It's a slow day. Not that there isn't anything to do. Believe me, if I only opened my eyes enough to care I'd be assaulted by a cluttered home and a raging river of laundry. Nor is it that I am bored. Today I am slow, as I live in this surreal time of grief, jet lag and a hard to swallow diagnosis. Nothing threatening, just out of my control to resolve, nothing I could have done to prevent it. Nothing. And in this nothing, I snuggle myself tight on the damp earth at the bottom of the pit. I don't even think it's depression, but just the need to glide quietly through this world for a time. The bottom of the pit with its warm humid odor-of-dirt feels comfortable. It's the consciousness that you can't go any lower and you can rest before resuming the struggle to get out, because I foresee that it will come. For now it's comfortable, I'm at the bottom and content to be there.
I haven't stopped, I've just slowed down. My mind is on "strictly necessary" mode. I breathe, I walk, I do things that must be done, without prioritizing, without order. Not thinking brings relief, it's not suffering. Don't feel sorry for me. I want this, I need this. I disengage in order to conserve my soul's energy, which is precious and approaching empty. The normal noise of whiny children, crying, laughing does not reach me, does not touch me. There's a birthday to prepare tomorrow, yet I don't fret, I don't worry and over think. It will get it done, somehow, I will use the strength I have.
It's funny to not feel the struggle that is so much part of my life.
A close friend's death is a considerable blow, compounded by the fact that you always wish you could have said or done more. It begs the question, "More of what?" Compounded more yet by the realization that you can't be there to pick up the pieces, hold hands, cry and listen to the desperation of a mother who has lost a daughter at such a young age and is now left with a son-in-law and two grandsons, as old as they may be, who still needed their wife and mother. Then you add the thought that your own mother leaned so much on this friend, who was part of her daily life and her life as a whole. Thirty years. A long time. It could have been more. We wish it'd been more.
Having to leave the day of the funeral and not being able to participate and follow the protocol of closure was difficult. It was even more difficult to know that I could not support my own mother; she could not lean on my arm and rest her grief there. As the shock wears off, I cannot be there to help her deal with the daily, at least for a while, knocking next door and not having her friend open and ask her inside.
So I am back to this place that is nominally home. It is comfortable to be back in my own house. Comfortable because of familiarity, not that visceral connection to my own roots that still surprises me every time I get off a plane and head for the hills, literally. Even with all its idiosyncrasies, the home of my youth, the origin of me, is comfortable. That valley hemmed in by mountains and hills, dotted with houses I know by heart, is home. In its stifling heat and sticky air, it's still home. Crazy drivers and all.
It was hard to come back this year. I got too comfortable. With friends who cared enough to want to see me, and friends who drove in from another country to spend a few days with us. An uncharacteristic impromptu decision that pleasantly surprised me and made me long for those relationships even more intensely now that time and space separate us. Yes, I miss it. I miss talking at a subsurface level, a second nature we developed growing up I guess, a cultural training, maybe a product of gregariousness, of the endless hours spent talking about anything and everything that inexorably led to knowing each other, and developing a level of comfort beyond the small talk. It was all recaptured in the one on one visits with friends of long ago and newly made friends. Focused friendship is what I lack, what I desire.
It is a day to rest, to lie away from the filtered rays of sunshine. I don't want to think of getting up and going, although I know at some point I must and I will, but not yet. Not quite yet.
[Note: this post was written after I came back from my home last October. Just hadn't gotten around to posting it.]
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