HOLDING CLOSE / LETTING GO

I wouldn’t exactly call it an anniversary; that suggests something to be celebrated. But I passed a milestone this last week — one year to the day since I lost my Sweetie.

Lost. Passed away. Joined the Heavenly Choir. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Whatever euphemism you like, as long as it doesn’t involve the ‘D’ word.

Funny, a year ago, I thought (in those fleeting moments back then when I was capable of thinking) that I’d have it all figured out by now. I would miraculously know what to do with the car I can no longer drive, this house, still so crammed with his stuff (not to mention my stuff!), this life with him no longer in it.

But so far that miracle hasn’t happened. I find myself just as overwhelmed as ever, paralyzed by the prospect of going on without him. I understand the necessity of plunging forward — instead of crab-crawling sideways like I’ve been doing. But the question is, when is it all right for those left behind to survive?

James is already physically gone, an impossible reality I grapple with every minute of every day. I desperately want to hoard his memory, like I’m holding on to his stuff, afraid that if I change anything, I might inadvertently slip one of the tethers still holding his spirit in place here with me. So I cling by my claws like Sylvester the Cat to every item that was so much a part of him, and every insistent memory of the life we shared together.

But no matter how ferociously I try to hold on, I can feel part of him beginning to slip away from me. Whether I like it or not, my life is slowly beginning to regroup around his loss, the way tidewater patiently diverts itself around, but ultimately engulfs an obstacle in the sand.

The tide will keep coming in and going out again. I can’t stay in one place, just surviving from one crisis to the next. Somehow, I have to dig in and take a stand, or the tide of life will erode me.

Of course, some stubborn part of me doesn’t want to make any new memories without him. That would feel like a betrayal. But as horrible, as hideous a thought as it is, I need to go forward, or be stuck here in this precarious limbo forever.

I have to let him go.

But how?

Then I remembered a scene in my first novel, The Witch From the Sea. My heroine, Tory, the daughter of a Native American mother, learns that her friend and fellow pirate, Jack, has suffered a terrible loss in the past. She tries to comfort him with a Mohawk prayer for the dead — and the survivors. 

“They say to the dead: We release you on your journey. Let nothing of this world hinder you, let no friends or relations trouble you. Forget the sadness of this world and go in peace.

They say to the survivors: The journey of the dead will be yours one day. If you love them let them go in peace. Do not trouble them with your sadness. Do not be idle with grief. Do not lose hope.”

The next step, she tells him, is to abstain from wickedness for a year, although Jack points out, it’s a little late for that in his case. “If you can’t be good for a year for the sake of ceremony,” says Tory, “you must take the time to mourn out of respect.”

I’ve had a year to mourn, a process that’s not going to end anytime soon. But it’s time to get out from under the yoke of grief, to stop using my sorrow as an excuse not to take responsibility for the rest of my life. And, somehow, I have to re-commit to hope.

In this at least I have an ally in James, the most positive person on the planet; he never lost hope about anything, no matter how daunting, and his enthusiasm for life was unbridled.

That’s the part of his spirit I must never let go of. Never, ever.

(Top: Cosmic Connection, by James Aschbacher)
(Above: New Release Party, by James Aschbacher)