My great-grandfather, Buckle, started a fundamentalist Christian church in his living room, in Georgia with my great-grandmother, Betty. In the same home, they would raise three genera- tions on homegrown food and a sweet disposition. Sweet, but like a Vidalia onion cake.
In this same living room my sister and I would practice ballet and perform the nativity in costume. when we spent summers with Grandmother and Daddy-Buck, we learned how to sew seeds, fry okra, catch crawdads, and pull Betty out of the creek when she fell in from time to time. Betty was beautiful and complex– she had fierce religious convictions and an even stronger dependence on prescriptions. She read to us stories like Amelia Bedilia and subjected us to hours of televange- lists like Binny Hin. We were trained ballerinas and spirit-filled demon hunters by the age of ten. We were steeped in believing that life was everlasting if your name was written in the Lamb’s book of Life, but that the devil’s army lurks to possess the unguarded soul with everlasting Death.
“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” Revelation 20
[The fear of death is a powerful instinct and persuader. What a comfort to eliminate it altogether; and live believing life is eternal.. albeit warred over by good and evil. And you could be saved! But you have to follow the rules. And if not, so death will be eternal suffering in lakes of fire.]
My exodus to Massachusetts felt like a great escape for many reasons. At the time, I wanted to run as far as I could. I had just lost my partner to suicide three months prior. Sep- tember 28th, 2016. He was 22. He suffered through addiction, and a similar familial dynamic in which prayer and god's word were the only medicine offered supportively. The time following Connor's death, I could not stand the physical sensation of being awake; my body was not digest- ing food, and I was hallucinating and self-medicating heavily. Every place, every road, and every familiar face was a reminder of this unimaginable pain I did not know how to swallow. So I ran. “If I have to be here on this planet, I have to do what I want to do. I’m going to make my own dreams. I have nothing to lose but myself.” I remember sobbing into my mom's shoulder as I left; afraid of giving up on my own life and angry that I had to go on hurting.
Mascara on the sleeve of an oversized sweater
Grey blues wallowing in hibernation weather
Breakfast smells across white walls in sunlight
Turning pages of memories of my last life
Mascara on the sleeve of an oversized sweater
Swollen lips utter ‘lean on me, it's gonna get better
When there is a natural disaster does the earth feel sorrow or guilt? Does she understand that this force and purging is a mechanism of her ever-perfecting nature? When we sit and cry with her to let our bodies feel and imagine why, with everything, does she feel that too?
Rip through the machinery of your fragile brittle mind
June, 2017 11:30am (Connor’s birthday week)
When I feel joy I become joy potent and permeating
I peel my eyes to see its play present in my sorrow
And now when I feel joy, I also feel my sorrow
My sorrow looks for joy And my joy looks for sorrow
Now tethered to each other and tied into a loop
Try to close a book backward
Will you feel the pain of your actions forever as I will?
You now without body to feel from, do you sense now the gravity which pulls
August, 2017 11:30am (Mom’s birthday weekend)
It has held my love between bodies and held beloved bodies that are not bodies anymore
If I can honor my body because of what it has held, I can also honor my body for holding me
If I can honor my body for what it has experienced, I can honor all bodies for the vast unknown of what they have experienced
October 2018 9am (we fell in love in October)
You are especially breathtaking in the morning
When you’ve been well hydrated, with warm cheeks.
Jello morning sliding around in the kitchen in woolen socks, Twisting winding spiraling your limbs around yourself Dizzy drifting dance and dreamed you spilt
your beans into a cozy nest to share
A pumpkin promenade of bare bones busy with repair
I became a sun when the void was too dark for me to see you
The Wind saw itself and the word was Bird
It has been 6 years. 6. I think of Connor every day. I feel strange about it as if healing over time would change the frequency that I remember scenes of our relationship. It is scary to forget things. Denial and anger subside and like all who grieve I will cry, whenever I feel like it. But more than that now, I laugh or smile which is better. I will find glimpses of him in the quiet of tall trees, remembering his particular way of being surrounded by them and how he enjoyed feeling so small. the smell of French press coffee, the days that I sleep past 8am. and the importance of doing absolutely nothing at all. I think of Connor when I have to be brave, and sometimes I can laugh remembering how fast he drove or the other ways he could be dangerously brave. I re- member the softness with which he listened and played and his adamance that messy was okay. “If I separated myself from you I would turn entirely to thorn” - Rumi
In my grieving, the inner process of shock, abandon, accept, and assimilate, snags and snares and just might trigger-play memories back like a reverse-draw-four-days-in-the-abyss. My subconscious reaches for something to comfort and soothe a spiraling spiral. A dream will come to help untangle the unseen and unspoken. The sun hits my skin again and tears kiss my pores, it’s nice to see you, yourself, again in the sun, remembering to drink and eat and move and hum.
germansingergirl
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janainaart
andulkaphoto
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