Nov 25, 2011

Anniversaries



So, it's Thanksgiving.  And I feel like I should have something to say about that, but I don't.  Because Thanksgiving doesn't exist anymore.


Instead, Thanksgiving is now the anniversary of The Day I Got The Call From Mr. Badger's Sister, Warning Me He Might Not Make It Until Our Scheduled Visit On Friday Night And Asking Me If I'm Sure I Want To Remember Him The Way He Looks In The Hospital.  That doesn't make for much of a holiday.


The Monday before Thanksgiving is the anniversary of Mr. Badger's goodbye speech to me, of him making me give him my blessing to stop the chemotherapy and go into hospice.  It's the anniversary of me cursing him out and saying that if he was going to give me his goodbye speech, he was goddamn well going to give it to my face.  It's the anniversary of him asking me to come visit him one last time.


The Tuesday before Thanksgiving is the anniversary of Mr. Badger's text that his organs were failing and that we needed to make the visit sooner rather than later.  It's the anniversary of me sitting in my department chair's office, trying to find a way to be professional and not cry while asking for emergency time off, of trying to find a way to describe my relationship with Mr. Badger in a way that would make it sound "legitimate", since we were not "officially" dating.  We had dated on and off for six years, and we were exclusive lovers for the last two, but he wasn't my "boyfriend", so I sat at the table in my chair's office, my whole body shaking with fear that our relationship would not be deemed important enough for me to cancel my classes.


The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I took off towards The North for the first of the two-day drive Upstate.  Too upset to pack, I shoved all my dirty clothes into my largest suitcase, grabbed my coat, and ran out to my car, still in the jean shorts and Frye motorcycle boots I had been wearing around the house.  And on the drive towards Alejandro's house, The Cowboy called me.  And I had been trying to keep all this business from him.  I mean, we had been getting pretty close, and it was really nice, so while of course I wanted nothing more than to call him and tell him what was going on, I didn't want to make him feel like he was the person I'd call and dump all my emergencies on.


But he called me when I was driving, and the timer on my massive Crazy Bomb ticked down to zero, and I exploded into a mass of uncontrolled panic.  And at one point, I was half-crying, half-yelling at him because he obviously didn't understand what a horrible person I was.  Because I should have married Mr. Badger.  I knew how much he loved me and how he wanted an official relationship, and then he got sick, and I should have married him.  And The Cowboy finally raised his voice to me, saying, "Okay, so what would be different if you had married him?!  He would still be dying."


And of course, I sobbed, "He would have died having someone.  No one deserves to die without having someone."  And of course, part of my brain recognized that official or not--Mr. Badger did have someone...he had me.  And when The Cowboy actually yelled at me to bring me back to reality I didn't feel like I was being yelled at.  Men yelling at me, or even in my direction, makes me feel jumpy and implicitly threatened...but The Cowboy was just doing what needed to be done, and he had been far more patient than anyone else would have been.  And somewhere among all of the nerves and fear and panic and regret and tears, he brought this little kernel of safety.  It felt like a blanket.  Maybe the blanket the EMTs wrap around you as they haul you off to the emergency room, but a blanket nonetheless.


Thanksgiving is the anniversary of doing my dirty laundry at Alejandro's house, only to discover that in that giant suitcase of dirty clothes, there were about 30 pairs of underwear, 30 pairs of socks, five pairs of jeans, and two shirts.  Then Alejandro dragged me out to the curling club so I wouldn't be at the house alone.  Shiawassee, who had always considered Mr. Badger as a brother, as coming down to Upstate to see him as well, and we were meeting on Friday to see him.  But then I got the call from his sister, that his lucidity was slipping, and maybe I didn't want to come anymore.  And I asked, "If I came, would he still know that it's me?"  To which she replied, "Yes."  So I said, "He wanted me to come, so I'm coming.  I'm leaving now."  So I left the curling club at 10pm to drive through the night to Upstate, cursing myself the whole way for not leaving sooner, for holding to the original plan between me, Shiawassee, and Mr. Badger.


And The Cowboy talked to me nearly the whole way to Upstate, with me crazed and cursing myself the whole way, afraid that because I had stuck to the original schedule, I wasn't going to make it to Mr. Badger in time.  I was going to fail him.  And The Cowboy was supportive and patient and somewhere underneath the quivering mess that was my brain and my body, there it was...that little undercurrent of safety.


The day after Thanksgiving is the anniversary of my visit to the last rest stop before Upstate, the one I always stopped at when I visited Mr. Badger to wash up, change clothes, put on makeup, and fix my hair to make myself look "accidentally fabulous", so he'd think I just showed up looking like that after an eight hour drive from The North.  Whenever the stop made me late--and it usually did--I chalked it up to "traffic".  That rest stop was also where  learned how to insert a contraceptive sponge, the place where I first touched my own cervix, so that the sponge would be in place and ready to go just in case Mr. Badger and I jumped on each other the second we saw each other.  And early in the morning the Friday after Thanksgiving, I stopped there again, because I legitimately had to pee, but instinctively, I reached for my makeup bag to make myself look pretty for him...until I remembered that in this context, he wouldn't care if I looked pretty or not.


7:36am on the Friday after Thanksgiving is the anniversary of me finally pulling into the parking lot of Upstate Hospital, where I ran in, confused about how I would find his room, and when I did find it, of me meeting his mother, father, and sister for the first time by them exiting the room, closing the door, and checking to make sure that I really wanted to see him like this, that I didn't just want to remember him the way he was before he was sick.


That Friday is the anniversary of us seeing each other one last time, of about two hours of him holding my hand and squeezing it, of me saying the things that needed to be said, of me stroking his body and his hair the way I used to when we were in bed together, before he peacefully died holding my hand.


If you go by days of the week, it's the Friday after Thanksgiving.  If you go by dates on the calendar, it's November 26.  Either way, it's the anniversary of the day I watched my exclusive lover of two years--the man who, although we both knew we were not perfect for each other, I knew would always, always love me--die right in front of me.


On the journey from Upstate back to Rust City, I made it as far as Alejandro's house, where I completely collapsed and didn't move for two days.  I had eaten only one meal since Mr. Badger's call on Monday, and my body had just given out.  I laid in the big, fluffy bed in the Fairytale Tower, sometimes with my laptop open to complete the funeral-related correspondence, and otherwise just staring out the window into the city beyond.  Because there was nothing else I could do.  I could barely move.  At one point, I tried to take a shower, and I couldn't lift my arms all the way to my head to wash my hair, so I just got out and laid back in the bed, dripping wet and freezing.


And while I was laying in The Tower, feeling bereft and lost and unworthy of the role I had fulfilled for Mr. Badger, unworthy of holding his father while he cried, unworthy of his mother's tour through Mr. Badger's baby pictures, unworthy of knowing his history before me; feeling like a bratty child who wanted to kick and shriek and stamp her foot at the unfairness of it all; feeling like I was trying to survive as nothing but a skeleton with a heart and lungs; feeling like nothing; feeling like the embodiment of Delirium itself...while I was laying in The Tower feeling all of this simultaneously, I got an email from The Cowboy, and part of it said, "Your ability to empathize is greater than anyone I have ever known...it's incredible and beautiful and tragic."


And in that moment, those words cut through the relentless, merciless grief and said, "Look...somewhere in all this panic and snot and delirium, he's found something good in you.  He's looking, and he sees you.  He knows you."  And over the months when the grief was at it's peak, I'd go back and read that line in that message, and it would remind me that in the embarrassingly uncontrolled mess the grief had reduced me to, there was someone who could look at me like that and still see me inside there, and see me as good.  That there was someone who could look at me like that and still know me.  There was such a sense of Always about that, too.  Just as it's critical to have someone who will always love you, it's monumental to have someone who will always know you...know you and see you as good.  There's such safety in that.


Funny how much things can change in a year.


So here I am, in this never-ending one-year anniversary week that is supposed to be a holiday, and I am reminded that I am without one who will always love me as well as one who will always know me.  I am entirely without safety.  And I don't know what to do about it except feel it.


The thing is, I find myself wondering if I'm allowed to feel it.  If it's appropriate for these to be anniversaries of mine, rather than being the exclusive property of his family and friends.  Because we were never friends...the first night we met, he asked me on a date.  We were always lovers.


And It hink about that, and this whole year, I've been trying to find a way to articulate the significance of my relationship with Mr. Badger.  since we weren't friends (under my definition of friends), and we weren't official boy/girlfriends, I think the common conception is that relationships like ours were "just" sex.  And while our relationship was a lot of sex, and I'd go so far as to say mainly sex, I would never say it was "just" sex.  Because I don't think "just" sex exists.  For me, anyway.


I mean, if you think about what is actually shared in an ongoing sexual relationship, that partner gets to see you at your most vulnerable, your most exposed, your most ecstatic.  That person is the one pushing you into that vulnerable, exposed, ecstatic state.  That person sees the you that your friends will never see...the you that is at once the most animal as well as the most fragile.


And something happens then.  Not the cliche women-fall-in-love-after-sex phenomenon, but a bond is created unlike any other relationship you have.  If someone has been inside your body, if someone has truly explored your body to discover ways to bring you joy, if you trust each other enough to have a new experience together...something happens that is so intimate and strong and important that it changes you as a person.  And this is regardless of whether you're going to get married or you're experiencing True Love or not...if you have really loved that person's body, if you truly tried to learn that body and mind for the purpose of giving and sharing pleasure, if you trusted that person enough to honestly expose yourself in order to surrender and to take, there is a bond that is created that is sacred and ancient and 100% legitimate.  Common culture doesn't allow for that, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.


Because it is true.


If you really open yourself up, and you're not just a mouth and genitals and get-off-and-get-outm that's what happens with lovers.  There is no "just" sex.


All that being said, I wish the anniversaries weren't at Thanksgiving time, where every year the holiday will force a space in which I remember them, in sequence.  Not that I can do something about that, but I still wish.  It's a complicated experience, having such a devastating experience simultaneously remind me of a love an a knowing and a safety that are now absent.  It makes the anniversary doubly tough.


An of course, I continually think of Mr. Badger's goodbye speech, in which he talked about how special I was, and how I deserved all of the happiness in the world.  And then I look at myself on the anniversary of the speech, and I see that I could not be farther from it.  And I hesitate to admit it, but it makes me feel...lonely.  The absence of someone who would always love me.  The absence of someone who would always know me.  It's a loneliness I know I must have felt at some point in my life, but I can't remember the last time.  That's how long it's been.  And while I don't typically mind being alone, loneliness, on the other hand...it's enough to make me feel like I don't actually exist at all.


Grief counselors and such say that the first anniversary is the hardest.  And I hope that's true.


I really, really hope that's true.