The calendar doesn’t move the way it used to. Now it has spikes embedded in it.
Dates arrive with weight already attached. Birthdays. Death days. Anniversaries. Holidays that still show up but don’t bring everyone with them. I feel them coming sometimes before I remember them.
The calendar remembers every damn thing.
Today (Sunday) would have been my sister Tammy’s birthday. My eldest sister.
So we went out to the cemetery, cleaned things up a little, talked to her like we always do.
A vase on her grave had broken, likely in the last windstorm. A stake in the ground was bent. I straightened what I could. I wanted it to look right before her daughter came out later.
While we were there, we cleaned my parents’ bench too. Wiped it down. Threw away old and worn decorations that had stayed too long in the weather. Said hello to the rest of the family.
It may seem silly, decorating graves. But it feels like something you can do when you can’t do anything else.
Just a few days before that, St. Patrick’s Day came and went. That used to be my parents’ anniversary.
The dates keep coming whether I’m ready or not. I’m trying not to be overly dramatic, but some sting more than others, and I haven’t figured out yet which ones are going to catch me by the throat.
Today, after the cemetery I sat on the porch in the gorgeous sunshine finishing George Saunder’s Vigil because it is due back to the library tomorrow and can’t be renewed.
That felt apt, although it was simultaneously a tough read for today. But I finished the short novel. (I was 50 pages in and it’s only just over 170 pages, so I couldn’t see taking it back when I was already so far in.)
In Vigil, someone looks back on a life from the edge of it, trying to understand what mattered and what can’t be changed. It circles the idea that everything was inevitable, even as it leaves room to wonder if that’s comfort or something else. (I’m intentionally being vague.)
There’s talk of inevitability. Of “elevation,” a slippery term in the novel that I’m not sure is ever completely defined in it. (Maybe it was; I wasn’t reading as carefully as usual today.) What I got out of the word is basically spiritual transcendence, getting “above” life, mercy, something like that?
I kept wondering who the comforter (Jill “Doll” Blaine) was trying to comfort when she said everything was inevitable.
There were things hinted at in her former life that we could only feel. Things she may not have wanted to look at directly.
And I found myself thinking that maybe the way the word elevation is used in the story could be termed as denial, just as “inevitability” may well be a way of trying to escape responsibility.
Or maybe they’re both something softer than that and I can’t see it today. Maybe it’s just the only way a person can keep going. (Does that make sense?)
The book was a little like As I Lay Dying, a little stream of consciousness, and a lot like Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunder’s first novel. Inventive, descriptive. You have to pay attention, unless you just ride the stream. That’s an option.
Grief doesn’t accept stage directions. If it did, I would have given it marching orders. As it is, I try to dance with it instead, even though I alternate on days like this between tears and grumpiness.
Grief doesn’t rise where you expect it to rise or resolve where you think it should. It doesn’t care that the library book is due tomorrow. It doesn’t wait until you’re ready to feel it. And the year doesn’t smooth itself back out. The calendar remembers for me.
I try to honor the family in the ways that are still available. Cleaning. Straightening. Showing up. Saying their names out loud.
And I try to be patient with myself on the days when I’m off. I don’t know if that’s elevation or denial. I just know it’s what I have. It doesn’t change anything. But it matters.
That brief book review in the middle of this post is not meant disrespectfully; that’s just my way of handling the loss.
After slipping the library book in the dropbox (they have a hold ready for me to pick up tomorrow, a juicy one, so I can’t have any overdue items out and I wouldn’t anyway), I took advantage of my remaining restlessness to drop some items off at a donation bin and vacuum and wash my car.
My heart still aches, but they haven’t invented a wash for that yet, not that I know of.
dremadrudge.com 