panic

"And I sing and sing of awful things
The pleasure that my sadness brings
As my fingers press onto the strings"

 Last night I couldn't fall asleep from the thought that there is no exit - that every night ahead will be like this - a black void.  So the present and the future are ruined, but is the past?  If that were the case, wouldn't everything be ruined, because it inevitably ends in loss? No, I can think of the past without it being drowned out in sadness, or at least no more than I would have felt before for something that I cannot recapture.  My life is not ruined, because I have no future, as his is not, because it ended abruptly.  We had our lives.  That's all.

"Except we keep coming back
To this meaning that I lack
He says the choices were given
Now you must live them
Or just not live"
~ Bright Eyes

And furthermore, they say that while there is life there is hope.  But that is not true - some things are irrevocably lost, even as we continue to live.  They are not impossible, but we make them so with every breath.

more on place

They say 'it was his time,' when someone dies. I say that place is more important than time when it comes to death.  Accidental death, at least.  Yes, time and place conspire for a unique set of circumstances, but place seems more important in the equation. 

Place certainly plays an important part in forming us.  Not that you can escape from your drives and tendencies, but they can play out differently according to your environment. 

I don't find it accidental that California claimed him.  His whole pilgrimage to there by train - it's like he reached the end.  Yes, I should take him back there so he can continue his journey by sea.

And I have reached the end here.  All the pleasures and connections I had found have retreated.  My lack of purpose now as a childless mother is multiplied by the fact that I came here for him.  And this place took him away from me.  It's not an irrational hatred I feel.  I don't feel hatred.  There are very few things I feel anymore, besides pain.  I don't blame the place, but it was instrumental in how things played out.  And it unmistakably weighs on me.

places

I have said before that time doesn't heal, but maybe places do.  Being away for almost three weeks unexpectedly gave me a respite from waking up in pain.  It's not that I was happy, but the pain I felt was mostly dulled.  Maybe because I had only happy memories of my son there as a child.  Maybe I didn't feel his absence, because he hadn't been there in years anyway.  I don't know.  But, as I came back I was acutely aware that there is no reason for me to come back here, no one to come back to.

I also went to a place where I thought I could scatter his ashes.  He had talked of the mystery of our mountains and how he felt tied to that land.  It is a beautiful and spiritual place, with seven lakes at the summit of a mountain, where people gather in mid-summer to dance.  The top two lakes, which I couldn't reach, because the weather turned to rain and fog are named the Eye and the Tear.  The Tear is the highest one.  I thought I would lay him down there, and I would go into the Eye one day.  But, I don't know now.  He didn't seem to belong there, in calm waters.  It is the sea that must take him, because it rages and covers the world.  I will go back to the place he liked, the one that claimed him and see if he belongs there.