sheilahjfrench

Request

31 December 2014

New Year’s Intention/Request:

Please help me to turn this darkness into light.

December 30th. I smell the Christmas tree. Morning sun is pouring through the windows. I’m listening to ‘Music to Inspire Positive Thinking’. A new habit since Vaughn died. I’m drinking coffee, black. The smell of the Christmas tree is the same as when I was a child, and every year my mom would love its scent and its simple green majesty so much she would say, “Oh, let’s just leave it the way it is!” Every year. But we always ended up decorating it. The tree smells the same as it did every year when the children were little. When sometimes we would haul one down from the ranch, or at least chop one down from a tree farm. This year and last Livia and I went to the tree farm but we just bought a pre-cut tree. It’s a good one. It smells the same.

I’m crying. Looking at the big gold-sprayed, macaroni-encrusted, red-yarn-bowed ornament with a what?–6, or even 5-year old Vaughn peering from the center of it. How long before this ornament disintegrates–before the Elmer’s finally loosens its hold on the artfully placed pasta?

I tell myself that little boy would be gone anyway–just like the shy little 3-year old Livia on the other side of the tree. Those little children live in my heart.

I can see this writing is going from nostalgia to self-pity. I started out trying to sort what’s changed and what’s still here. The awareness of movement through the window as the wind picks up on this cold, bright morning. Yes, that’s familiar. The scent of the tree. A sense of aloneness, or more like the feeling of being adrift in a mysterious world. That is familiar also from my earliest memories.

And so, I will go and have a shower. Liv and I will drive to Calistoga on this bright shiny day and take mud baths. Because we are still here. And I know Mom, and Don, and Vaughn will be somehow with us. Because they always are. How could it be otherwise?

Beautiful Weather

November 2014

Well yes, the weather’s been beautiful There’s something in it–the precise time it takes a leaf to fall (not very fast, actually), or the dusty smell of decaying leaves, or the heft and warmth and softness of the air. The sounds–of birds, distant cars, doors closing–are muffled. There’s something in it that feels so terribly familiar. As though there’s a memory being jogged that I can’t quite bring to mind. Or as though time is collapsing, and this moment is not necessarily now.

It’s as though Vaughn, and Don–my old life–are right around the corner. As though the veil, as they say, really is thin at this time of year.

Or is it just the memory of these same sensory impressions from a time that I was happy, or a time, at least, when Vaughn was still here?

I think I have cried every day for the last month. No, that’s not true, because I remember two days last week when I didn’t cry, and there must have been a few others. But I’m crying a lot. Is that reality setting in?

Just a Kid

November 2014

Today I went to Safeway. There was a kid sitting where you used to wait for me.

Vaughn–I know you were just living your life.

Before you started having big problems you used to wait for me to pick you up at Safeway. Later, when you were coming down and hungry, you would wait for me to drive down and buy you something to eat. But despite everything, and all you went through, on some level you were always just a kid waiting for your mom at Safeway.

I remember how you used to peruse the candy aisle. It would take you forever to make a choice. I used to get impatient. Now I imagine how you must have been weighing your choices–imagining the various bars, drops, and chewies in your mouth–wanting to pick just the right one. And I realize that must have been pleasurable to you-the deliberation and anticipation. I wish I had been more patient–allowed you your moment of pleasure. So much in your life was hard and unpleasant. In the candy aisle you were just a kid.

Vaughn I love you. I miss you. I want to see you again SO MUCH. I have to believe I will.

Rote

October 29 2014

The way it works is that when I feel ‘okay’ or even ‘happy’; when I act like a sane human being, it’s because I’m doing it by rote. I remember how to act normal. I remember how it feels to be happy. So I try to seem that way. But it’s a thin veneer. It wears off quickly and I am back to this well of misery and self-loathing.

All of This

May 2014

She says writing things down helped her. But I’m not sure I want to feel enough to write.

My feet hurt and I don’t know why I’m here.

My back’s aching a little, too.

And it’s a lovely, still night. Leo and I have determined the temperature is 74 degrees, oh 73 degrees now– the perfect temperature. Not too warm, but no need for a sweater.

There’s some machine in the distance humming–breaking the sense of quiet–but otherwise it’s lovely. Wonder what’s making that sound?

All of this…and Livia graduating and preparing to go away to college, and me wondering what I’ll do after she leaves, and hoping to experience a period of growth. All of this…and trying to heal my arm so I can dance again, and ruminating, as usual, about my romantic situation. And in all of this, through all of this, Vaughn is gone.

Vaughn is gone under everything.

Hold On

20 December 2013

Now that the longest night is here I realize I’ve tried too hard to ‘move on’. Now that the longest night is here, I realize I am not ready for the promise of light.

I want to stay in the dark with my grief. Hold it to me, as thought I’m holding my boy close.

I’m not ready for a future without him.

Dear Mom

November 2013

Dear Mom,

Well, I hear you’re still around (somewhere). I can’t wait to see you again. It’s been a long time–thirty one years. More time without you than with you.

My life has turned out to be pretty hard. I used to feel sorry for you, but my life has turned out difficult too–losing Vaughn–and Don. I know you will be taking good care of Vaughn. He is the sweetest thing, isn’t he? And so handsome. Maybe that doesn’t exist where you are.

Your must be wise now, Mom. I can’t say you were very wise here, to be honest. You brought on a lot of your own suffering, at least as far as Dad went. I was dismayed when George said you were with Dad–I hope that was some kind of misunderstanding. Or at least not “together” in a way that’s causing you suffering.

So I have a question for you: What should I do? I have (X?) number of years left to live. And I am mostly, or often, pretty miserable. It doesn’t seem like the way to go. I’m sick about Vaughn, of course. And I’m surprised to find that I’m pretty much alone. Livia is my only family. I don’t even know if I want more family. Don and Vaughn and Livia were my family and maybe I didn’t appreciate that enough. But I didn’t cause Don to drink. And I didn’t plan for him to roll the jeep. I certainly didn’t want Vaughn to take the road he did–my precious baby.

But all of that happened. And here I am. Still standing. Still breathing. What should I do?

I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left being miserable.

Cover of Night

21 December 2013

The longest night of the year.

Plenty of time to let the darkness drape around me, hold me in its still embrace.

But is it enough time to grieve for you?

Can I take my time, somehow letting each nook and crevice of my brain accept, believe, absorb the loss?

Or do I have to hurry up and mourn you while the darkness lasts, knowing the darkness will seep away too soon, leaving a cold light from which my sorrow will have to scurry into the nooks and crevices of my brain,

Hiding from the glare of day, waiting for soft cover of night to come out, unashamed, to stretch.

I wish this long night would be even longer.

Stretch so long that I could pour out all my sorrow into it…

Grieve and grieve.

My tears falling into the dark night as though onto black velvet.

Soft.

Soundless.