“Thank you for trying to teach me to live boldly”

So it happened. I finished it last night and it is a bittersweet ending. For anyone who is not familiar with the book City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, I strongly recommend this book. I cannot say that I am an expert on the author. In fact, what I know I learned through my time with the alchemist, but she is a tremendous writer, truth seeker, researcher, and novelist. My ignorance about Liz is that until I laid my hand on this book, I didn’t realize she wrote novels. She is a tremendous novelist and more importantly you can feel her essence in her writing. Her carefree thinking, her free spirit, her tenacity for truth seeking, and authenticity.

I have a confession to make, this book became my possession on June 25th, 2020. I picked it up for the first time almost a year later and it took me till last night to finish it. The significance of that is tremendous. A lot has happened in the last year. So much other reading was "necessary" that reading for pleasure was not a priority. I wonder if that approach was part of the problem. Within this book there are so many life lessons that anyone could learn from. I sure did. Last night, when I placed that book back on the shelf, slightly tattered and used, I realized that this book took on so much more meaning then I realized not for what the book contained in terms of life lessons, history, and entertainment but rather the intimacy about my relationship with the book and what it represented to me. And maybe it wasn’t even about some cosmic significance for me as much as I knew what it represented to her.

When someone or something dies, we spend so much time seeking meaning. Looking at the meaning behind why something happened either to justify it or to explain it. We seek meaning in things as a way to bypass the pain. We spend so much time asking why and looking at all the variables that led to an event in an effort to avoid feeling the pain associated with the loss. If we can explain it away, create a narrative about the experience that makes us feel better, absolve ourselves of accountability, we can avoid the most difficult parts of loss, the actual feelings. What we fail to acknowledge is that to heal, you need to feel every ounce of the pain. If you don’t feel it, you can’t heal it. What I have learned recently is that you don’t find meaning in the “death” real or perceived, it is what you do after that matters.

Everyone grieves differently. Some move on quickly, seek another for comfort, engage in hobbies that are enjoyable, travel, write. Some people cope by using unhealthy behaviors as a way to numb the pain, in reality healthier coping strategies are better than the others in terms of outcome but in reality, who am I to judge anyone on how they choose to cope with their loss. For me, I have chosen writing, reflection, solitude and in some ways memorializing. The ending of this great literary work to me is much more significant than whether the author will ever write again or not. It is an acknowledgement that the journey I took with this book would have been so much different if I had made different choices. I will forever acknowledge that my choices led to the outcome I am living in. That rather than living a certain life, I am memorializing an experience. But that is how I am grieving, and I will not shame myself for that.

It’s the small things that count, I think. Regardless of the outcome it is the small things I do to maintain a connection to something that matters to me, is how I cope, deal, get through this difficult time. For me it’s a million little things, City of Girls, deep introspection, writing this blog, buying books that I may never get to read, all of it are little things that for me have a much more significant purpose. The purpose is to maintain a connection to something that was so important to me. And even with these little things, there are times when the loss is too much to bare and the memories bring me to my knees. And then I spiral, seeking anything to confirm that what I knew to be true was true. I know it was true for me. I don’t need proof, of that. I have thousands of words to validate that those feelings did exist. Feelings, love, they don’t prevent death it only makes it harder to heal afterwards.

There are days that I don’t feel like I’m healing. I feel like I am still struggling and while most days I am ok with the pace at which I am moving, there are days like Wednesday’s where I wish there was something, anything I could do that would be authentic to my journey that could erase the pain that I feel on Wednesday. I know that sounds like a desire to numb and in many ways that is what I wish that I could do but we all know the only way out is through so I remain here for however long I need. Someone asked me yesterday what the significance of the day is and outside of hump day it shouldn’t hold so much meaning, but it does for so many reasons. I wake up on Wednesday with the warm embrace of my children surrounding me and when I get home at the end of the night, it is a stark reminder of the loss, of the unexecuted plans, of the tremendous solitude. I am alone with myself and while that is no longer scary it is not what I had imagined this leg of my journey would entail. But it is my reality and my truth, and I am living authentically to that. It is all I can do to get through to the next moment. That IS how I am living life right now.

Some may think I am foolish for the way that I have chosen to grieve. That rather than work towards erasing the moments, the experiences, the feelings that I am doing everything I can to keep them alive. And quite frankly, I don’t care. My feelings, my experiences, my grief are mine and if I grieve a lifetime then that is my choice. The grief will change and evolve overtime, perhaps get easier but it will never not exist, and neither will she. The memories, the words, everything that happened will forever be a part of who I was, who I am as a result, and who I will become. The meaning is found in the person and the moments you shared with them, being grateful for the time you had, not in the aftermath of the loss.

I don’t normally read the acknowledgments at the end of a book, but I did last night, and I am glad that I did. Liz left a beautiful tribute to her lover, partner, and friend Rayya Elias, “I know how badly you wanted to be here at my side while I wrote this novel. All I can tell you, baby, is that you were. You are never not at my side. You are my heart. I will always love you.” Time heals but the memories we create with people never die. Grief truly compels us to review, recap, rehearse the experience whether it was pure bliss or a beautiful disaster. That is how we keep the memory alive. That is how we get through the difficulty, that is how we survive. The permanence of death is one we can only work through and learn how to adapt to. The loss of someone or something still living, and breathing is an adjustment that with it carries a tremendous pain and wonder. The wonder of what was, what could have been, and what actually is.