Fish

One day we were shopping at TJ Maxx and my husband found the perfect decorative fish for his garden, it wasn’t expensive and he did not buy it.

The next day we went back to the store to find the fish, the perfect fish, for the perfect spot and it was gone.

the perfect fish

And that is where my thoughts took me when I saw this little fish I made years ago.

And then I thought of my friend who has been slipping away and how he said to me “so many wonderful people in this world,” a few weeks ago when he decided no more treatment.

And I thought about all the joyful moments and laughs we have had over the years.

Lots of perfect moments like the perfect fish that just disappear into space and time.  I’d like to find those moments again, grasp them, hold them to my chest and never let them go.  Ours weren’t moments in Paris or on a safari…ours were shared conversations about the owl in the tree and history…they were the time we all went to the local diner just to have a good ham-salad sandwich.  They were jokes we made about my husband’s Star War’s Bridge and how I thought he, Ram, wouldn’t have enough to do in retirement, and our friend, Joe, kept reminding me of that every time I started fretting about my husband’s newest project.

But in the end, the moments are gone and love and the memories remain to lull us to sleep at night.  The tears to grieve and honor the migration of souls and the mysterious ways our paths cross to build something the monument of which we can never see until its past.

My friend died Thursday, he was one of the best friends I have had in life, I told him that, I told him I loved him, but I thought I would see him today, that was the plan.  But he had other plans.  The Buddhists would say he is in the Bardo… but I can’t feel him right now.  I’m hoping when he is buried across the lake from us, that when I drive to the knoll on my way home where I can see the lake and the sun streaming through the clouds over Tburg, that I will look across and feel his spirit in a new and different way.  That he will speak to me until I leave.

@claireaperez@gmail.com

November 2017:  Writing Joe in the Bardo

Dear Joe,

According to the Buddhists you are in the bardo and I am wondering: are these things I see signs from you? Or am I just feeling the imprint of your life?

Tuesday, the piliated wood pecker, the holy grail, which you and Ram always see and I always miss, flew directly in front of our windshield. He grazed the glass as he flew across the creek to a tree he could sink into. “Piliated” shouted Ram. “Joe” I yelled.

Thursday I unloaded my grocery cart and as I waited for the cashier, I saw behind me a man with a single 6 pack of ginger-ale. (For the reader, Joe brought ginger-ale wherever he went…it was his drink of choice so much so that his family honored him by bringing a six pack to his celebration ceremony).

I thought ginger ale…better let the guy check out in front if me. I hesitated, he looked like the master of the universe type and I am resistant to noblises oblige. But still I let him go.

Nicest guy, couldn’t have smiled more or thanked me enough. I heard you say, in my mind Joe, that what I had assumed was “not necessarily the case.”

And finally, Ram met some people out at a movie I did not want to see. I did not want him to go to Blade Runner alone so I helped arrange some buddies for him to meet out. When they sat down, he wasn’t particularly happy about their seating choice so he up and parked himself behind the group. And here in is where I hear you loudest: march to your own drummer, respectfully, beat the drum loudly and clearly, find what works for you.

Ram and I often reflect on who in the world is our tribe. We have many community friends but few close, close friends. We often long to be part of a “group” that alludes us, but you Joe, you were part of our tribe. You, me, Ram…we all three march to a different drummer, it just isn’t the same one.

I will continue to look for the signs…of course, but I think the signs are just the symbols of you left behind for us to hold.

More Grief and Leonard Cohen December 2017

I can’t get past these first few lines of a poem I started about Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah.

…its a long and broken Hallelujah
the major chord
the minor lift
the beauty in the moonlight that overthrew you

I use to live alone until I met you
it went like this
The fourth, the fifth
The talks so long, the major lift

I thought writing Leonard Cohen style might help me capture the feelings about my dear friend who passed peacefully 48 days ago and left me with the purest, most unfettered grief I have ever felt.

I’ve done a lot with this grief of mine: finish his book which we started together last May. I have listened to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah so much that youtube will probably start charging me a  fee.

I have written poems, essays, letters about and to my friend in my journal, my nose is literally inflamed from all of the tears and sadness that have flowed out of me. Why this unexpected grief response? “Oh,” say the experts (google grief), “this is all  past griefs you are responding to, as well as this loss.”

“I am?” then why does my heart ache to call my friend and talk with him? Where is he?

I decided to try and understand what Leonard Cohen might have been writing about in his song. This song, done so many times by so many people, even Cohen thought it was a bit much. This song which finds many of us in the lonely room.

Leonard Cohen searched his whole life for deep connection, this above all else was his goal. He had lost his father at 9 and his dog around that time…these losses so young, one never quite recovers.

The connection Cohen refers to I think means that handful of friends you are told you will be lucky enough to count on one hand, those people who get you.

Those friends, my friend, are rare indeed. They walk into the room where you use to live alone until you met them. There are so many parts to meeting those friends…  the same worldview you share, the same depth of place you are willing to travel with them, the rawness of your soul you are willing to expose, the essence of who you are and what pains you.

Leonard Cohen’s halleluiah pretty much brought me to my knees while I prepared flowers for my friends memorial. Love is a long and broken hallelujah because as much as we connect, as much as our minds and hearts will allow us to reach union with the spirit that bore us, we are in the end, alone. I do not know where my friend is but I have had two dreams about him.

These dreams have arrived in that liminal moment between sleep and wakefulness. In one, my friend tucks me in with a worn white blanket, he tucks it under my shoulders. He looks confident, compassionate as if he wanted me to feel better and rest from the months of a bittersweet time we shared from Feb. on when his cancer was diagnosed.

Several weeks later as I finished his book, he came to me again as I dozed off. He was dressed in a black gentleman’s coat like his favorite character in his book. Standing erect, back to me a top hat and cane for show (19th centuryesque), he was walking away from his gravesite and of course me…love is a long and broken hallelujah and Joe I am so so glad we knew ya.

claireaperez@gmail.com