Dispatch #1

The Thick Residue of Loss

The other night I dreamed I was at the house of a man I was newly dating when he suddenly turned on me. Earlier in the day, I’d handed him my spare set of keys when he’d kindly offered to go retrieve something important and forgotten. When I fled, I reached safety before I remembered he still had them. I went back to face him, demanded the keys. Someone helped me escape, but I don’t remember who.

On another recent night, I dreamed that I was back on my old college campus. I had some business to attend to, and afterward, it was dark, and I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my car. It felt too unsafe to walk alone, so someone drove me round and round. Someone helped me search, but I don’t remember who.

These days, help sometimes comes from faceless sources.

I miss my dad the most when my anxiety has reached a fretful crescendo or when I’m in the throes of a major life decision. He always knew, respectively, how to talk me off the ledge or how to talk me into making the jump. I used to think both messages were essentially the same: don’t be afraid. But really, it’s something altogether different: whatever happens, you can handle it.

After two years of loss — of my marriage, then of my father, then of my dear friend and mentor — I’ve spent a lot of time at the ledge. Here’s the thing: loss has had a cumulative effect. Everything I handle is thick with its residue.

I spend my days with ghosts. I go back for what I’ve left, trying to evade the next blow. I drive round and round, trying to find what I’ve lost.

Loss has a way of discomfiting by proxy. I’ve watched others squirm as they reckon with their own vulnerability. These are the ones who have tried to contort my resilience into a clean and linear narrative hurtling toward being okay now.

I’ve come to think resilience is just the ability to write whatever happens into your narrative. For a long time to come, mine will be thick with the residue of loss; it will circle back to grief.

That’s also how it goes on.