My last post started with being sick but not contagious. This is the reverse. Day four calling in to work to say I’m not coming in today. There are things going around, but there are always things going around. I don’t always catch them, and they don’t always catch me. But last week, four days into return to work from a five day bereavement to deal with my ex husband’s passing, the shock, emotional but also physical. Timing and so many other things relating to past, present, future, the week he died and the following week when my son came down to deal in person with end of life things, and his brother came up to also stay with me from funeral to when his brother returned home. Three people with too much stress and memory crammed into a tiny one bedroom apartment. I don’t know how we got through, but we did, and I looked forward to returning to work with its expected, usual, daily repeated retail stress and stresses; and the people there who keep me sane, remind me I’m strong and make life worth showing up to do daily things.

I was tired, and sad in a subterranean way. Not surface, no tears yet, no certainty of grief.

But memory in body, taking over what the mind could not do. Displacement a habit. Move emotion to the side; look, see, do. Keep moving. A smile, a greeting, handclaps and hugs. Years tied up in seconds. Old familiar faces becoming more than just a phrase I remember from some vague song or poem. I know these faces, and most of the names. Some I forget because I forget a lot and have no place to hang them in the life of today. I hate that I forget, and yet a part of me knows, I trained that skill for good reason, very young, and even before this. No wonder I am sick. Dust from long years. Practiced dissociation, not intentional, but real, holds at bay the things forgotten, wanted and unwanted memories at loggerheads for space. No just space, but motion. Emotion. Allowing out the things told “No”, long lines of things there waiting for expression in a breath. Depth beyond this shallow breathing, deep like the hugs I received.

I sleep to these feelings. I sleep to the pain. I’ve been sleeping for years, dreaming battles I fight for some things hard to name, or for children and family, houses a lot, place in communities where religion features as camps and retreats, leaders good and bad, saving sanctity where I can, if I can tell what it is. Dreaming is hard, it steals restful sleep. I lie wasted from rest, like illness, like this week. My body screams purge. I let it. I must. It doesn’t give me a choice when pushed to the edge. Still it’s ironic how like and unlike extremes are in moments of testing. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that, and I’ve written this slowly, so now back to work. Day two may be hard, like yesterday was; full of pain, lack of energy, sitting too much.

I’m glad for the work that I do away from home. It’s repetitive in ways, like waves pushing me into pattern I know, folding pants, hanging shirts, emptying changerooms and returning things to place. I haven’t managed that at home yet in ways that I’d like – too much redress for the effort – I’ll get there, I will. There is space now in his leaving, sad to say, but there is, a letting go on his end I needed him to take. Give me freedom to think and freedom to breathe, without guilt, too much guilt just from taking up space. How does that happen? I couldn’t quite tell, but I’m writing more easily this week and last, even while sick. Some bits are still ugly, I didn’t make them that way, just allowed them to the page. I allowed them to say what is remembered, how it was said; I wonder if memory may come now that he’s dead? What a terrible thought if it’s true. I can only wait and see.

I hope that he’s safe, regardless of all that went between, the words, the curses, other things as well. We talked about some of it and what I’m writing, and why. Irony that he knew, that I visited, even though, and just because, that we talked through his questions and worries and all that he hated laying in that place. Still he wondered why God loved him, and why he was alive. Tough questions right to the end.

Irony and illness, strange bedfellows, strange friends.

Be well, John.