Love, It Is Love

“Yours was the first face that I saw.

I think I was blind before I met you.”

First Day of My Life, Bright Eyes

I’ve been knocked around by grief the last few weeks. I haven’t felt the wallop of grief like this in a while, nor did I first acknowledge that it was grief at all. In the period of time before I recognized it to be grief, I thought I was symptomatic of dying. Name the illness, I had it. Name the ache, it was mine. The feeling of impending doom wouldn’t let me alone. I thought my healthy living children were also dying. Another figment of my wildly cruel imagination. I lost my memory, again. I forgot to stock the fridge and to do the laundry, despite both tasks constantly staring me in the face when I chose to not leave my house day after day. My voice echoing in the emptiness of the fridge as I yelled to my children there were no berries for the tenth time of the day. Just as quickly as I closed the fridge, I’d forget we needed food until the next ask occurred (don’t worry, we have plenty of canned goods in the house). Laundry piled high in corners of various rooms in our house. Just as soon as I’d walk into the living room, one of the only rooms free of a laundry pile or strewn clothes, I’d forget about the two weeks worth of dirty clothes stinking up every other room in our house. My husband asked me multiple times a day, “Are you okay? Have you lost your mind? Are you taking drugs?” The drugs question bemused me in my state of stone cold sobriety. I think I am okay. No, I still have my mind. No, I’m not taking drugs. “What kind of drugs?” I asked once. “The ones making you act like you’re on a entirely different planet,” he said. What is going on with me? I wondered. Finally, day fifteen into grief beating me to a pulp, I realized who the culprit was. “Weird,” is all I could think. The constant blow to the head by grief prevented me from forming a further thought.

I don’t count the days since June’s passing, but dates inevitably add up. Throwing me back into the ring forced to face grief. I’m down, I’m up. I’m down, but because of the most recent blow, I can’t get up as quickly. I stay down. I see stars. I close my eyes and slip into an unconscious state where there exists no pain. No death. No me. No my children. No my child who is no longer here. No my child who has died. No dates. Suddenly, I’m conscious, on my two feet, and fighting back, against my will. Fighting for my identity. Fighting for meaning. Fighting for the will to live. It’s too much expended energy, so I succumb. I slump in the ring, surrounded by grief, and instead of sending blows to the head, it disperses itself upon me like a weighted blanked. I can think again, but I can’t react. I am too weighed down. I slip into meditation and allow the thoughts to flow in and out. I stare grief in the eyes. What more do you want from me?

After June died, I purposefully didn’t count the minutes and seconds because they added up to days, and eventually would add up to years. Years from the last time we were physically together. I couldn’t bear the thought. I hated time for being a thief. I gave myself permission to let the counting go.

I know the approximate time June died because I was there. I lived it. I don’t know exactly if that time was 11:04pm or 11:05pm because I was holding her and not paying attention to the clock. When I looked at my watch it said 11:09pm. There was not a doctor or nurse standing in the room to mark the time as they do after attempting life saving measures on a patient. Instead it was a friend or sister that told me. Maybe it was my husband. I don’t remember those details specifically either. For me, June was here and then she wasn’t. Maybe it was 11:05 at night. Time is not of a necessary concern on my long list of concerns. The general time matters I suppose, but I do not apply it meaning and I do not hang from it. It is not a beacon of hope. The time she was here is now gone. Time in relation to June is a sharp contrast of life before death and death after life. To June time does not exist. To me, time in relation to June hurts, so I try to let it go. Is it me letting go of the pain? I think this might be me letting go of the pain, but not before reliving it again.

These last few weeks I’ve allowed myself to travel to that time. The last few days of June’s life. Does it serve me? I cannot know right now. Time, that asshole, will show me one day through the unfolding of life itself. Can it be of any importance to time travel to when June was still alive? The time the word Mama came from her perfect heart shaped mouth. What good is time travel? And yet, I can’t stop myself from boarding the time travel vessel. It takes me back to her where I am forced to acknowledge that she did, in fact, die and that she is, in fact, my child, and that this is, in fact, my life. For a time traveling moment, part of me says, “No way,” in total disbelief. It’s the type of disbelief that merits proof. So, I look for June. In the house. In the car. In the rear view mirror. I travel in time searching for her, but inevitably I end up on the day. The day she passed away. I end with the time where she, her soul, was no longer physically here. Her breath gone. Her heart no longer beating. I end with the time that came after June went away. I end with death.

Where there is an end, there is too a beginning. I’ve thrown this notion in the metaphorical trash a million times. I didn’t feel or see a beginning until well after June died. Again, I am applying time, but time is a loose and abstract construct. Where there is an end, there is a beginning is the only concept of time that serves me. That’s all that matters now. At my core, I believe in a beginning despite the utter rebuke I feel for it after Junes ending. I’ve watched the end come to many things in my life and I’ve watched what grows from the ground where something has died. To grow from the ashes is still to be alive. I feel alive because I feel pain, upset, sadness, anger, heartache, and love. To feel is to be alive in a human body. I am alive. I have begun to live again. Where there is an end, there is a beginning and our family is a testament to just that.

In grief I feel like I am dying, but I know that being knocked down has its purpose. I know that when I am lying flat on my back after grief punches me in the gut that what’s actually dying is the pain. I am letting go of pain. It hurts more to let the pain go than to keep it with me. June will never come back, I know this now. I have come to terms with the loss of June being permanent, but still, it physically hurts me to write. When I am knocked to the ground, I lay in hopes of the earth absorbing a little bit more of my pain. After I’ve been down for a while, like I have these past couple of weeks, I begin to realize I will be stronger if and when I get up. June is not pain, June is love. I am not letting June go, I am letting pain go. The love I have for June will only continue to grow like the flowers after the earth has singed.

I look for June all around me. I look for love. I see her in the evening before the sun sets in the purple and pinks of a cotton candy sky. I see her in the gigantic tree across from my kitchen window which I admire as I stand and wash endless dishes at the sink. As I walk into the house I stop and I admire June in the flock of geese squawking overhead as they make their journey home. She makes me grateful I am home. I feel the love. I admire June in the breeze that wraps itself around me. I admire June in the earth that I am so fortunate to walk with my own two feet. When I walk I remember what it feels like to have once had June be a physical part of my life. The contrast of her no longer being here gives me overwhelming appreciation for a few steps. I know what it’s like to love and be loved. I know what it’s like to adore and be adored. Is there any deeper love than that of a child for the person she firsts opens her eyes to on this earth? I was the first person June saw when she opened her eyes on earth. I was given the honor of gazing firstly into her eyes. Our souls meeting as humans for the first time. I admire June with my children in the stars at night. “Which one do you think is Junie, Mama?” my oldest daughter asks me. “I’m not sure hunny, that one or that one,” as I point, “which one do you think?” I ask. “I think that one, Mama. It’s the brightest star.”

We stand admiring you under the infinite galaxy, us, tiny little specks from the floor of the earth. We stand and see all of your beauty. As we stare at you, our brightest star, you stare back in wonderment of our beauty. We are eternally your family. Your soul has left this realm, but our souls will forever be entwined. I’ll continue to look for you, June, in the beauty that surrounds us. I’ll remind your brother and sister as they grow older that energy does not cease to exist, it only takes a different form. I’ll pray that one day, they too feel you wrap your arms around them in a warm fall breeze or that when the waves lap the sandy beach, they feel you're calm. That they will always turn to you when they feel lost in this life, for you are love, beckoning us with your brightest star.