I Can't Wait For You...
Yesterday, I drove seventy miles into the desert to the place where he lays. I drove through wind and clouds of rain to lie down next to him.
I don't know how to explain it. When someone you've loved for all your life dies, its all you can do not to stretch yourself out over their grave and become a part of the earth that covers it. And the fact is that I have loved this man, and he, in turn, loved me, from the very first breath that ever filled my lungs. Before I could even speak, before I knew how to ask for anything, I knew how to call for him.
You could never imagine the feeling you feel when you find out someone you love is gone. Totally gone for the rest of your life. I remember my mom kneeling down in front of me and saying the words. And when she did, the whole world went silent as I heard the sound of something deep inside my soul crack and break. Something that had been trying, for so long, to be strong. And my ears are still ringing from it.
Unlike some things, there is no perfect way to mourn someone. As I stepped out of my car and crossed the lonely gates of the cemetary situated so far away from the rest of the world, I had no idea what to do. The burial mound in front of me was haunting and vacant. But simply because its all I have left it could not be more special to me.
It's now the place I go to rest in my head. That isolated place in the desert where the sky eternally shifts overhead and the sand is so fine that you can't hold it in your clenched fist. And its both quiet and open enough that you can listen to every whisper in your mind. Or not listen at all.
As I lay on my back on top of his grave, I can hardly believe what has happened. The concreteness of what my back is pressed against and what that means about the rest of my life.
I close my eyes and open them again to the swirling clouds. I think about the night you died, how hard it rained down on me outside in the thunderstorm. I think about sitting up at night tending to a campfire to light your way to wherever you are now. And at dawn on the third day, I was there to watch you run into the sun.
But it's been a long time since then and I know it. I've sure as hell felt it pass. And as unfathomable as it seems, the time has come for me to start moving on... as impossible as that idea is for me to fathom. I almost don't want to. No matter how I look at it, it will always seem too soon, too uncaring, too undevotional, too much like I've given up on you and I'm not ready to do that. I'm just not.
Yet there's nothing I can do about this situation anymore. It's done. It's been 8 months and I've begun to realize that I've got to stop waiting for you to come back. To rescue me from all these harsh realizations and let me hold onto you, in your arms until the stars run out of light.
Luckily, I have things pulling me in a direction. Both literally and figuratively upward. Then again, I think, there is nowhere else for me to go, no lower level than the one I've been on. So now there is simply nothing left for me to do but try to do the first thing that has ever seemed impossible to me...
"I don't know what being happy is without you", I say aloud to him and the empty graveyard before I leave.
...Silence.
And because I knew I would never be truly ready, I detached myself from the ground he lay in, turned my back and made myself walk away. Every part of my insides ached with pain as I took one last look back at his burial mound before leaping- heartbroken, destroyed, battle-weary and uncertain- off the cliff that had become my old life.
"Last night I had a dream that I was in the graveyard
Looking at my father buried in the ground
I'd swear that I could hear him tell me he was sorry
He told me he was sorry
And everything has changed." William Fitzsimmons
I don't know how to explain it. When someone you've loved for all your life dies, its all you can do not to stretch yourself out over their grave and become a part of the earth that covers it. And the fact is that I have loved this man, and he, in turn, loved me, from the very first breath that ever filled my lungs. Before I could even speak, before I knew how to ask for anything, I knew how to call for him.
You could never imagine the feeling you feel when you find out someone you love is gone. Totally gone for the rest of your life. I remember my mom kneeling down in front of me and saying the words. And when she did, the whole world went silent as I heard the sound of something deep inside my soul crack and break. Something that had been trying, for so long, to be strong. And my ears are still ringing from it.
Unlike some things, there is no perfect way to mourn someone. As I stepped out of my car and crossed the lonely gates of the cemetary situated so far away from the rest of the world, I had no idea what to do. The burial mound in front of me was haunting and vacant. But simply because its all I have left it could not be more special to me.
It's now the place I go to rest in my head. That isolated place in the desert where the sky eternally shifts overhead and the sand is so fine that you can't hold it in your clenched fist. And its both quiet and open enough that you can listen to every whisper in your mind. Or not listen at all.
As I lay on my back on top of his grave, I can hardly believe what has happened. The concreteness of what my back is pressed against and what that means about the rest of my life.
I close my eyes and open them again to the swirling clouds. I think about the night you died, how hard it rained down on me outside in the thunderstorm. I think about sitting up at night tending to a campfire to light your way to wherever you are now. And at dawn on the third day, I was there to watch you run into the sun.
But it's been a long time since then and I know it. I've sure as hell felt it pass. And as unfathomable as it seems, the time has come for me to start moving on... as impossible as that idea is for me to fathom. I almost don't want to. No matter how I look at it, it will always seem too soon, too uncaring, too undevotional, too much like I've given up on you and I'm not ready to do that. I'm just not.
Yet there's nothing I can do about this situation anymore. It's done. It's been 8 months and I've begun to realize that I've got to stop waiting for you to come back. To rescue me from all these harsh realizations and let me hold onto you, in your arms until the stars run out of light.
Luckily, I have things pulling me in a direction. Both literally and figuratively upward. Then again, I think, there is nowhere else for me to go, no lower level than the one I've been on. So now there is simply nothing left for me to do but try to do the first thing that has ever seemed impossible to me...
"I don't know what being happy is without you", I say aloud to him and the empty graveyard before I leave.
...Silence.
And because I knew I would never be truly ready, I detached myself from the ground he lay in, turned my back and made myself walk away. Every part of my insides ached with pain as I took one last look back at his burial mound before leaping- heartbroken, destroyed, battle-weary and uncertain- off the cliff that had become my old life.
"Last night I had a dream that I was in the graveyard
Looking at my father buried in the ground
I'd swear that I could hear him tell me he was sorry
He told me he was sorry
And everything has changed." William Fitzsimmons