natural selection

My son joked once that when he grows up he wants to be natural selection.  I'm reading a book about it now and wondered if he was defeated by natural selection - his traits too rarefied, too unfit to perpetuate.

I once planted flower seeds that a friend had brought me from Holland.  I knew nothing about it and planted them in pots that were too small.  They grew tall but never flowered because the stalks broke - they were too tall and fragile to survive.

nostalgia

This is a new phenomenon for me. I find myself gripped suddenly with a longing for the past - any past - not just when my son was here, but even before that.  Any past time in my life now seems idyllic.  Even last year when I was undeniably depressed.  I want that back.  Anything but this, anything but now.

Our Dark Knight

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absence

"the hours after you are gone are so leaden..."  Samuel Beckett, Cascando
"All the years keep rolling/The decades flying by/But ahh, the days are long..."  The Walkmen, On the Water

I can deal with the years, the decades without you. It's the individual moments that can break me. The void is too much to bear. My love is going into a black hole, never to be returned. I am slowly turning cold.

mourning

So I had a crisis after I finished the book. At first it was about the reaction to it and thinking of maybe having to rewrite it (which I can't and won't do).  But really it was about not having it as a nightly ritual of grieving.  Where to channel my grief now?  Can I let go of it or will it come back with a vengeance? 

The pain I get upon awakening has been a little unpredictable lately.  Sometimes I don't get it immediately.  Sometimes I look for it and that provokes it.  Other times it skips me.  Then it comes back as usual.  That is also something I've been clinging to, I think.  Without it, what do I awaken to?

This morning I had an intimation.  I woke up thinking of him.  It's strange that people think the photos of him covering my walls would be a constant reminder.  They are not. I don't need a reminder.  What was different this morning is I caught a glimpse of the endlessness of despair.  I have been telling myself that grief is forever.  Today I felt it.  The finality of it.  Every Saturday I will wake up to nothing to look forward to.  He is not just away for a while.  There is no substitute.  There is no way for me to rejoin him.  Even if I die.  We die alone.  He died alone.

audience

When it comes to writing they say the deeply personal is also the most universal.  I think that applies to my story, as well.  I know it has the power to shake people up.  I think my critics so far have been too close to be objective.  I will try a couple more, who are not that invested in my well-being.

reaction

Well, I asked for it and it's unnerving.  Even the well-meaning comments from friends and family still feel like an intrusion.  What happens when I put it out there?  Will I regret it?  Will I want to un-know what people think of it?  Maybe I should give up on a wider audience.  Maybe some things are better left unsaid.