I
didn’t cry for my grandmother’s death.
Well, either of them, really. Nor
did I cry for my grandfather’s. I
managed to work out a sniffle when my Father died, as it seemed untoward not
to, and I didn’t want to give my step-monster the forever longed-for proof that
I, in fact, did not love my Father, as she had always suspected and
passive-aggressively intimated. I
suppose the intimations grew less passive and more aggressive as his demise
neared, resulting in vicious screaming from her at his deathbed and an icy
demeanor at the funeral.
It’s
not lack of love, though even I have to admit my relationship with my Father
was trussed with tension and remorse. It’s
not even that I eschew public crying, although, to be honest, there is little I
find more humiliating, even at appropriate and expected times. It’s more that, with people I don’t see
daily, the evidence of their absence needs to fester for it to become real. I need
to linger over the phone number absent-mindedly, go through a Christmas
shopping list, before it becomes clear to me that they aren’t just living their
own life while I live mine.
It
may have become real faster with my Dad, I suppose, if I had gone to see his
body when he passed on the morning of my birthday. The step-monster was there, however, and my
feelings were freshly slapped from her most recent accusations that I had not
visited enough. (What constitutes enough
when someone alternates between ignoring and forgetting about your
presence?) Besides, did I mention it was
my birthday? My Father had already
ruined several of those in my lifetime, and fear mixed with resentment
bolstered my resolve. My brother pleaded
with me to come, but I reasoned that he must not look much different than he
did on his deathbed the night before, and I preferred to remember him
breathing, even raspily. My brother
could, were he churlish enough to take it, claim his “I-told-you-so” regarding
my regret. Luckily for me, he’s not that
sort; though were the tables turned I can’t promise he’d be as fortunate.
No,
I save my crying for the cats. The tears
build up in a hard rock behind my broken thyroid and wait, through all the
dying, through all the tsunamis, through all the romantic hurts and physical
pain, and comes out in a raw, utter wail of sub-human sorrow when a cat
dies. For you see, the absence is real
immediately. The absence is real from
their staring eyes and limp jaws and sudden realization that there is no one to
wake you up with wet pushy purring tomorrow morning, no one galloping to meet you
at the door tomorrow night. The absence
is real and keenly felt in a way it can’t be when a relationship has been
reduced to unsatisfying phone calls filled with only good news and uncomfortable
holiday visits.
This
is why I drove around Santa Fe New Mexico for a week, hitting “repeat” on the
CD player. Santa Fe’s lilac dust
glittered through my tears, the soaring strains of Japanese-scented English smothering
my wails behind the rolled-up car window.
Fritz, my big, orange tub of a tabby, was gone forever, and I was
inconsolable, save for Yuko Honda and Miho Hatori’s soft harmonies and
near-incomprehensible lyrics.
It
was the verse, really. “I wish I can
take it away to three thousand light years away”, I would croon with them,
repeatedly, snot dribbling down my upper lip.
“Don’t be afraid, I’ll be next to you”.
I would imagine myself flying to a faraway planet, one arm stretched out
before me a la Superman and Fritz cradled in the other, no dripping bag of
fluids or pain, to a planet where kitty kidneys grew on trees and nine lives
were literal. Even now, the song can
make my knees week.
That breathy, tentative first note,
like a low test of the trumpet’s mouthpiece, is enough to push a tear to the
brink of my eyelid on even the best day.
By the time it steps up to the crescendo and the brushes hit the snare,
I am invariably a snuffling wreck, even in public. “All I can do is sing for her and
myself”. All I can do is sing for him
and myself.
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