At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask, because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.
How are you doing? The soft voices that ask the caring questions start to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living.
The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. Friends visit only on weekends. The phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop. Like snowflakes and people—flowers wilt.
But I can’t, I do not return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. My lives. My worlds. Blah blah blah.
My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes. My friends eat at home, or the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise because it is now missing my favorite sound. Now nothing seems right.
Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person’s existence? In the beginning—disbelief. Shock. A phone that becomes a cold thing that no longer brings me silly messages from the now dead person. I start feeling more feelings. They are feelings that slowly start to whisper away as I acclimate to what’s missing from my life. Missing from my lives.
Then—then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I LOL. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. Then—when I’m kinda functioning without that constant feeling of emptiness, loss, grief—that is when the death hits me. I’ve returned to the normal head space.
Life goes on and so do I.
Right?
I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what’s under the now scarred skin: severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images. Those things haven’t started healing yet—and I know that the deepest cuts never will.
In the passenger seat, I see the stars come out of the sky. Yeah, they’re bright in a hollow sky. You know it looks so good tonight.
My sky is exploding. My stars are combusting. I am a passenger. Newly healed and freshly sore. Waiting for my stars to come out of my sky.
And I knit and I knit. A scarf for Darlene. Darlene will smile. I’ll feel her smile in the yarn coming alive in my hands.
I can not, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be. My life—my world— is lost and I’m still trying to find it.
My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes. They also eat at home or the home of friends. They return to their worlds. My world is now silent. My house is now quiet. I pick up my yarn. The soft, fuzzy wool I’m gripping is the only reality I can touch. Feel.
Knitting through my life.
I’m a passenger in my own life. I’m navigating the unfamiliar, unpredictable, terrain of amnesia. I am knitting together a semblance of connection, one stitch at a time.
I find myself in the hospital room, I stand next to the bed on which is resting my dead mother. This happens many, many times in indecipherable periods. I’m looking out the window. It is June 14. My birthday–my half birthday–is on the 21st. Summer solstice.
I stare at the white blinds, which are slanted open. I look through countless strips of shiny white plastic. My gaze creeps across the shutters, to the sky. The sky is blue. I’m standing on the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital. The sky is blue. It’s that clear, clear, clear, clean, lightish blue. It is the kind of blue that occurs only for a brief period. It happens on days with a slight breeze and little pollution. Danny and I left the trailer in San Jose. After the call came, around 7:30 a.m., we departed. Danny Lee Clark Junior (he’s dead now, too) was with me. Now, it was around 9:30. It wasn’t yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00. It would start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I’d never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows. I would not–did not–think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. I realized that I’d never seen her face so smooth, the lines around her eyes were softer. Now I stared at her eyelids, which rested. Still.
I would not–did not–think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. I realized that I’d never seen her face so smooth, the lines around her eyes softer. Everything about her makes me think that she was, at last, in peace.
Michelle O’Kane 