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| Dust of Snow (M.A. Reilly 2014) |
I.
The death
of my husband unseated a sense of sureness that once framed the place I know as
home. Now home feels less permanent, less safe. Where I live now, sorrow
grows like trees, deep rooted with leaves that silver as if rain might be expected. Sometimes
I'm filled with expectations about the new life I am making, but these moments are
inconsistent. Rather, pain anchors me and just when I think I've given name to this sorrow it shows up donned in some new garb.
Yesterday,
it was the unexpected Yes song, "And
You and I" that came on the
radio. It wasn't just the song that stirred a deep unease. It was also the
memory of hearing Rob talk about the purity of Jon Anderson's voice and as I
remembered I was transported back to the townhouse we shared in Fort Lee nearly
30 years ago and I could still feel the warmth of sunlight which filtered each
morning through the windows in the room where we each wrote. There, we could
see the very tip to the George Washington Bridge and what I see mostly is how
impossibly young we were.
Two days
ago, I was at home when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was an art
therapist I had met when Rob was in Morristown Hospital. She was phoning to
return art work Rob had made in January and she asked to speak with him.
Whereas I can now write that Rob died without erasing it, getting my voice to
utter the same phrase destroys me. My breath gives out. It is these types
of surprises that trigger the understanding of what absence feels like. My Rob
is no longer here. Today it was an unmarked envelope that came addressed
to me in the mail. I opened it and found Rob's art that he had made while
on the oncology floor of the hospital that the art therapist had returned.
II.
Profound
sorrow is bone deep and terribly known. Earlier this morning I was
reading Bonnie's latest letter to
her husband, Tuvia and her words helped me to realize that it is the familiar
that is so difficult to contend with when the one you love is gone so
permanently. The familiar foregrounds the absence, the tragedy. The field
shifts. And most everything is unsteady. And here's the
thing: there's no place to hide. There's no way out of this. There
is only living each day, each moment. Trying to make sense of the the senseless.
III.
Tonight
I'm thinking about safety and pain and desire and the way sunlight moves across carpet when I come across the Rilke poem, "Entrance." He writes:
Entrance
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Whovever you are: step out in to the evening
out of your living room, where everything is so known;
your house stands as the last thing before great space:
Whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their fatigue can just barely
free themselves from the worn-out thresholds,
very slowly, lift a single black tree
and place it against the sky, slender and alone.
With this you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that is still ripening in silence.
And, just as your will grasps their meaning,
they in turn will let go, delicately, of your eyes . . .
Rilke's words remind me of
the tenuousness of safety and how in many ways my house--this home I made with
Rob "stands as the last thing before great space." Rob told me
to live brilliantly after his death and I suspect doing so will require me to
walk out beyond the borders of home into unmarked, unnamed space.
I'll get there. Just not
tonight. For now, the weight of the wedding band Rob placed on my
finger so many years ago, feels right. Necessary.
