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Cycles (II) , 2020 by Sean Mundy
The first time I remember trying to tell this story, I was in highschool. My father was already dead, so it must have been highschool. I’d say freshman or sophmore year. I’d had Ms (pronounced Misses) Casler that year. She taught us the scarlet letter so it must have been the second year of highschool. I distinctly remember she taught us the scarlet letter because I remember her telling the class that she had never read the book. She had so little respect for the book that she didn’t even read it. She literally told us to read the spark notes. Honestly that made me want to read the book even more.
Anyways I am getting distracted. I was telling you about this story I wrote for the first time back then. What I had realized, this must have been a few, maybe 3, years after my Dad’s death, Is that I would never recover. I realized that some kinds of wounds leave permanent scars.
Actually, honestly, I think to tell you what I mean I need to go back even further than that. Back to the first time I noticed. My sister had childhood brain cancer. I don’t remember how old I was, whatever age I was barely able to form memories. This lesson is rooted so far down in my brain stem, I’d bet even my motor cortex learned this. When I say I feel this in my bones, I mean it. She had brain cancer, and my family had a daughter that had brain cancer. Her life was permanently changed, she will never live a normal life. She never healed fully back to the person she would have been, and neither did we.
When I was in highschool I tried to write down this lesson. All at once I realized that nothing was ever going to be the same again. I was never going to be a kid with a father. My mom was never going to be a mom with two healthy kids and a husband. My sister was never going to be a kid who didn’t survive cancer. My dad was never going to be a dad again. Things never go back to the way they were.
Honestly for years now I forgot about this old story, this old scar. I’ve been living my life around the awareness for so long, I totally forgot I had it in the first place. I have gotten over hard things. I can do it again.
What found the story again for me was reading this essay by Bess Stillman titled “the year I didn’t survive”. This essay is proof that I am finding it hard to contain how much I appreciate Bess for sharing this story. How good it feels to find my story again.
If you haven’t read her piece I command you go read it before I spoil anything else about it.
Making it happen feels Sisyphean. The simplest tasks, which barely required a second thought when Jake was alive now feel insurmountable, if I can even remember what it was I meant to complete. I’m becoming an unlikely Zen master. Grief demands my brain sit in the pain of right now.
Her piece tells the story of the year after, her 40th year. The quiet “Sisyphean” process of re-building a life from what’s left in the ashes. Of friends who absent mindedly say the cruelest things when they tell me I seem “like myself”. Of how her cells literally contain the DNA of both her newborn daughter, and her late husband.
This made me wonder if my brain still contains some of yours. In all of the thick wonderful time we spent together I became a pretty good mind-reader. With just a glance I could read your mind. Just from the way the air felt around you. When we were together our individual selves stopped having such clear borders. The blurry lines allowed us to slip just a bit into each other. To find a place to store some of our pain. For a little while we found someone to help carry some of our burdens. I think that maybe when you left, maybe I kept some of you, and you kept some of me. Reading Bess’ piece made me realize that this too was a wound that would leave a permanent scar. There’s no going back now.
Time keeps dragging me forward, whether I can see ahead or not. And in the darkest hours, of which there are many, I try to remind myself that I didn’t know what happiness looked like before I had it the first time, either.
So what is there to do now but the quiet work. Just like Bess time keeps dragging me forward. My heart still beats. Just because I’ve seen the top of one mountain, doesn’t mean I won’t see it again.
And of course I’ll love you forever, whoever you are.