I know why the crows crow more raucously late in fall after most of the other birds have gone on ahead. I know why the grating caw of crows make me feel lonely and disturbed. I know what it is like to be left behind as well. The last week of August will forever be my greatest “being left behind”.
First of all, in those first hours of loss, I was beyond being anything but balanced, stable, and capable of doing anything but work until sweat poured off me as I cleaned out everything of mine from my Sweetheart’s house, in Maine. I was pure and raw wound and incapable of stopping the work for those days and nights until I finally broke, totally, and called a friend to ask if she could come and get me. At her house, I found calm and peace and rest. I will forever be grateful to her for rescuing me from myself. My daughter flew down the second day. The third day, my daughter leading me by my hand, all the house was cleaned out, all the stuff I could not ship was taken to a place where they could sell it (donation for a store that was going to have to close and one of my sweetheart’s favorite place to go) and, saying goodbye to everything I had ever wanted in the world, and friends I would never see again. I was broken.
Over the next few months, living near my daughter, I began to live again, not with joy, but live a life where I was able to start making my own decisions and to feel like I could take one more step ahead. The nights were long and my new home was filled with heavy sorrow but I felt like I might be able to carry on. I thought no further than a next step for months but I got better at it. I got out of my own way and allowed myself to surf from one experience to another. I had to find ways to focus on getting healthy and getting on with getting on. I could not, in any way, make plans or goals other than to merely take the next and next step. When I thought it was not being able to make a decision, I was making them, soulfully. I was allowing myself to surf life for a time.
Others, over the months, began to tire of my grief and I got comments like, “Be happy.... get over it” (and inferences to such) … and I would try to fake it but I was a cawing shell of grief. I totally lost my sense of humor. I am pretty sure I was hard to be around because I could be smiling one moment and then the authentic feelings would seep from inside and I would be so serious and blank and lost. I was a foreigner in my own land. I was but a blink from breaking down in tears. Nothing seemed to appease the sorrow.
My children decided I should go down to Yuma to either sell or decide not to sell my place there. As I landed in Yuma, the lost feeling only exacerbated my sorrow. I had my sweetheart’s little compassionate service dog, Esqueese, with me, of course. I had watched an animal grieve for the first time in my life. It was horrible to see her try to crawl under the deck and try to die too. I had felt that same way but to see her grieve, to search for him everywhere was the saddest thing besides me. When we landed in Yuma, she came alive. When we pulled up to our site, and she saw the 5th wheel under the shelter, she bounced with joy, running to get in. I know she thought, “Oh, here he is!” I opened the door and she raced in looking, searching and, not finding him, wanted out to go into the casita where he went to roll his cigarettes every morning. I unlocked the casita and she bounced in, only to come out and search every inch of the yard. I brought her in and began the usual cleaning. Picking up bits and pieces of his things that were still where he put them when we left that last spring. I watched her deflate. She was a living mobile of my grief. I worked for a while then we went across the street to our best friends. Man Hands, as I called my sweetheart, had told me to give the convertible to his buddy and it had had troubles so it was parked in their backyard. Esqueese went directly there and while we visited, cried, remembered, I realized |I had not seen her for a while. We called, searched their yard and finally found her, under Man Hand’s car and she would not come out. She had found a last piece of Man Hands and would not surrender it. It took our friend crawling under that vehicle to get her out. Again, the void of his s[ace was not just physical, it was overwhelming.
In a few months, Creator would have me make more and more decisions and I made them as prayerfully as I could. It was the best thing for me to leave fall and crows behind in Alberta. I needed to finish the wrest part of my grief down where it was warm and where I had to ace that void and deal with it. I had a future to script. I had to let go of the past and live in the present. And I made decisions that led me to this future where, every fall, I listen to the crow’s complain about those spaces left when others have goner on ahead and left voids where cawing echoes in the abandoned sky. I remember where I was, where I am, and where I will continue to be, in my own empty spaces. I fill my void with new people, places and things, and it is good. It is not perfect, and I do have my moments where I surrender to feelings of the past, but here I am and I am here.
The crows remind me how far I have come.
©Carol Desjarlais 19.10.20
No comments:
Post a Comment