Still Crazy

The loss of anyone leaves a big, fat gaping hole in one's being.  A black hole, that sucks out all light and keeps it from escaping.  A bottomless pit where the stone you toss into it never hits bottom.

Grief.  Goddamn grief.

I am weary of grief.  I am tired of trying to fill the hole.  I've become Sisyphus, the Greek dude who was condemned to pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down, and start the process over.

Whoever conjured up that character must have been plagued by grief.

Years roll by since my great losses.  I function, I get through the days, and then for no reason I find myself enveloped by loss and that sense of being totally alone.  Almost like in a vacuum.  And because it's a vacuum, there are no molecules to carry the sound, so truly, no one can hear you scream.  No one can hear you even speak, or cry, or whimper.  You're on your own.

And yet I function so well.  Just ask my colleagues, my family, my friends.  But what the hell do they know.  Nothing.  They cannot hear me.

The Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special aired recently. I watched it and enjoyed it. But it plopped me right back into the depth of grief.  Why?  Well, my husband and I loved the show, and even though he worked many Saturday nights ( he was in "the business") we found a way to watch it right after his own shows, or we'd hurry home from the gig to watch (pre-TIVO days, of course).  Worse, he and Dan Aykroyd were twins (honest to God, we would be out in public and people would ask for his autograph), so watching Dan perform was like seeing my husband again. Plus Steve could imitate any Aykroyd bit perfectly.  I was transported back in a nanosecond to laughing over Bass-o-Matic and the Blues Brothers.  

It has been days since the special, and I'm still caught in the grief hole and can't seem to get out.  Steve and I should be laughing together right now.  Instead, I just laugh alone.  And laughing alone when it should be shared is very sad indeed.

On the heels of that special show came a matter I was handling that involved traumatic injuries to a young man who was, almost to the day, a year younger than my son.  And defending the doctor and hospital that caused his injuries (by prescribing a new drug without proper monitoring and follow up) were two young men not too far off from my son's age.

Wow.  A young man dies.  Another suffers traumatic injuries. Two others go on to professional careers.  The fickle finger of fate.  It's fucked up.

I can't stop thinking about what my son would be, or where he would be, or what he would be doing. That's fucked up too, because there's no way to know.  But I keep playing out scenarios.  It's like the kid's books where you can choose your endings.  But I know how his story ends.  That part never changes.  But I keep trying to play out how it SHOULD have ended.  More trying to fill the hole by busying the mind with stupid, useless exercises.

Grief isolates you.  You realize damn few in this world can truly understand the sense of aloneness, of isolation, of being adrift.   So you just don't share any of it with anyone, ever.  Besides, that's what shrinks and blogs are for, right?

What fills the hole?  Every one has his or her own filler.  Some, it's ignoring the truth and just returning to life.  Some, drugs or alcohol or sex or a combination thereof.  Some, it's work.  Some, it's marathon running or cycling other endurance sports.  Some, nothing fills it and they are slowly dragged into the hole, like quicksand, and they exit this existence.

For me, I work.  A lot.   It can always be justified as "accomplishing" something.  Or building my business.  Or some other positive attribute.  But I am really trying hard to fill that hole and not let it consume me.  Running from the tsunami, if you will.

Funny.  My BFF and I had talked about using work as an escape just shortly before she died.  She agreed that it would be easy to use work that way, and I laughed as I told her how grateful I was for her because she was there for me to always share with -- which means I didn't have to use work to escape.

Yeah, well, we know how that turned out.  Fucked up.  You need a shared history friend to really be able to deal with grief.

The take away from this?  If you know someone who has lost someone super close to them (a friend of mine calls it a "core person" which is a great description) just know that they have this hole, and try to be one of the ways the hole is filled.

Either that, or sit down and share whatever alcoholic beverage they prefer.  And let them talk about the lost one.  And have a good cry.  And then take them out and do something crazy/fun.

On the SNL 40 show, Paul Simon sang one of my favorite songs.  I always thought I'd be able to sing it with Steve, as we were pretty crazy when we were kids. Or with Heidi, as we were pretty crazy too. Simon's voice is pretty much gone, but his lyrics are as powerful as ever:

"I saw my old lover on the street today,
She seemed so glad to see me, I just had to stay.
And we talked about old times
 and we drank ourselves some beers,
Still crazy after all these years."

Yes, we would still be crazy.  No holes to fill.  Just a shared history to take a little farther down the path, together.


Copyright 2015