Untitled, or Catharsis
An Open Letter to:
My dearest Robert David,
I went out my door that morning and you were standing there in the ditch with your back to me, leaning on your shovel wearing a brown button-down shirt with the collar turned up, camouflage board shorts, socks and work boots, and your John Deere baseball cap turned backwards and pulled down low front and back. In that moment, my entire being sang, and soared, and lit up, and started to hum and throb. I didn’t know your name, I hadn’t seen your face, I knew absolutely nothing about you except that I loved you, all-consumingly.
Eventually I saw your beautiful face, I heard your melodious voice, I watched you work, I listened to you talk, I was finally introduced, and at every turn that humming intensified. We’d run into one another here or there, and every time you opened your mouth if you didn’t make me laugh you surprised me with wisdom of great depth that you spoke as though it ought to be common knowledge, or you simply made me feel like a woman. Like a woman, baby, with a capital WO. Your moral character shone through not only in everything that I was ever told about you but in your every action and every word. When you would hug me hello or goodbye it felt so right in your arms I never wanted to let go. Little did I know until much later I’d been intrigued by you even before we met.
You’d come to visit us, and when you’d leave I couldn’t stand to see you go. I wrestled for weeks with my feelings, begged my heart to stop yearning – no, not just yearning for you but needing you from the pit of my soul – prayed I’d find a reason for what was happening so I could examine it, understand it, and let it, and you, go. The hum that started the first time I laid eyes on you (before that at a subconscious level) didn’t stop or even ease up, just intensified into a palpable resonance I could neither deny nor get away from, until finally I had to find a way to reconcile the love that was already in my life, which hadn’t dulled a bit, with the love for you that had begun to consume me.
You didn’t know how I felt until I called you that night and told you I was in love with you. Up until then you thought you were engaging in yet another innocent flirtation with a woman who just wanted a little ego boost. You were so good at giving that to the ladies (guys too, but in a completely different way :); you could make anyone happy for at least a minute or two just by your presence) and I never minded it. I was so proud to be the one, once I was, going home with you at the end of the day or night.
It took some time and it was rarely easy but instead of me throwing over one good man and our relationship for another and probably ruining most good things in all our lives in the process, the four of us managed to find a way to be a family. Even in the hardest times we all had love for one another. I think I thought that would be enough to sustain you until things got generally easier, for us and for you.
I would have given you everything of me, but it was only another testament to your goodness that you knew you couldn’t take all of me when I had a family to consider, and a good one at that, so you were content with only what I and we could give as I was and we were with what you offered. You tried your best to give me everything but you couldn’t put me ahead of the people who needed you more than I did. You knew how much I needed you, but you knew too that… I would be okay. You also knew how much I loved you, enough to truly let you go whenever it was your choice to leave.
I miss you every day. I hurt every day. I cry every day. Selfishly, I beg for you to come back and be with me, just let me take care of you and protect you from the world that asks so much of you, let me stop it from taking more than you can give while I maintain for you to others the illusion they carry still that you are superhuman. The rest of my life without your voice, your touch, your easy affection, your humor, your presence, your music seems like it will be hollow in so many areas. I know that I’ll fill it with this, that, and the other, and that in time this gaping hole in my heart will heal over and I’ll be able to think of you without thinking I’ll die for want of you. I know that you knew that I would have Dude and that my love for him and his for me would abide and help us to tide one another over in the mean time. It’s just that right now I can’t see how or when any healing will begin. I just want you back.
I gave you time to yourself because I thought we’d have lots of time to be together, but on some level I always knew our time was short and that contributed to my intense need to embrace you and enfold you into my life. It was the reason I was always thinking you thought I was boring – I figured that feeling of short time arose from what I thought was an understanding that you would, when you felt able, move on to someone more rah rah, more well-suited to the edge your temperament seemed to need, and who could give herself to you wholly. Now I understand not only that that feeling was God telling me to love you while you were here but also that you didn’t want that rah rah or need it in your life so much once you’d found a certain sense of peace, and I feel like had I understood that sooner I might have held you tighter and been more in your face about giving me your time. You might have been more able to see how important you were to me. I didn’t want to bind you any more than I felt I already had, but I wonder if you didn’t need to be aware how much it mattered that you spent so much time away.
At the same time, your desire to be with me and to take me with you when you went anywhere contributed to your sense of hopelessness in the end when you felt like you couldn’t do those things without hurting other people about whom you also cared and you couldn’t not do them without hurting me and yourself. Had I been more adamant about it it seems your dilemma would have only been deepened. This is one place where I have to accept and appreciate what we did have without regretting what we missed or were cheated out of, and where I must forgive those who created hardship for you over and above the struggle in which you were engaged with your own sense of morals.
In a spectacular example of the pavings on the road to hell, I can think of a myriad of things I did, said, or didn’t do or say with the best of intentions that in hindsight with more information I suspect felt to you like I didn’t care or I cared too much or things were going off the rail. You always said, “Don’t ever change,” and yet I stopped saying things I came to think were too harsh and I stopped doing things I came to think were too overbearing. I think, looking back, those were the things you wanted me to say and do, even if in the moment you might have reacted in an annoyed way. I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry. I’m sorrier than you can imagine although I guess I believe that you know now how I felt, and how I feel, and probably how I will feel. I wish I’d made it clearer then.
I know you’re here. I know you speak to me all the time. I know you make things happen around me, and around us. I know you love me, and you love us. I know you know that I love you and we love you. Still, I want you physically present. I want to hear you say, “Hey, luv?” and I want to say, “Yeah?” and I want you to say, “Can you do me a huge favor?” and I want to say, “Sure!” and I want you to say, “Can you roll me a cigarette?” or, “Can you bring me a beer?” or, “Can you come up here?” I loved that last one especially, ‘cause it meant you just wanted to see my face and give me a kiss and a hug and a little love. Half the time that was all you wanted anyway, and any other request was just a smokescreen to get me to come to you. I loved that about you.
Your mom’s coming to live here. We’re looking forward to it. We talk pretty much every day, as I’m sure you know, and I think we’re all going to enjoy one another’s company. Still… … Still. I wish things had gone so differently. I know you know I’ll be ‘okay’, but I’ll never be… okay. I can feel the thought of you behind my eyes all the time. I carry a void where you’re supposed to be in my life, and while I know the wound of losing you will heal that void can never be filled by anyone but you. I’ll stuff it with memories. I’ll take any thought of you that anyone can give me and try to make that hole a tiny bit smaller. I’ll hold you in my heart and mind forever and think of your voice, your scent, your spirit, your song, but unless you become whole again and walk the earth as a man there will always be a space where you’re meant to be in my life.
I guess you’re not meant to be there or you would be, right? I get that. All things are as they must be. But why, baby? Why? No, I get it. I get it from your perspective. You knew I’d understand, but you had to also know that I’d make it all about me. What about me? What do I do without you?
I know, I go forward. I ‘buck up’. I live. I love the ones I’m with, my Dudes and all our friends and family. Yeah, I get that, but no, it’s not enough. Without offense to the Dudes, whom you know to be stellar, having had you I can’t be without you. I can, obviously, I am, but I don’t know how I’ll ever stop crying and a life lived in tears… Why? What’s the point? The point, I suppose, is to get beyond the tears and hold on to the love, make my life count if not for myself then in remembrance of you, but I don’t know how that’s going to happen.
I don’t know what to do with the bitterness that wants to arise toward the people who so callously worked at taking your time away from me. I don’t mean the time you spent enjoying with others, I mean the time that was taken for no reason other than that the people doing the taking were jealous that you were happy with me. Your good nature prevented you from telling them to fuck off, but again, you were torn between keeping them happy and doing what you wanted to do. I wish I’d pushed that door open more and made you talk through it instead of letting you do it on your own and get wrapped up in it without knowing that I understood. I didn’t at first but I did get it eventually and if you’d known better than I made clear that I understood maybe it wouldn’t have been so hard for you. Maybe we would’ve had that time I expected. (See how expectations lead to disappointment, darlin’? :)) I’ll never know that, I guess, but I suppose what I have to do with the bitterness is use it to cleanse my system and keep reminding myself that you wouldn’t want me to carry it. It serves me no purpose once it’s run it’s course.
I love you so much. I love you. I love you. I know why you thought you had to go, but you didn’t have to. But you did have to, I know. You just couldn’t see the way forward, I know, and what you could see just looked like more hardship, I know. I’m so sorry I didn’t do more to light the way. I’m sorry I didn’t say or do the right things or did say or do the wrong things. I’m sorry I didn’t spend every waking moment I had free just buggin’ the shit outta you. But I’m glad you got to rest. I’m glad you got to be happy. I’m glad you had the unconditional love of a woman, and of a family, and that you had a home with us before you left this plane. I know that you were happier with part of me than you’d have been not having any of me, and that all of most anybody else wouldn’t have been enough to make you give up the little I could offer. I know you took me just the way I am and you loved me completely. I only wish you’d stayed. I wish you’d come back. I wish you were here. Oh, how I wish you were here. (:))
I love you so much. What will I do without you? Baby, it’s almost killed me once already, losin’ you. (Thanks for thwarting that, by the way, muchly appreciated. :)) I’ll do my best not to let that happen again – I know you wouldn’t want it even if it meant we were together – but you know damn well not a day will go by that I don’t will you back into my existence, and you know how I am when I get my head and heart set on something so you might as well just get your ass together and get back here. Hey, we got your watch fixed. You can have it when ya get here. (I guess this is the bargaining phase, eh? :)) Or you can just let me haunt you until the day I die. I will. You know I will. :)
I gotta tell ya, babe, it was a spectacular way to go. Suited you perfectly in terms of the way you’d want to be remembered. I wish we hadn’t been arguing but I don’t know if you’d’ve done it otherwise and I know you wanted to or you wouldn’t have, argument or not. At least our last words were kind. I’m glad you didn’t have to be alone when you went, and I’m glad you chose me to be there. I think and I hope you know I understand, and as much as I wish your choice had been different I’ll never hold this against you. I could never really be angry with you. :)
I still love ya, honey, and I can still feel your fingers slidin’ down my face when you wanted to say you loved me without sayin’ anything. I still hear us reciting the Lord’s Prayer together that day because we couldn’t read the bookmark little Dude asked us to that was hanging under your window from where we were lying, and didn’t feel like moving to where we could so we winged it. (That bookmark reads, by the way, “May the Prince of Peace bring you the ‘Peace that passeth all Understanding’, and when your journey here is through may the King of Glory welcome you into his
Want you (want you)
Miss you (miss you)
Need you (need you)
Love you (love you {always})
madly,
truly,
deeply
Please come back if you can and you want to, and if you choose not to or find you can’t, please keep letting me know that you’re here anyway. I love you. I love you.
I love you RD, forever and ever, ’ey-man,
Peace
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