Flowers

I was a pallbearer at my Grandmother's funeral this weekend. The director had to chase me down to attach my boutineer, because I was also involved in audio, video and music. There are many details in putting together any church service, and I usually have my fingers in most of them. It keeps me busy and slightly panicky, which is a state I apparently like.

There were last minute additions to the slide show and CDs coming in left and right. Funerals are always like this at the church – favorite songs to play, postlude music, videos of memories – always showing up in the sound booth ten minutes before the service. Being occupied kept my emotions at bay until I was supposed to sing my solo. This was helpful. I got through the song okay. I also led congregational music of Grandma's favorite songs.

‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus
Just to take him at his word
Just to rest upon his promise
Just to know, “Thus saith the Lord”

It seems like a funeral director would be really proficient at pinning on boutineers, but oh well. The thing had a pin that was sticking out a millimeter away from my jugular. Eventually it drew blood, which I guess was okay because I had on a red shirt. It hurt.

It hurt to watch my grandfather, in his unerring dignity, caress his wife's face one last time. It hurt to watch my mother and my aunt, and to try and imagine their loss. But mostly it just hurt to have a part of me missing, and to know it would never come back. It didn't feel like grief, or saying goodbye to a person. It felt like moving, packing up and leaving the house you grew up in, leaving behind a neighborhood full of friends. When you move you know you're heading for a new place, where you'll make new memories. But you just ache and ache for the memories you leave behind, and the rooms into which you can never again walk. That's what it felt like, as we drove to the graveside, with blood on my shirt.

We sang there under a tarp. Grandma's other favorite hymn.

What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer

The director hurriedly removed each or our boutineers, six carnations from six grandsons. We were maybe standing a foot away from each other, in utter silence, and yet he felt the need to mechanically repeat “please hold the flower and I will instruct you when to set it on the coffin” six identical times. A little reminder of the dehumanizing machinery of the “death industry.” The six of us walked past the casket, six of her grandkids all grown up to be men, and placed our flowers on top as a last goodbye. There was something profound and beautiful in that silent moment. Something dignified and holy, a reminder of the all we held in our hearts and all we would leave behind there buried in the grass.

Goodbye Charlie

The hardest thing about losing Charlie was handing him over to the receptionist in the pet emergency room. He was cold and unresponsive, wrapped in a towel in my arms, and didn't even look back at me as he was whisked away through a door marked “Employees Only.” I was wet and cold from the rain, but he wasn't. I'd been rubbing his little body in the car, driving with one hand, and telling him, “it's okay little buddy, just stay with me for few more minutes. We're almost to the doctor's.” It was midnight. I never saw him again.

Charlie was a “replacement dog.” Just before Christmas we lost our beagle of eleven years. (I'm still not ready to post about that one.) We rescued Charlie from the pound shortly after. He was a spindly tan chihuahua, with dark eyes and a head too small for his body and ears too big for his head. He lived in our home for only eighteen days. He felt it was his right to sleep on top of my head, so I learned to push him aside and let him burrow into the crook of my neck.

He was sick the last couple of days, and James yelled at him when Charlie threw up in his lap. Charlie ran into my bedroom where I was resting, hopped up next to me crying, and nuzzled under my chin. He'd already been in trouble for his house-training mistakes, and this reprimand was just one too many. Despite the messes, that was a good day.

Wrapped in a white towel, Charlie looked helpless and even smaller than he really was, like some kind of Eastern European war orphan, pale and worn and quiet. The x-rays were inconclusive, but the vet knew something was seriously wrong with his abdomen. He was in excruciating pain. I signed papers and left him overnight for a series of x-rays as barium was passed through his system.

What is it about crisis that wakes all my demons? Driving home in the early morning hours was an exercise in choosing to stay on the narrow path. The streetlights and the rain colluded to excite my senses and I felt those familiar tingles of the illicit in that forbidden hour. It is good to know that ultimately I chose not to add the sickening lost-ness of relapse into the unavoidable chaos of that night.

I was deep in a confusing dream or nightmare when the phone woke me up at 4:30. Charlie had “coded” three times, and did I want to continue with life saving measures? “Well, yeah, I guess” was all I could come up with. What do you say to that? Ten minutes later I was finally off of hold. The vet, who had been mostly positive and very competent, was now hoarse and breathy. Charlie's heart had started, but his brain was probably gone. It was time to let go.

I spoke with a friend in recovery the day before Charlie died. We discovered a mutual secret: that during the rocky chapters of our marriage, when affection was running dry, our dogs helped fill in the gap. Sometimes meetings and books and phone calls just can't measure up to that warm furry snuggle, to hearing another soul breathing in the darkness. If you're not a dog person, I'm sorry if that's weird for you, that's just the way it is.

Charlie died of a a perforated bowel. Despite his penchant for chewing, there was nothing detectable in his intestines, and I was told it was probably from a defect that existed before we even adopted him. All I heard was this: there wasn't much else we could have done. It was just his time. He was a gift and a joy. Thanks, my little friend. I really do miss you.

Forbidden Grief

I think I loved her.

There, I said it.

I want to put some kind of warning at the top of posts about Elena (the emotional affair) so that Linsey (the wife) won't have to read them. But why bother? Linsey knows everything anyway. I call her Sherlock Holmes because she's so freakin' hyper-vigilant. Over the years she's become a better and better detective, while I've become a better and better liar. The codependent vs. addict arms race.

Back to Elena. It's hard enough for me to express the officially sanctioned emotions, like gratitude or joy or excitement. So I guess I should go easy on myself for avoiding the grief I feel over ending a relationship with someone else's wife. But feel it I must, as I've been told many times by my therapist brigade.

Elena was a sexual abuse survivor, just like my wife. She was hard on the outside, desperate and scared on the inside. Like all the girls I've been drawn to, she was maddeningly hot and cold. One day she'd flirt, enticing me past my boundaries with warmth and danger, the next day she'd pretend she didn't know me. Women like this get under my skin, and I become obsessed with getting through their defenses. I've lived for this buzz since middle school. I've come to view it as my earliest addiction.

I can honestly say the prize I'm after is their trust. I want permission to tease and talk intimately with the most intriguing girl in the room, while other guys chase after the skirts. Yeah, I'm that guy. The one you can't complain about because he's been a friend to your wife, and you know he's not necessarily trying to get into her pants, but you keep tabs on him all the same. Except Elena's husband didn't know, or care, because he was too busy flirting with the girls at his work.

What made Elena different than all the rest? I'd been drawing bull's eyes on women for years, in classes, in choirs, at work. Basically, she was the first one who truly reciprocated. The rest had flirted back, then moved on. They knew that if you let a guy flirt for too long, he begins to feel entitled, possessive. Elena didn't mind. I was always trying to figure out exactly what was going on, what each of us was getting out of the relationship. My answer was: She likes that I pay attention to her. I like that she lets me.

You must understand where I was at that point. I had long given up on my marriage, and more significantly, me. I'd read the books I was supposed to read and tried the stuff I was supposed to do, and none of it fucking mattered. Each time Linsey tensed up when I touched her, every urgent phone call she remembered just as we headed to the bedroom, each little rejection left me feeling more and more repulsive. I must have been a pretty sick person to take all of her shit and conclude it was entirely my fault. Today, when I get paranoid about what she talks about in her support groups, Linsey likes to say “it's not all about you, Eli.” Oh how I wish somebody had told me that back then.

So it was a big deal when the Starbucks girl flirted with me, while I was buying hot chocolate for my son's preschool teacher, who happened to be Elena. (Who didn't like coffee, hence the hot chocolate.) And each day when I dropped off my son, the Starbucks was payment for Elena's affection and attention. And I ate it up. She was tiny (Linsey says “elfish”), Latina, a little psycho, and had poor boundaries – all the things that turn me on. We texted and talked on the phone, instant messaged, MySpaced. Then we each carefully covered our tracks, erasing our call logs and internet histories, so our spouses wouldn't find out.

Eventually it all came crashing down, but I'll have to tell that story another day. I'm exhausted emotionally, because despite my resolve, Elena still pulls strings in my heart. Don't tell me the difference between “love” (the mature commitment) and “love” (the high school feeling) because you know as well as I do that every human being yearns for both. Elena and I both grew during those years, and for what it's worth, she was a beautiful person. We laughed endlessly and she was kind to me when I was heartbroken.

I remember crying to Elena on the phone over a mess I'd made by relapsing. I understand it cost her nothing to comfort me, to tell me I was going to make it. I understand she didn't have to live with me. I understand our feelings for each other were illicit, addictive, destructive, selfish, reckless, and short-sighted. But they were real, and I miss them. I miss her, her voice and her eyes. Most of all I miss her friendship.

Good Grief

There's something about grieving that's...mysterious.

That's what he said. And that's what I needed to hear.

Of course we'd also hit the basics. The five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It's funny how you can hear this stuff over and over, think you're so emotionally intelligent, and then completely miss what's going on in your own life. Until your therapist points it out. So part of recovery is facing the grief of loss, even when the losing is intentional, as in letting go of your addictions and the people who've dragged you down.

Not that this is anything new for me. Losing Lita, now that was grief. Linsey and I were young, and naïve, and idealistic. Somehow we got the idea in our heads that we were supposed to adopt Lita, a seven-year-old foster child in my wife's classroom. It didn't work out. And I still don't really understand what happened there. She was never mine to lose in the first place, so why did it hurt so bad? The last day we ever saw Lita, I ran to the store to buy her a gift. Maybe no one noticed the grown man weeping as he looked for a “goodbye” card in the aisles of Food 4 Less, but I know I wasn't alone. Because for some reason that day every angel and muse of longing and heartbreak ascended on me to play me a song, and instead of background muzak I heard these words:

There are roads that can take you to places that you've never been.
There are people, when you meet them it's like they have lived inside your skin.
There are souls you connect with so strong, a bond that's so deep and so true.
And that's the way I feel about you.

There are times, like a magnet you're drawn into some body's life.
You don't know what you're doing or why you are there, but you know it's right.
There's a sense that the piece that was missing has suddenly come into view.
And that's the way I feel about you.

I believe in this world there is nothing that happens by chance.
There's a reason that at just this particular moment you came into my hands.
Like a gift that you never expected you treasure your whole life through.
And that's the way I feel about you.

Lita's ghost haunts my River Isis. I'm not afraid of her, nor am I ashamed of her presence. Because loving Lita was a good and beautiful thing, something that Linsey and I did together, with nothing but good intentions. And that kind of grieving I'm OK with. My struggle is in allowing myself to grieve those things that I'm ashamed of.

[Photo by tavopp under C.C.License]