Somewhere in the midst...

Sartre once wrote, "Life begins at the other side of despair." I understand that my life will begin soon. But first, I need to surrender to this journey, I know...

Grief, what a confusing and frustrating process. You find yourself relieving old hurts, experiencing sadness about events you thought had long-ago healed.  Sunday would have been Mother’s 79th birthday, but it wasn’t because she is dead. My Mother is dead. I have to keep saying this to myself, lest I forget. It pains me so when I forget and then remember. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one can relate to this feeling: the forgetting and painful remembering. I don’t remember experiencing this for this long with any of my previous loses and I’m not sure what it means. Is it because of the intensity of the loss? Is it because it’s the first time I'm experiencing loss sober? Is it because of the relationship? Who the fuck knows. It is and that is all I can say about it. Mother was not big on celebrating birthdays unless it was hers. I didn’t miss her for mine because it had been a long time since she called me at 4am on my birthday to sing me “Las Mañanitas.” I’m not sure I had any feelings in particular about it being her birthday, only that it seemed to burgeon an immense sadness about my brother, Juan, that I struggled to reconcile.

I have been challenged with trying to sort through these very confusing feelings connected to my sibling. They’re a mixture of anger, resentment, longing, jealousy, unwanted connection, and shame. My therapist had me write him a letter during one of our sessions. I expressed angst against it, thinking that I was way past that stage of healing. “A letter? Seriously?” I begrudgingly wrote a letter that, to my surprise, brought forth sadness and longing for the brother I lost somewhere between our time in La Cañada and San Salvador. I remember his replacement quite vividly: a face filled with menace as he pushed me down a flight of stairs. Then nothing; an empty face just staring at me at the bottom of the stairs as I rolled into a ball crying and terrified. I remember the blank face he donned while raping me a couple of years later and the hate-filled face that beat me. Somewhere in those memories is the worried, weeping face begging for forgiveness after he brought me home from getting cuts and wounds stitched at the Red Cross. Then there’s Mother’s face crying out in agony for him with her last breaths and my inability to alleviate her suffering. All these faces. All this sadness. My therapist reminded me that one loss can burgeon other losses. Maybe Mother’s death brought the last link to Juan; and hence, finality to our relationship. I want to hate him. I really do. The reality is that when I think of him a great sadness overwhelms me. I have no idea what his life is like now. Part of me can sense that he is not well. Or maybe it is vindictive hope that creates that illusion? I don’t want to know. If anything, I wish I could eradicate him from my memory banks. But for now, he must be part of this grieving process.

I wish Mother were here… she’d help me sort it out while she gently caressed my head with her arthritic fingers. I was never too old to sit on the floor before her as I laid my head on her lap.  If I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can almost feel her hand on my head. Fuck! I miss my Mother!

Until this process is done, somewhere in the midst... sadness dwells.