paranormal activity

Last night, I'm pretty sure I woke up to some paranormal activity in my bedroom. I was alone. The kids had begged to sleep over at J's mother's house. I was waking from a dream (it was either directly or indirectly about J). In the same moment I gained consciousness (i.e. within the same seconds of waking up) the shade of my fire escape window suddenly coiled into itself with an incredibly loud, thunderous snap. Like a child, I instinctively ducked under my blanket with a startled shriek. It was 3:45 in the morning and it was dead silent. My heart was racing and I was angry. I was hissing at imaginary J for such undesirable, heart-attack inducing behavior. "This is NOT how I wanted you to come back! I wanted you not to die in the first place. That's it. Not come haunt me from the after life."

Then I thought about it and wondered if it was just frustration of his spirit who has not yet realized what exactly is happening. And then I continued to wonder whether it was maybe just a left-over energy pattern. I can't remember how many times he would climb out that window to go have a smoke in the middle of the night, sometimes accidentally causing that shade to snap up into itself just as loudly, waking me from my sleep. And at last, I thought, maybe it's just an incredibly strange coincidence.  - I decided to go back to sleep with the lights on anyway.

The next day, J's mother told me she also woke up around 3 a.m. and noticed her lights flickering wildly.....  lights that were turned off. She also told me that J's younger sister had had a dream that night in which she encountered him on the streets of her neighborhood. And when she asked him what he was doing here...that he wasn't supposed to be there....that he was dead......he appeared genuinely surprised.

I don't know... I'm not too fond of any type of such obvious supernatural stuff. I like the more subtle signs of peace and reassurance. Something of a different dimension still but less paranormal ...small signs of divinity or purpose to assuage my pain and feeling of loss; ... an incredibly fitting song for the moment, the mourning dove after tough nights, a quote stumbled upon...


I'm sitting here tired... but, I must admit, a tiny bit afraid to go to sleep.

making admends from the after-life

dammit. this isn't getting any better.
the fact that he isn't coming back is a reality that seems to strike me again every day, many times a day, despite the fact that I had my hand on his dead body. I know he passed. I know that this is my reality and, yet, I am surprised by its finality anew every day.

There is no escape from this.

I had a dream about him. A few days ago. It was the first dream of mine he appeared in since his death.
At first, we were together in a new place...or rather, I was in a new place and he came to see it. He was a bit confused and so was I. I wasn't sure if either of us knew that he had died but we both were aware that there was no real, physical space for him in this new place of mine, which I was showing him.

In the second part of my dream I wasn't really aware of my surroundings. It was just him talking to me. It appeared as if he was making amends in some way. It was as if he was watching re-runs of his behavior from many years ago. When he first set on this path of self-destruction. When his liquor- or drug-induced episodes involved his loved ones. At first, he referred to an older memory or scene he must have been looking at that included his ex-wife and daughter when she was still an infant. All he said was that he didn't realize how awful he was. How bad the alcohol turned him. He also must have reviewed, in stunned silence, past escalations with me. "Yes, it was bad and sometimes worse," I said. "But that was a long time ago." -- "I'm sorry", he said with true regret it seemed, "I'm sorry."   -- I was somewhat surprised to hear that he seemingly wasn't aware of  the full impact of his addiction. It was as if he just now got the opportunity to review (and seemingly relive) his intoxicated behavior with a clear mind and from an objective perspective.

confused

I'm confused about how I should feel. ... I know, J loved me in the end.... he had developed trust and gratitude and true love, it seemed. He showed it in many ways he never did before. He also thanked me often and wrote letters of reassurance (that he is trying hard to straighten out his life). Something, he really didn't commit to in the first few years. And so, I find myself torn between these two phases, wondering if he maybe didn't love or respect me after all. Wondering, if he lived another double life.

If he did die of an overdose - something we won't know for months (which is when the toxicology reports come back) - then he probably had been using all along and I just didn't see it. I was aware that he just regularly relapsed but the full story may have been that he just hid it better all the times he was using in between. I only noticed his use on the days he lost complete control -- when he couldn't help but drink and then wouldn't come home or show up in the middle of the night only to be refused entry at the door.
(At some point, he internalized that drill so much that he stopped trying to come back to the house when he had anything to drink, for I just did not let him in, no matter how awful the weather was outside or how much he begged.)

I see so many signs of peace, support, and hope at the moment that I cannot believe he didn't love me...but I wish we would have had more time to make up for all the tough times we had.

The truth is, I regret nothing. I don't regret any time I spent with him, even when he drove me up the wall with his out-of-control life, for I loved him truly and unconditionally...with all his faults and weaknesses.
I loved his walk, his voice, his gestures, his birthmarks and scars, his smell, his stupid tattoo, his wild side, his intelligence, his everything. He made me laugh, he was up for anything, we danced, we could talk for hours without end, and we could sit peacefully with each other without saying a word.
He was my soul-mate.

Here a snippet from an email I stumbled over today:
"My love, you are my best friend.  I feel totally comfortable around you.  I do not change even the tiniest bit of my personality for your sake because I don't have to.  I don't even have to put on clothes around you.  Therefore, I am as if alone when you're around for I have nothing whatsoever to hide from you."

i'm my therapist's therapist

So,.. I went to see my old therapist. The last time I had visited her - years ago - I had decided that, even though I liked her personally, I wasn't too convinced about her therapy style and academic credentials (she is a big fan of Dr. Phil and loves to share stories). To that, I have to say, that my mother is a therapist and probably the most competent and well-read one I have ever talked to about anything. But, my mother isn't here...and...she is my mother. 

And so - despite my reservations about Dr. W -  I chose to call her anyway. I really am not sure why (probably laziness of finding a new one), Also, she had met J a few times.

She didn't remember me or J and she was being her quirky old self doing all the talking (instead of listening to me -- the client ;) ) ... but when I told her why I had come, I realized, why I had really ended up in her office again.

Before I could reveal even a sentence more than the fact that J had passed away, she emotionally related immediately and shared with me the tragic news that her son had just died. And with 'just' she meant almost exactly one year ago. He was 31 years old and died unexpectedly and suddenly. I was shocked, for if there is one thing worse I could imagine than losing your partner, it is to lose your child. It really set me back.... put things into perspective in a way.

She then proceeded to tell me all the many signs of his continued presence she had experienced . She told me how several people had approached her to let her know her son had visited them to send her one or the other message. The most memorable one was the one in which he let his mother know that he had been at her 70th birthday party this year, and what she was wearing, and what she said, and all that.
It was sweet. I felt like I'm in a one-on-one grief support group -- only that my session was up within 30 minutes and I had to cough up a co-payment. I actually felt a little bit like her therapist....but either way...it was a good encounter. Not what I expected but more helpful than I could have possibly imagined.

what else remains...

his laundry

his hot sauce

his white bread (cuz he hated the "organic tasteless stuff I bought")

a dish I cooked on our last day together, still sitting in the fridge

his tooth brush

his towel next to mine

his hair in the shaver

his bar of soap in the shower stall

his clothes in my closet

his pillow

his graduation gown (finally graduated from Columbia last May)

his login name on the computer

his emails in my inbox

his netflix viewing history on my queue

his hand-writing on papers everywhere

his books

his shoes

his deodorant

his asthma pump

his swimming shorts

his keepsakes (pictures from his and my daughters)

his cigarette butts in the ash-tray outside

his coffee cup stains on the window sill

his penny collection

his head-phones

his religious bracelet (although, he called himself a heretic catholic)

a shirt that still smells like him

his name in my mailbox

his absence.

what remains

I haven't picked up his ashes, yet. His mother thought that I should be the one who decides what happens with them. I am going to give some of the cremains to his ex-wife (they have a daughter together) so she can spread it where they went to school together. They were high school sweet hearts and, I think, he would want to be near his daughter, too. I will keep the rest. My 8-year-old requested a little portion she can keep in her memory box and, eventually, when I'm ready to let go, I will spread the rest of his ashes into the Hudson River. He used to love to jump into the raging current of this dirty New York house river. Several times he also dared himself to jump off the C-Rock, a 30-foot high cliff in an estuary of the river between the isle of Manhattan and the Bronx.

I miss that crazy boy.



C-Rock from Eric Branco on Vimeo.

the power of the mind

I feel as if my brain has enveloped my consciousness with a hazy layer of protection. I have read about the power of the mind in traumatic situations. I have read about disassociation and full-blown temporary psychosis functioning to protect the individual suffering from whatever trauma. I never thought it was possible to temporarily suffer from a mental disorder, especially not something so severe as psychosis.

Anyway, I'm entirely too grounded for such extremes, I think; however, I have noticed a change in my perception. Time, for example, has become something I'm only vaguely aware of. Yesterday, I couldn't for the life of me remember what date it was. To me, it feels as if J just died today, even though it is now almost two weeks ago. I also don't know how I'm getting from point A to point B. Every route I travel seems to be done on complete auto-pilot. On the positive side, this is making traffic jams and commuting a sudden non-issue for me.

Yesterday, when I went to bed, my exhaustion seemed disproportional in relation to my activities of the day. I hadn't been up early, I didn't go to bed late the night before, and the day was pretty low-key. However, around 10:30 p.m., hours before I usually go to bed, it was suddenly as if I could sleep instantly, with my eyes open. I made my way to bed shortly after 11 and the moment I hit the pillow, I was almost in trance-like sleep. I had a dream that was so incredibly realistic that I couldn't figure out I was sleeping, something I can usually do. But something seemed really wrong in my dream. I felt almost paralyzed and suddenly I became convinced that I was trapped in my dream. Somehow I knew that I wasn't awake but I also knew that I couldn't wake up. I tried to hold someone's hand to help me out of this. To wake me. And, eventually, I got myself out and arose startled. For a very brief moment, I hoped, everything had been a dream. Everything. Including J's death.

I'm going to therapy today. First time in years.

coping...

I can't stand his absence. I cannot stand the finality of death.

When you are on the outside looking in, when you witness the tragedy of other people losing loved ones you are filled with empathy and sadness. If the lost one is of a relationship you can relate to, a child of the same age as yours for example, the pain and sympathy is even greater. But when you are the one who has lost a most important person in your life, the feelings are closer to devastation, anger, desperation, and helplessness. At least, those are the sentiments which feel most prevalent to me.

I do have moments of hope, of peace, of acceptance. But these moments are rare.

A moment of peace I like to remember is when the mourning dove appeared at my window. It was three days after his death. I had already woken up to the sound of the dove and thought about how beautiful and soothing the call of this bird was. I didn't see the animal, however, until my daughter pointed it out again a few hours later. My friend had come over and encouraged me to recognize the symbolism of this appearance. "STOP what you are doing already and come look!" she said, "this means something!"
And so I walked to the window, and in the middle of the height of a snowstorm sat this one bird, right on the fire escape, looking into my room.

My friend even encouraged me to take a picture. It's a cellphone photo, so you can't really see that it is windy and snowing... The fact that the dove was looking at me, isn't quite clear from this small image either but, at least, it's some sort of documentation.

I kept waking up to the sound of the dove for a few days but the most touching encounter with the bird I had the day after the funeral.

 I had been sad that I hadn't heard or seen it all day and I thought it was gone....minutes later the dove appeared. It sat on the tree next to my window singing to me its soothing call. As I looked up with sincere gratitude - just listening and admiring this lonely mourning dove who had seemingly come to assuage my pain - a small window in the otherwise completely overcast sky opened up right behind the bird and a shining bright sun-ray bathed the animal in a glorious light, turning it into a silhouette and transforming the moment into a complete spiritual experience for me. When the clouds closed again, the bird flew away. I will never forget the power and beauty of that moment.

Now, I know why religious or spiritual paintings are always so kitschy... because that's exactly what it all looked like....minus the cynicism (of calling it corny or kitschy, as I like to do). ... It was simply beautiful.

I wondered, whether I should run for my camera or phone but decided to take in the moment fully instead. "This one, you're just going to have to store in your own memory," I thought to myself as I took in every detail of this wonderfully peaceful experience.

Here some images I found online... I also found links with info... interesting...
http://www.beliefnet.com/Wellness/Environment/Galleries/A-Spiritual-Field-Guide-to-Birds.aspx?p=2
http://www.symbolic-meanings.com/2007/11/06/symbolic-meaning-of-doves/

 I was a bit shocked to hear that in Christianity the dove, among other things, symbolizes the Holy Spirit. A concept I don't really believe in. Maybe I need to go read some Karen Armstrong to re-examine the origins of trinity. I think, she explains that it was meant differently ... but I can't remember.

Anyway, this image is from the Vatican, I think. Definitely a church in Rome.

The dove I saw was not white. It was a brown dove.... a mourning dove.... but this image illustrates well how the clouds tore open behind the bird...

Last but not least, here someone's photograph of a mourning dove on a tree. This is closest to the atmosphere (English?) of the experience I had. The sky was overcast just like this...it was in the afternoon....and I was looking slightly up at the dove.. similar to the way it is depicted in this image.

small observations

There are two glasses sitting in my sink that I don't know what to do with. They are clean but they are inseparably stuck together so I just left them there. Two perfect glasses. Fully functional on their own but stuck together like this -- useless.

I feel like one of these glasses right now. Inseparably attached to J.

***
Today, parked in a lot behind the discount store within which I was going to buy containers to transport and keep J's ashes, I sat in my car sobbing. I tried not to but I couldn't help it. Somehow I knew, he wouldn't like to see me this fallen apart. I hardly ever cry. As I looked up from the coffee cup I was sobbing into, snow began to slowly float around me. It reminded me of what his sister just said the other day....that, for some reason, she thinks of her brother when it snows. It only snowed for a few minutes....it seemed less like a meteorological appearance than a specific sign for me. A sign to stop crying.
That same strange minute-long snowfall happened later in the day, when his sister and I pulled into the funeral home's lot to pick up J's ashes. I had just finished telling her about the dream I had had of her brother that night. It was the first time in weeks that I dreamed of J and in it he seemed to be making amends for past behavior...years ago. I will write this dream down when I get a chance.

After returning from the funeral home, I looked over the paperwork and it contained the address of the place where he had died. When we googled the location, it turned out to be the building I was looking up at when I sat in my car overcome with sorrow earlier.
He left this life in the building right next to the discount store I bought his 'urn' in.

His last breath of life

J is gone.
My love, my best friend, my soul-mate has left this world behind.

He died in the early morning hours of Tuesday. I had had an inexplicable, excruciating pit in my stomach until the moment I got the call that told me he was never coming back home.

I feel as if I am in a dream, an alternate reality within which the turning back of time seems almost possible. Last night, I just walked out my crowded house to go see his body at the funeral home. They had already locked the doors and I pretty much had to beg to be let in and allowed to see him before he was prepped for the service on Sunday. And how grateful I was that they let me. It was incredibly special to get to be alone with him.

As I stood over his body, I kept hoping he would just wake up. It was the lost child deep inside of me. The child who hasn't quite accepted or understood the physical world and its hard facts, yet. I cried, I talked to him, I scolded him, I apologized for having been so tough-loveish, I touched him, and I just looked at him for a very, very long time.

I have never lost anyone close to me and the pain is beyond anything I could have imagined. It literally feels as if someone has tightened a belt around my chest to the point at which it's just constant, inescapable pressure.

There is so much I want to write but I cannot find the words now. I am in a haze.... and I still need to write a eulogy, prepare images, a memory book, and a playlist for the service tomorrow.