Didion

I finally finished the book by her that I started last summer - her first novel Run River.  No wonder I had trouble finishing it.  A 26-year-old dies in it. Her sister-in-law burns her journals, because she doesn't want her husband, the brother, to 'see the pattern.'  He blames himself for not keeping her safe.  He eventually kills himself after he murders somebody, and as his wife holds his body, she tells him her memories of him.

"She hoped that although he could not hear her she could somehow imprint her ordinary love upon his memory through all eternity, hoped he would rise thinking of her, we were each other, we were each other, not that it mattered much in the long run but what else mattered as much."

the horror

A friend wrote to me when she found out: “You gave him so very much of your life to help make his... horror. what horror. how incredibly cruel.” Cruel, yes, but a waste, as is implied by the first statement - emphatically, no. He made my life as much as I made his. Maybe more.

I always felt sorry for couples who were childless by choice. Maybe even felt superior to them. I know, that’s not very nice. Do I feel chastened now? To the contrary. A child is not an investment. A child is the closest an atheist can get to God. That’s what I felt when I was in labor. I was just a vehicle for life to come through me. That’s what I always felt it was – a sacred responsibility. That’s why I feel like such a colossal failure. I had a treasure – I held the meaning of life in my hands – and I lost it.

forgetting

In going over his Facebook posts, trying to keep his voice alive in my head, I’ve come across this quote repeatedly. It was like a mantra. It’s from Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.”

This is its continuation:

“We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

Except when death freezes things and the present stops obscuring the past. Surely then we don’t forget.

from a reader

"Maybe he knew it all along. Knew that this was just a brief visit.... Through his death and your writings, you have become closer than ever. You see your similarities. Maybe this was what scared him sometimes: he was afraid of exposing his own vulnerability to you, because he knew you would understand too well."

Thank you, E. for making me feel understood.  And thank you to all of you reading this and making me feel less alone.

Second-guessing

This is an excerpt from the book I'm writing:

He told me I was in denial, but really he was hiding the truth from me all along. ‘Can I trust you now?’ I wanted to ask him. I don’t want to relive my whole life, I just want to redo that conversation. Even if it fails to change anything. I just want another chance. There are so many things we think are impossible to change, but death is really the only one. There is always another chance before death. We just don’t want to take it for fear of being wrong. I didn’t ask him ‘can I trust you now’ because I thought he would fly into a rage as he did whenever I doubted him. I predicted his behavior and acted accordingly. But what if I was wrong? What if that would have been the right opening? What if even if he had still died we had had a different conversation from all those other ones. There are signs that he really changed towards the end. I missed out on the opportunity to acknowledge that.

“Every day I wake up and spend five hours training my body to exhaustion just so I don't have enough energy to actually throw myself off a bridge. Everyday I am forced to reconcile the mangled peices of a human being and I don't think you've even noticed.” 

Of course I noticed. With a mix of pride and terror I watched his boastful postings about his injuries. A really bad shin scrape, the ‘still prettier than you’ almost broken nose, the bruised ribs he complained of a few weeks before the end and which I suspected had caused him to overmedicate. The Fight Club therapy he was practicing. Was he rebelling against me? Against my emasculating power. He ended our last fight with: “I have to go hit people now. Thankfully.” Three hours later he apologized. It was self-punishment, wasn’t it? Freud’s melancholic, who rather than hating others turns it upon himself.

Our Dark Knight

I got up last night to write down this dream.

Batman had to withdraw from the world because of a super villain who was after him, so he feigned his death and from then on would live in secret with his family. And that would be enough because being with the people you love is like being with everybody. This was a movie in the dream, but the ending was only revealed after the movie ended, so it was real.

Some writer said you never have to revise what you get up to write in the middle of the night. I guess it's true. I was questioning the title of my book, but I have a reason for it now.

acceptance

I've been wondering all these months what people mean when they say it will get easier, except not knowing what the hell they're talking about, obviously.  But I think I know now - it's this, this terrible calm, this acceptance that nothing will ever be the same and yet things will go on regardless.  And this is so much worse.  It's like hoping for a death sentence and getting life in prison.

live in dreams

In my dream you had come home because something went awry with your plans - you screwed up.  But I was happy because you were there and I could hug you.  You looked over my shoulder as I was cooking chicken and kale - what I actually plan to cook today. 

When I woke up I wasn't pained that it wasn't real, because in a way it was.  I got to hug you again.

money

First time I remember that I've had money in my account come the end of the month.  It hurts so much.  I wish you were still here, so we could keep arguing over money and getting me into debt.

You were right about that, as about so much else.

writing

“No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge.” - Jack Kerouac

Writing is becoming a tyranny.  Not just this, but the 'book' I'm writing.  I'm tired of judging my emotions by how good a writer I am.  Yes, a lot of it is trite.  That doesn't make it less true.  'Trite', a word I learned in creative writing class in middle school.  The worst condemnation.  Enough.  I just want to feel.

Spring

The nice weather makes me want to die.  And I don't mean just now.  I've always been like that.  It's like I've been created to tough it out, but I don't have what it takes to let go and enjoy the warmth.  No, that makes me want to quit. "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair."  It brings so many expectations that will never be fulfilled. 

more dreams

Well, I thought the fear had disappeared.  That gut-gripping fear upon awakening.  But that's because I hadn't dreamed of him.  It came back one night.  I was following him and watching him go somewhere, a bad place, at night, looking for danger. I wasn’t trying to stop him, more spying on him, but I was cut by the knowledge that this is what he does, that there are things I don’t know about, risky things.

Then last night I had quite a different dream, a very Freudian one.  He was 6 or 7, we had gone back home for good and I was concerned that he would forget English so I was going to get my father (a former Ambassador) to ask at the American embassy if they would accept him in their after-school program so he could go there maybe once a week. I was concerned that he would grow up not speaking English. There was also some other opportunity - a play(?) that I wanted him to try out for. The embassy's back yard abutted on our own (or what appeared to be my grandparents' village house yard). We could hear the kids playing. As I was formulating this plan there was some urgency to it, but at the same time I thought, well, what's the point, when he's dead now, but I still planned to go through with it.

why me?

Sometimes the unfairness of it just chokes me.

End of the day

Such a blessed relief. Especially on weekends when I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself.

I did my yoga, I cooked lunch, I did my writing (thank god for that), I'm having my drink (never enough, but I resist overindulging) and soon (not soon enough) I will be unconscious. Overall a success, I think, considering I have no hope for the future.

'Life is how it is, not how it was.' - Bright Eyes

the question of self-pity

"People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as 'dwelling on it.' We understand the aversion most of us have to 'dwelling on it.' Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is unnatural, a failure to manage the situation." - Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

How many times did I say this to people - it's only self-pity that makes me sad. I'm not sad for him - he is no more, I'm sad for me. But I'm also sad for who he was. Now that I'm writing about him the hardest thing is not writing about the death. That gives me a certain comfort. I can feel a certain detachment as I'm describing what I'm going through. But when I write about his life, everything makes me sad - the good and the bad, the things we did and didn't do. I wish we had done more.

I wish we as humans didn't dread death. What is death to us? I just wish we knew what we have while we are living. But we can't. We just can't.

writing

I've started writing what I hope will be a book. Working title is Our Dark Knight. In a way it comes easily. I'm never at a loss as to what to write next, but it comes at a cost. Being truthful brings up pain that would otherwise lie below the surface. I realize that I'm in a peculiar state, one in which anger and self-blame become one. But I have no choice. I've failed at life. I need to succeed at writing. Otherwise I have no excuse for continuing to occupy space on this Earth. I owe it to him. His life is complete, but mine isn't. It's a lonely task. It makes me feel like I'm at the bottom of a well. Memories are not things you have. They are things you will never have again.

reading

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues

 I first heard the poem in "Four Weddings and a Funeral".  Was reminded of it reading Joan Didion's memoir about the death of her daughter, Blue Nights.  Went on to read the one about her husband, The Year of Magical Thinking. 

I never liked Joan Didion, although she was one of my son's favorites.  I always found her cold.  Now I think she is just like me.  Or maybe all people who lose their only child are alike.  In any case, it helps to read about someone else experiencing the exact same thing.  It makes you feel less alone.  Thank you, Joan.  You take comfort where you can find it.  I have always looked to literature.  Never thought I would find it in non-fiction.  It has changed my perspective on writing.  That even the most profoundly personal can be universal.

just deserts

Lately I've been feeling that I deserve what happened.  More than that - that we all deserve what we get.  And so I deserve this barren life, bereft of its only meaning - love.  Why?  Because of cowardice.

You told me I lived in denial.  Not exactly.  It's not that I couldn't see.  It's that I couldn't act.  My sins are all ones of omission.  I never did the wrong thing.  I just didn't do the right thing.  Because of fear.  There are instances that come clearly to mind.  But this is not the place. 

I said in the beginning that I knew I was always meant to write.  The reason I haven't is not because I think my writing is not good enough.  It's because I have no imagination.  I'm always amazed at how wildly imaginative my dreams are.  But in real life I have no access to that power.  But there's one thing I can do.  I can write what I know.   I was kind of a journalist after all.  I can take what I know and make people understand it.  Maybe even feel it.  That's all I need to do now.  I need to write about you.  Because you were amazing.  Because you had no fear.

Another reason I gave myself a pass on becoming a writer is because I thought you could do it better.  You were as good a writer as me, but you also had a life.  But although you wrote, you didn't leave behind much.  You were too busy living.  Well, I have no life now, so I have all the time in the world.  I will write about your life.  I don't pretend to know all of it.  I was in denial, remember?  But there are people out there who know about it.  They can help me fill in the gaps.

no love

Oh, who am I kidding?  Love can't save anyone.  You knew that.  You were wiser than me in so many ways.  Love is at best an illusion.  The best kind, but still an illusion.  No one can take away another's pain.  No one can give another's life meaning.  I was naive to believe that.

And you were right about me - I did live in denial.  As cynical as I am, I could never face up to how ugly things really are.  I was always secretly hopeful that truth and beauty will prevail.  

I am no more.

love

"everything passes before you get to scream I LOVE YOU out the the window of the train"

I hadn't seen that one before.  I know you meant it more than literally, but that's one of the biggest regrets I have for you - that you never really found a deep romantic love.  I think that if you had, it could have saved you.  I know that mine couldn't.