Goodbye

Recently I've thought I should retire The Daisy Pages and just do watercolors and ride my horse as much as possible; deal with this grief thing more privately. I probably won't though.

But I'm calling this post "Goodbye" because I'm leaving for a few days to go north.

"Hug a tree for me," my friend (the former stallion's owner) told me, then added, "I mean it." He knows I'll be in the land of the redwoods, a magnificent corner of Earth where certain trees grow as wide as a houses; stand taller than Jack's beanstalk; and are older than our ancestors. You know, those trees.

My little cabin happens to be surrounded by them, and as an added bonus there's a river nearby. There's also a place not far where I could ride someone else's horses, should I want to.

I'm planning on taking my Honda, my art supplies, my guitar, the horse book I'm reading, and I suppose a hairbrush. Couple more things, too. The following day my nice cousin will drive up with my daughter and sort-of daughter, and we'll stay 'til Monday.

So that means I'll have five-plus hours in the car to ponder the trip we took to my cabin last Memorial Day weekend, when my son was still alive. But he was already not wanting to be; I kinda remember that. Nighttime; his face in the light of a friend's backyard fire. Trying sooo hard to be charming after napping much of the day. Trees like sentries, the soft ground. Then he slept some more. And more.

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Daisy got to be a pony for a little while today. I helped a five-year-old onto her back and walked them in circles under a perfect sun. It was the little boy's first time on a horse. His mom is a friend of the elderly woman I help. We were all there together: Emotional therapy for me as well as for the elderly woman who so rarely does much more than watch TV with her seriously compromised, seriously grumpy husband.

I wouldn't say it was exactly emotional therapy for Daisy, who doesn't need therapy of any kind.

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So I was getting food to take to my cabin and while in line at the store I saw my son. Well, okay, not my son, but he had on my son's old hat and he was about the same size and age. He walked by purposefully, probably toward the tofu section, it was that kind of store, and I felt my eyes welling up. I quickly pulled my sunglasses on, and by the time I was at the cashier's I was more or less back in charge of myself. There had been a moment, however, when my mind fast forwarded to an imagined scenario where I was sitting outside the store after having slid down a wall in a heap of teary despair, holding the bag with my tofu, and a stranger comes along and asks what's the matter. And I tell her (in my imagination she's the kind-looking woman who was ahead of me in line): "I just saw someone who looked like my son. And my son's dead, he hasn't even been gone that long."

Seems I conjure up a lot of little scenarios in my mind that never really happen. Do you?

Trees

My son once wanted to climb extremely tall trees, and did. That's why those trees are in the corner of the watercolor I did today.

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I cried listening to, of all things, Sonny and Cher singing I Got You Babe, on the car radio today. I'm getting wetter around the edges again, I guess that's how it goes. Painting felt good.

Jaded

I'm sitting on my bed next to my curtain of scarves and eating a scone that looks more like a cookie because I didn't measure the water right. Since yesterday I've talked to Ory in Texas and later in Kansas; took an elderly woman for a back x-ray; connected with two people I know whose sons also died; educated myself a little about World War II since that's what my daughter's studying in History, put gas in the Honda... and so what?


The author of The Daisy Pages sometimes feels like she's turning herself inside out here, and to what end?


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Lately, every time I think about my son my mind seems to move somewhere else on its own accord. My grief is in a holding pattern that's shifting around in increments like a tiny crazy breeze.

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There's a stain on my shirt and the cat is snoring again. I wonder if my son's remains have bone-bits mixed in with them but I'm not about to look.

--

I don't even want to do this, but I am. My guitar is on its back next to my bed like a spent lover who just had a smoke. Nearby there are new paintbrushes in a plastic cup laughing at me and beckoning me to use them both.

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I'm in a particularly jaded mood right now for no obvious reason.

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Well, and I fell off a friend's horse yesterday. No, I didn't land on my head. I have a skin wound on my arm about the size of a silver dollar, and one of my toes is bruised. My arthritic hip hurts no more or less than it normally does. My friend had let me ride one of her two horses after I was done riding Daisy, and I was attempting to show off how gracefully I go bareback. But I didn't have brakes since I was simply holding onto the end of the lead rope. A quick bouncy trot threw me off balance and when the trot became a canter down I went. My friend whose horse it is, and who is a much more experienced rider, said dryly, "I wouldn't jump onto a horse I didn't know and try to canter bareback with no reins." Then went on in her schoolteacher voice telling me how it's good to have a "healthy fear" of horses. Which apparently I don't. After she'd had her say I said, "Okay Mom," and also quipped, "Maybe it's my latent suicidal tendencies." I was trying to sound lighthearted once I'd brushed the dust off and noted that nothing was broken. I'd caught the horse and got back on but only to walk while my friend and I talked about the fall, etc. And I actually felt lighthearted, not at all stuck in the Land-o-Grief.

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That was yesterday. Today I just feel jaded. Twisting that old ring around on my finger again. Wondering if I ever knew much about World War II. Wondering if I should put the scone-cookies in the fridge or leave them out. Making a painting in my head. Remembering when I'd ask my son what he was thinking about and he'd say, "Nothing."

Walk

"FORGIVE YOURSELF" someone wrote on a
dumpster not far from my house.

It was an off-color day but I couldn't say what color it was, I guess some shade of blue.

I keep thinking weird stuff, like if I read the coroner's report it'll provide some kind of answers and I'll have an "aha" moment and then maybe things won't be so hard. More likely the contrary. As if its some big secret how my son died.

These days it sometimes seems I'm just kind of wandering around without entirely knowing what I'm doing, be it painting or cooking or working or riding or talking on the phone or looking up local truck driving schools. Hence, when I went for a walk earlier tonight I figured it shouldn't be merely a random walk but that I should have a destination, and I decided I needed to buy some Krazy Glue.

So with a sense of purpose I left the house, that is after making burgers and some other stuff for the teenager and my sort of daughter, both of whose presence I don't take for granted even if I sometimes act like I do.

In a nutshell, my son is dead and even if some people think I should be "over it" I'm not. I'm in this kind of limbo place, and my house needs paint inside and out but I don't care, and people are getting killed senselessly and I don't care, and I can't meditate to save my life but I don't care, and a friend who I was going to do something with this evening bailed on me and I don't care, and...

Oh, okay, I care about a few things I suppose. Like seeing Daisy tomorrow since I didn't get a chance today. Certain people.

Anyhow so I took my walk, and I turned up this one street and saw a dumpster on which someone had painted "FORGIVE YOURSELF," and so of course I had to take a picture.

Because the thing is I am feeling a little guilty. Guilty about not being more of a giver; guilty about not being more of a worker; guilty about fixing lazy dinners or not bringing cloth bags to stores, guilty about wanting to drink more; guilty of not sending more birthday cards, guilty of not getting anti-flea stuff to put on the cat...

Guilty about having a son who took his own life?? Oh no, I didn't just write that.

(That's what therapy's for, right?)

After I took the picture of a dumpster I kept walking and soon there was music: A powerful sounding woman singing accompanied by instruments and joyous voices, and I realized I was walking near the back of the Black Baptist church my son had attended somewhat regularly in the last months before he killed himself.

The congregation had welcomed him warmly then-- my confused, blue-eyed son, and he'd invited me to go to services with him but I never did. He wasn't really religious anyhow, not then, not ever, but nevertheless toward the end he made a desperate attempt to find someone who could help him, tried to settle on the Baptists... even going so far as to spend some time at a neighborhood bookstore perusing used Bibles. He finally settled on a green and yellow paperback version of the New Testament which he carried with him as regularly as he did his wallet... for a time.

I kept walking past the back of the church and the music faded, and then at the store where I bought the Krazy Glue I also bought calcium and coconut water, the last a weird new thing I discovered recently.

On the way home I went to the front of the church, the music was still blasting out the wide double doors and I saw peoples' backs, saw some of them moving to the rhythm, I looked up into the light of the rockin' church, wondered for the umpteenth time what it must feel like to believe in God.

Right before I got home I rounded a corner and this guy who was talking on the phone said the words, "Fuck all that."

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I dunno, guess I should just go to bed. Maybe the day will look another color tomorrow when I go see Daisy.

Tears

Spashed some color around on my new watercolor paper last night, felt a lot better afterwards. I made myself (and Daisy) crying in the painting. I've been having a hard(er) time crying in real life lately. I don't know if that's good or bad. That's my son in the sky, obviously.

Stallion

It was starting to get dark when I walked to a downtown bookstore for a poetry reading. I'd fed the teenager and ate a lot myself. I'd parked a ways away so I could walk off some calories. And to allow myself a chance to think and feel. I haven't felt anything intensely for about five days now. I keep wondering when the novacaine will wear off.  I don't think grief just sort of skulks off around the corner like an embarrassment.

At this one corner a guy was ranting. I couldn't see his eyes. Well, I didn't exactly try. I couldn't tell what he was saying but I kept some distance between us until the light turned green. The guy stayed on the corner ranting. When I was crossing the street I remembered about a time I was with my son in another city six years ago and we encountered a filthy homeless person talking to himself. My son said matter of factly, "That's how I'm going to end up."

The reading was curated by my son's former poetry teacher. My son had been a star pupil. When I got there, but before the reading began, people were milling around the folding chairs and refreshment table talking to one another. I reminded the community college's poetry teacher who I was. She told me that the next issue of the school's literary journal would be dedicated to my son.

I put my black coat over the back of a folding chair and sat down. Two men about my age introduced themselves and said they'd taken classes with my son. The poetry teacher had told them who I was. They spoke kindly of him, and his talent, and one of them said, "He was always inviting us to do things even though he hardly knew us."

Yep, that was him in recent years; trying to build a social life that'd never come easily, wanting approval and recognition. He got it, from some of us, but it wasn't enough.

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The poets who read were all quite fine. Almost made me want to write poetry myself, but... nah. One poet wrote about a woman during the Mexican Revolution who rode a stallion. Her words flowed like hair. Someone else wrote about an upside down bagel in New York, and another wrote comic dialog so well that I laughed out loud. But inside I'm still waiting to cry again.

Afterwards I took a cookie from the refreshment table. Ate some, threw the rest into a bush on the way to my car in the dark. Came home, teenager curled in bed asleep. Walked upstairs, didn't think about Daisy, didn't drink wine, twisted a ring round and round on my finger; a ring I made a long time ago when a friend showed me how to use his silversmith tools, before I had kids or a mortgage or a horse.

Carousel

My son is naked sliding down a tunnel formed from dense foliage. I follow him rapidly, Mama-lightning bumping down the rutted ground on my butt. I need to catch up to him before he tumbles out the other side. I finally do, toward the end. He's no more than three. A prehistoric beast made of white-brown bones pokes its head in the opening, teeth sharp as razors. Opens a gaping mouth at my son. I wave my hand at its jaw bones and teeth, they break like twigs. No more threat. Somewhere in the tunnel made of bushes a baby sweater with giraffes on it lies in the dirt. Sunlight filters through small openings. (Dream)


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I ride Daisy up and down hills and my hip hurts and my sister walks alongside. We talk about this and that but I don't really feel anything emotionally as much as I feel that constant dull ache in my hip.
The next day, Mother's Day, I pose for a photo in a park in front of a sign that shares my name. I go on a carousel ride with my sister, my daughter, and my sort of daughter. I sit on a horse, of course. My sister sits on an ostrich. My daughter sits on a zebra, which I wonder later if she chose on purpose, being that she's black and I'm white. We all go up and down, up and down, and the music plays. In the evening I drive my sister to the airport, hugs and thanks, wonder if the tears that I'd kept at bay all weekend will come as I drive home alone. They don't. (Real)


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I lie face down on a table with needles in my hand, my thigh, my feet. Nose stuffed up, New Age music. Feel nothing. Well, stuffed up. Earth toned walls. The acupuncturist comes back into the little room, does some more stuff to my body, and afterwards is interested in hearing about my horse. I show her some photos on my phone. I walk home afterwards, it's not too far, arthritic hip feeling a little better, mind still on the numb side. (Real)


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I open the blue mailbox and there's not much. Well, a jury summons addressed to my son. Tears do well up then, albeit briefly. (Unreal)


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I'm up and down like a carousel horse. Or well, maybe flat and flatter. At least lately.