this way was lifted from me. And in that moment, I felt a great kinship with this young woman, knowing we had both experienced the gift of being comforted by Gareth.

And then, as if I had known them all, I imagined all who were curled up with him in that way over the years. The first girl he held like that. The one before me. The ones in between. Gareth was no real playboy, mind you. He didn't begin dating until later in life and when he did, he stuck with one person. I was (in his words and through evidence) the most significant romantic relationship of his life, but he had a serious girlfriend before me. And he had other relationships that started and fizzled out. He had crushes and good friends that morphed into something more momentarily and women who loved being in his arms and whom he loved being there.

I was not the only one to be held by him.

I was not the last.

Now I am folded into the memories of these others, and I take my rightful place there. I exist right alongside these women, next to them, with them, in that collective experience and I feel so comforted by that. There is my comfort. A different kind. But there it is.

And the other night, while this was all unfolding quite effortlessly in my head, I got it. I got what I needed to hold on to in regards to this and what I needed to let go of. And I did both.



3 comments:

  1. Damn. I can understand why he did it - people do really stupid things when they are hurting. But I do wish you hadn't had this extra pain to try to come to terms with.

    Lynne

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  2. Bridget, check for a private message from me.

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  3. Thanks, Lynne- it was a bit of devastation on top of devastation, but I understand exactly why he did it. I spent a lot of time in those first few weeks angrily asking Gareth "WHY?! Why did you have to do that?" about a lot of things. Those last few weeks were not full of his best decisions, that's for sure. Oh, my babe.

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