He went away

Just like that, he was gone. I was standing on a road in Red Hook, covered in sweat and my skin burning under a cloudless afternoon sky. I stared at my phone, my heart having dropped somewhere, laying on the sidewalk between my running shoes, maybe. He was leaving. It was over.

It had been all summer, and I had used any and every excuse to keep in touch with him all along the spectrum of passion, and just today I had hated him. I hadn't slept with anyone else, and the fucker gave me a case of HPV that ended up turning into precancer. I was pissed, convinced he'd given it to me from sleeping around with whoever and not giving two shits about me when he was all I'd been able to think about for months. I yelled at him, pretending there was no way I could have gotten the HPV from the Crocodile before he'd gone off his meds and held a knife to my throat.

I intended to yell more. Then he said he was leaving New York for good. Something about his mother. He hated it here. Then my heart fell out and suddenly I was standing there in the sun, the conversation having ended minutes ago without me knowing how or why. I was parched. I wanted to lie down right where I was, on the dusty sidewalk in front of wherever I was. It was over.

Then Josh moved out. He had moved in just six weeks before, after a several month tour of Europe and Africa, the two of us sitting in bars and crying in our beers about how useless it was to meet the person you're meant to love if that person doesn't want you back. Just six weeks and now he was leaving, right when I needed a friend to cry with. I felt like he was cutting our friendship apart with a knife.

Two weeks later, I forgot my best friend's birthday while she spent it taking care of me after the surgery to remove the precancerous cells from my cervix. I was lying on my couch with my head in her lap when my landlord called me and told me he was selling the building. I didn't remember it was her birthday until the next day, when she had gone back to Long Island.

I think I stared at the cats wondering if one of them was going to die.

Then I looked in the mirror and wished I would die.

I wished the Crocodile had cut my throat. I imagined the blood all over the floor in the foyer, seeping under the door. I imagined the police kicking the door open to find it slamming into my lifeless body, my purse still slung over the arm. I imagined them finding him in the bedroom, overdosed on whatever the fuck he was on, and finding the three bottles of untaken antipsychotics and looking for my ID in my purse. I wondered how they would find my mother's phone number.

I spent much of the next few months feeling sorry for myself that I was still alive, but I got a therapist. I knew I needed a therapist. I felt insane. I felt like everything was crumbling around me, and my home was once again going to be taken away. She didn't even know where to begin, my intake took three sessions and my problems, while not dire, all rooted back to this one thing: loss. Coping with loss. Regret of loss. Fear of loss. Worthlessness from loss. Emptiness from loss. Anger from loss.

Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.

I keep running back to that road in Red Hook. I go to the track just to turn around and run over that pavement in the sun and bring myself back to the moment my phone rang. I check it. I see that it's him. I don't answer. Even if I hate him, I don't want him to be gone.

You don't have to forget to forgive.

My grandfather's death a few weeks ago has done something really strange.

I was really close to Grandpa... He was one of the very few people who realized what a big hole my dad left behind and made every effort to fill in as much as he could for us. I always felt like I could tell him anything (really, anything) and he'd never judge me or think poorly of me. He was really good at that, at making you feel welcome and loved and putting a positive spin on things. Sure, there were times when we had disagreements, but not a day went by that I doubted he loved me.

In a way, since he's been with me for so long, I have more of him to miss than I do of my dad. At first I was a little scared that it would be even harder. But somehow it's much, much easier. He was sick and uncomfortable and elderly...when he died it was very much his time. And he was ready. And I saw it coming for a long time, and I shared so much with him and my time with him was so good that I was ready too. This seems to be a common theme--my grandmother, my mom, my sister all say they feel the same way. It's unexpectedly easy to let him go.

The strange thing I mentioned earlier is that this loss has made my dad's death easier. It's like a bookend to years of emptiness and rage and disappointment and frustration. Experiencing the peaceful and completely expected death of someone close to me has really helped me see death with a new perspective. As if Death and I have decided to kiss and make up.

I'm experiencing a new serenity I've never felt before. And it feels good, like I've got a better handle on this life thing than ever. It's like Grandpa's still sneaking presents to me when nobody's looking.