Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go

I always have music going, and lately I have ventured out from my normal playlists a bit.   A couple of songs in particular have been swirling around in my head.  They are very different songs, but they all seem to speak to the same truth.  Eventually life strips away everything that doesn’t matter.  

The “Last Phone Call” by Buster Michaels tells the story about a man who knows he is dying and gets one last chance to call the people he loves.  For me, I didn’t really get that.   I did speak to Bride somewhere between a few minutes and 3 hours before she passed.  Neither of us knew it would be our last phone call.  Neither of us knew that our last words to each other would be “I love ya damn it”.  It wasn’t a dramatic conversation.  There were no profound declarations or final goodbyes.  It was an ordinary day filled with ordinary words about ordinary life. 

If I had a dime for every time since April that I have thought, I can’t wait to tell Bride about this, I could probably retire.  Not because anything major happened.  Mostly it was about the mundanity of the day to day of our lives.  A picture going through the car wash.  A ridiculous billboard on the side of the road.  Some dumb shit Larry did or progress on the Galaxie.  Some success, some stumble, or just a funny story at work.  Nothing that mattered would have made the evening news.  Every one of them mattered enough that I wanted to share it with her. 

I find myself reaching for my phone a lot thinking about a quick text or call.  Haha, she would also include a weird looking clown emoji in texts.  That of course was in addition to hearts and emojis of love.  My first instinct when seeing a dumbass doing dumbass things is to call her or at least get a picture for her.  The love still needs somewhere to go, and my reflex is to share it with her.   In many ways, I hope that reflex to share with her never goes away.

“Grief Is Only Love” by Stephen Wilson is another one that keeps getting stuck in my head lately.  The title alone hits me hard, because it strips away all the bullshit and condenses grief down to its simplest form.  I have heard grief described as a separate emotion.  I am not sure that’s right.  Maybe grief is just love after love loses its address.    

All the things that come to mind that are connected to my loss aren’t the big things.  They are the places that love used to go, every day.  Text messages, phone calls, and random stories.  The constant stream of little obscure moments that made up our life together.  Love is still here, the need to share it is still here.  The only thing different is the person I spent a lifetime sharing those moments with isn’t here to receive them.

Maybe that's why grief can feel so strange. Nothing is wrong with the love. The love is doing exactly what it has always done. It's reaching outward. It's looking for the person who has been on the other end of the conversation for years.  On April 21^st, the conversation ended.  The love didn’t.  It still shows up every day looking for somewhere to go.  The love is still expecting someone to be on the other end laughing at the punchline.

All of this reminded me of the funeral scene in Waking Ned Devine.   Jackie said that the words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the very front and hear what was said, maybe even have a little cry yourself.  She would have had a lot more funny stories than I shared at the service.  And truth be told, she probably would have told them better.   

He spoke about growing old together, and when they laughed, they were young again.  He wrapped that up by saying his friend was a great man and thanked him for being his friend.  Sandy and I grew old together, and we were young again when we laughed, which we did a lot.  If she could hear me now, I wanna say you were a great, friend, lover, partner in crime, and I wanna thank ya for picking me as your life partner.

The funny thing is, I still find myself wanting to tell her all of that, and more.  Grief hasn’t changed the message, it has only changed where I send it.  Maybe Stephen Wilson Jr. has it right.  Maybe grief really is just love.  Love that still expects somebody to be on the other end of the conversation. 

On April 21^st the conversation ended.  The love did not - Damn it!!