A Portrait of the Artist as a Dead Man

Greg would be 63 today. Instead he's always going to be 55, while everything else changes around me, growing or diminishing, expanding or contracting. The farther away he gets, the more I find myself accepting not just his death, but everything. "It is what it is" grows more deep and yet more simple all the time.

On Thursday, my friend's mom passed away. I don't know her well enough, and I didn't know her mom at all, to become personally involved in her grief, although I took time Thursday night to sit quietly and send her love and calm, because how is it not beneficial to always send out love? Later in bed, I couldn't sleep for remembering that first terrible night Greg died.

Everyone retreated to their corners, glazed with shock and faded around the edges. Sharon, Dillon, and Cesar were alone in their respective beds; I was alone in the bathtub. For hours. I stared at a glass of whiskey balanced on the edge of the tub because I was so terrified to go to sleep, and I was terrified because when I woke up, it would be the first day I was on earth and Greg wasn't. I took for granted that my parents had a past in which I hadn't taken part cause I wasn't born, but I'd never fully understood that there could be a future in which my parents didn't take part because they were dead, until the day was imminent. Somehow I thought that if I could just stay awake, then that day wouldn't dawn and the whole thing could eventually be taken back. The water grew tepid and then cold. Eventually I ended up sleeping just enough to feel shitty.

I'm grateful those early days are behind me. I can see with distance that my relationship with Greg has colored every interaction with every man in my life (romantic or platonic, casual or serious, recent or distantly in the past). I'm sure this is not a unique experience, unless maybe someone who grew up without her father, although even then who knows how absence colors experience as well.

Suffice to say, there's a lot going on in my heartspace and always has been. Although there's one man I'd to address specifically, my Little Man, my closest living link to Greg.

With Dillon, I wonder what he remembers of Greg and how often.  For him grief is both impenetrable and below the surface. I'm often left to guess at what he's thinking or feeling. Are there times that he feels lonely? Betrayed? Angry? I hope there are times that he feels loved, as I have also. It's a hard truth to admit, but sometimes I treat my brother like a mascot, instead of a person with private feelings and diverse thoughts. I forget that just because he appears more surface than most, we're none of us so easily read and understood, and that includes him, and that included Greg, and that includes me.

As Bukowski wrote, "We're all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't." It doesn't, and yet somehow there is love - what kind of dumb blind luck is that?!

Here's to the circus! Much love, pop, and happy birthday.