*This post is for Chrissy, who attended her mother's funeral today. From one grieving heart to another.
8/15-8/21
Forward
I wake up cold the day of the funeral, and wander to the kitchen wrapped in a blanket. Standing in the middle of the floor, I find myself baffled by the day, and oddly frozen. My usual morning routine escapes me – normally, I am firing up the espresso machine. Instead, I head over to the mantel and light the candles inside the lanterns: for warmth; for light; for something…
I am truly dreading the funeral, in a way I did not expect.
The fog hangs in the valley outside our picture window: ominous but accurate for the day of a funeral. I end up sipping some tea, nibbling some toast, but the restlessness in my gut overpowers any sensation of hunger, and hovers there like a hummingbird over a feeder: madly flapping in a single spot. I am aware that each passing minute brings me – brings us all – closer to the service. I imagine Steve’s family this morning…lifting their bodies out of bed, slipping into black clothing, the clicking of their shoes on the pavement as they head to their cars…and I am struck anew by what little control we actually possess in life. The funeral approaches whether we want it to approach or not; the red hands on the kitchen wall clock are oblivious, inching clockwise toward a time when Steve’s death will be spoken aloud, the reality of it acknowledged from a pulpit; where the life he lived for 36 years will be remembered; where the life that ended will be grieved by everyone in the room.
I ponder my dread over the funeral. Aren’t funerals supposed to bring closure? Aren’t they a means of saying good-bye? Maybe that’s just it: I don’t want to say good-bye. I don’t want to close the door on my friend’s life. So perhaps for me, and for many attending Steve’s service today, the dread is about the funeral making Steve’s death undeniable: we will no longer be able to fool ourselves using the tricky, intricate trap doors in our brains, in our hearts; no longer cling to the sliver of denial that suggests Steve isn’t really dead. Furthermore, there is the also the terror of the feelings that await me at the funeral, the feelings I will have to face. Forward, I tell myself: left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe, as my favorite writer, Anne Lamott writes. She says this is the only way miracles ever happen – by putting one foot in front of the other. And I think surviving the death of a loved one is a kind of miracle.
The breathing part of Lamott’s mantra has been especially hard, ever since Steve died. Instead of the even flow of breath, the air wants to gather like storm clouds and hover in dark corners of my body – suspended there. It seems I’ve lost my breathing rhythm and find myself periodically forcing large pockets of breath out in long, extended, often choppy, exhales. The moving part is hard, too. I feel frozen, rigid…stuck. Maybe I fear that if I move, everything will hurt. That if I even breathe, I will feel the pain. That it will vibrate through me like the clapper of a bell. And it’s probably true. But we must feel in order to move, and move in order to feel. This is how we travel forward from something potentially paralyzing. If we hold still, avoiding the pain, if we pretend it isn’t there, then we are unable to carry ourselves forward to a time when it will finally feel different – maybe even better. Not necessarily to a time when we don’t miss our loved one or when it doesn’t hurt anymore, but perhaps to a time when our breathing resumes its regular rhythm again. So in the spirit of moving toward a miracle, (a miracle of survival) I will get up and go. I will put on my purple dress and my black shoes. I will step down each of my porch steps, climb into my van, turn the key in the ignition, rest my foot on the gas pedal and go.
