The blood moon
“The risk of love is loss and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.” — Hilary Stanton Zunin
It seems totally appropriate to me, a writer of horror, that the anniversary of your death was marked by a full moon - the super blood moon. A great glowing eye in the sky tinged red from crying, looking down on your ashes buried in a still as-yet unmarked grave in a rural graveyard, looking down on me as I travel through Europe. I stayed up until the hour of your passing, not expecting any kind of sign which is not the same as not hoping for one. Though of of course a super blood moon staring at me on the other side of the world is maybe the biggest sign there is.
I talked to R. before I left. She is finally, after a year, getting all the issues around citizenship, health insurance, and social security resolved. It was shaming, to hear about her difficulties, a young widow with two young children, a grieving stranger in a strange land but the bureaucracy most decidedly did not give a fuck, sending her driving on unfamiliar icy roads for hours to keep appointments that could have easily taken place via video. She was stoic and persistent. How you must have worried, knowing the scope of what she faced without you leading the way. How proud you’d be, seeing her manage it all. I hate that you died with these concerns uppermost in your mind.
The stone for your grave has been delayed more than a year - the gravestone people say, supply chain issues. Your mom says R. picked a stone that will have your picture, a modern look I saw on a few stones when I was wandering the graveyard (appropriately named Calvary) in the rain, searching for you. I wonder what picture R. chose. Strange to think how many more pictures of you I have than she, representing two decades of your life in which she was not just unknown but not yet born.
I wrote a little something about you at my writing workshop, where everyone reads aloud what they have composed. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but it was a mistake. At the first word, I became choked up, and had to breathe deeply and restart, and then restart again, and again. When I finished, voice trembling, I looked up to see that some listeners had tears streaming down there face. How kind people can be. Though I am the same, now - if someone tells me they lost someone, I immediately feel tears of empathy prick my eyes.
I was going through the stuff I brought back from the farmhouse - a little lapdesk with a hinged lid that someone gave me as a gift. Inside, I found pictures of us, dressed up, full champagne glasses sparkling in front of us, me smiling, you with your direct blue gaze. We are ridiculously young and beautiful. I still haven’t gone through the box that contains your college letters to me - I tell myself I am getting ready to, though it’s been more than 18 months now since I brought the box home. Someday I’ll have to, I guess. The thought of leaving them behind, unlooked at, for someone else to find and discard - I need to deal with it, and soon.
Yesterday I talked with a friend about suicidal ideation - which to me means the thought of wanting to end it all unaccompanied by any plan or intention to plan (yet). I haven’t had these thoughts since you died. Your death was like a wallop to the back of my head. “I’m hoping for a few more years,” you said to me in that last conversation. It wasn’t an unreasonable hope, that treatments might advance and give you a window large enough to see the futures of your children through. I could hear your pain, your anger, your disappointment. I appreciate life now, something I didn’t before, or at least not enough, something I thank you for every night as I lay sleepless for an hour or so. Will I be an insomniac forever now, I wonder? It’s better than it was - I no longer pace the house for the entire night, going from window to window watching the moon follow its own sleepless arc. This week I slept one night for 7 hours, the most I’ve slept since a few months before you died. It helps to travel, to be places that don’t remind me of you, that don’t remind me of grieving for you. I don’t really mind the insomnia - it enabled me to finish writing my first book. Not the one I was writing when we first moved to the city - I took too long to finish that, and in the interim the world has seen enough of that particular subject, so I shelved it. Your mom will ping me every once in awhile and ask about it - she was my editor for those first chapters - something you didn’t know, I think - and despite the subject matter, also my champion. I sent her a Mother’s Day card since you couldn’t, and we cried together via text. You are still so loved.