Did you ever have the dream that you find another room in your house, maybe another whole wing? It’s furnished, it’s familiar, it’s yours, but at the same time you think, how could I have been unaware of this? It’s a pleasant dream.
Bereavement is the opposite of this. A room you had, used, fled to, rested in—is gone, closed to you. You can never enter it again, never see it again. It’s walled off, an amputation. It’s a phantom limb.
How many times every day—no, a hundred is too many, but is ten enough?—do I get an idea, read a poem, encounter a situation, that resonates with me, and which I know would resonate with my sister? She would know why it does! Tell her, call her. But oh yeah, that’s right: nevermore.
I share these ideas and thoughts in my writing, I try to make them as comprehensible as possible to somebody who isn’t me. But it isn’t really possible. There’s no one who knows what we knew. No one with the gnosis of the first person I ever loved. The person after all, with whom I learned language itself.
Nobody needs to respond. But thanks for a space to articulate this.
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Dear, Hyp.
No words, other than. I and we are here.
I would hug you If I could.
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Certainly, what Kevin said.
I’ve also lost a room recently, and as usual, beyond the immediate circumstance, I appreciate how you express yourself. Inexplicably, that somehow makes mine easier to bear. I’ll stop babbling now and go look at my 23 new Koi babies and stare out at the yard, hoping that Lucy the resident Mallard comes back soon with her ELEVEN new ducklings.
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Thanks so much my two dear interlocutors. And TW, so sorry. There can be no consolation, but…kind attention is infallible balm.
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