Category Archives: Marine Corps

The Year of Firsts

 

This was when my grieving began, following the Marines and Dad's caisson. Author's watercolor/pen and ink drawing
Author’s watercolor of Marines following the caisson

 

I read somewhere that in Celtic tradition grieving lasts a year and a day because you have to get through the first birthday, holiday, season without someone.

Even though Dad died several months ago it wasn’t until his services at Arlington a few weeks ago that I felt like my year had begun.

My brother and I had decided that Dad’s services would be for immediate family and they were so calm and peaceful.

Perfect, and perfectly sad. 

I am glad he is home with his Marines and when we flew out of DC over Arlington I could see his grave.

Back home I expected random memories and tears. I did not expect feeling so…antsy.

Unable to settle, doing things in bits and spurts; intensely or not at all.

Disjointed.

Sporadic.

Rough, and not just around the edges. 

I understand the attraction of drinking oneself into sweet oblivion. 

A distant half-cousin sent rude texts castigating me for not inviting him to the service and with that brief exchange all the parts of why I never quite trusted him tetrised themselves into place. 

The nice-guy facade crashed to his feet and now I understand why his wife and daughters always seemed so…stifled.

He’s a jerk. 

He does not get to talk to me that way. Deleted and blocked, without regrets.

Nothing like a death in the family to bring out peoples’ true colors. 

People who know grief

I looked at a piece on Medium by an essayist who had lost her daughter. She wrote that poetry was the only reading she could manage after her death.

Sharp, clear, no-frills words were all she could tolerate after a lifetime of being an avid reader. Genres she had enjoyed before became trite in the face of her loss; fluff that had no place in her new world.

I would link her piece here but in my haphazard state I have misplaced it. Eventually I will find her again and share her work.

What is saving me now

Playing music has emerged as welcome respite and I am grateful that I have opportunities to make music with other people. Alone and yet not, feeling the tunes and being enveloped by the rhythms and words.

Art for art’s sake is a close second and watercolor in particular, without plan, is comforting.

We are still having windy cold weather but I get outside when possible; movement grounds me and fresh air is a saving grace. I find meditation and stillness too claustrophobic.

Lucky enough

It’s been an interesting few years and I am grateful to be where I am now. Loving makes grief inevitable, and I count myself fortunate to have had this relationship.

Eventually I think the edges of the hole in my heart will become less jagged.

We will see what a year and a day brings.

 

Connie Scott Productions