The Bridge is Love

The last time that we spoke, we sat in a cafe and talked about his plans for the future.  School, job,  his depression.  It was a conversation that we'd had several times before.  All of us had goals that we struggle with, the unending pressure to reach the ideal image of ourselves at some point in our lives.  He had been fighting an uphill battle to reach his goals for a long time.    

We finished our meal, shared a hug, and left for home in Albuquerque. A few days later he threw himself off of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge near Taos, New Mexico.  

Grief is such a mysterious emotion to me.  What is the evolutionary purpose of desiring something it's not possible to have back?  And yet, we're all fated to feel that emptiness, where memory is a dagger, dealing pain, one slow slice at a time. 

I've done what I could to cope.  I've honored his memory through ritual, through sharing with others, planting a Japanese Maple, years of therapy, and yet still... 

One morning I woke up, and he was in the kitchen, cooking, as if nothing had happened.  I ran up to him, tears in my eyes, hugged him, welcomed him back from his trip, and we talked about life, philosophy, the latest books he'd been reading.  Then I woke up, and realizing it was a dream, uncontrollably sobbed in the arms of my lover.  

I miss him. Especially this time of year, around the anniversary of his death, and around our shared birthdays. He's getting harder to remember now.  His touch, his smell, are stronger than the visual memory I have of him.  It's hard to remember his voice.  I miss the feeling, curled up next to him.  

My old housemate and I talked about him. I asked how he copes with it.  He said that he believes that he lives on in us, in the gift of the time that we had with him.  He changed us.  We changed him, making a mark in that chapter of our shared experience, even if, ultimately, it wasn't enough to change the end of his story. 

In 2016, five years after his death, I drove out to the gorge.  It wasn't my original intention to be there on the anniversary day, but that's how it landed.  He would have appreciated the synchronicity of it. 

On the high plateau, you could see long fields of scrub extending eastward to white capped mountains in the distance.  Cutting through the plateau was a river, which after years, had slowly worn away the ground beneath and created the gorge deep below.  Across the chasm was a bridge, and before the bridge was a lonely car park.  My intent was to honor him, leave a wooden rose out on the span, say a few words.  As I walked out, I thought I felt him then. 

I taped the rose to a strut in the center of the bridge.  I found that didn't really have words.  I still don't now.  There's just the loss, the chasm, the long drop away to the ribbon of water below.  I thought of him then.  I closed my eyes.  When I opened them, snow was falling, a gentle, windless dusting, all around me.

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." 

- Thornton Wilder  

Andy.

I found out Andy died this morning.

This Saturday morning I got up a little after sunrise to head into the hospital for an appointment.  I walked out the front door and two men with hauler trucks had just driven into his driveway.  I did a double take.  Asked them why they were there.  My suspicious is not unfounded:  There have been a rash of house break-ins lately, our own house was broken into, and Andy's door doesn't lock well so it's usually open.  It's an easy target. 

The older of the two men said that the occupant had died.  This shocked me a bit.  Hadn't I just seen him?  Definitely in September.  No, they said, he'd died a long time ago.  They were told to grab a few things like pictures and send them to the family out east.  Everything else was getting hauled away, presumably to the dump.

The last time I saw him, Vlad and I had just left the house and he was in shuttle with two workers. We helped them break into his house actually, because the gate had been locked.  He didn't seem to recognize us or hear us very well, and he looked really different.. emaciated.

So Saturday, I sat outside my house, watching the two men figure out the parking situation.  Tried to text Vlad and his girlfriend.  Went back into the house and woke them up.  Confirmed that yes, Andy had died a few weeks ago, Vlad hadn't had a chance to tell me.  I was furious.  Left the house and slammed the door (in true, Deane style).

Grabbed the steering wheel.  Couldn't think of music to play.  What could encompass my grief and frustration right now? 

Loneliness kills.  Over the past two years, this little data point keeps floating up to the surface of my consciousness repeatedly.  Loneliness kills.  We are three times as likely to die from complications resulting from emotional isolation than we are from cancer alone, heart disease alone, cigarettes alone.

Andy was a smoker.  Honestly, Andy was pretty bizarre.  A loner, even when his partner (lover, wife? I never knew) lived with him.  He wandered around the neighborhood in a tattered bathrobe that looked like it never knew the inside of a washer.  Frequently, spittle would fleck the sides of his unshaven face as he talked with you.  Taller than me, he kind of loomed over you,  his balding hair sticking out of the sides of his head, wearing glasses, cigarette dangling loosely from a finger.  The avatar of the crazy next door neighbor

Most of my interactions with Andy revolve around sharing a wall.  All that smoking lead to a massive amount of coughing, and we heard it throughout the house.  He also had a habit of letting the television run 24-7, and you could hear the ambient noise (but never the actual words) of whatever show was playing in the background.

That wall.  My schedule over the years has been erratic.  I'm up late, up early, and the sounds behind the wall effect how well I can sleep.  The coughing didn't bother me.  But the crying...  Andy had a habit of crying out in his sleep, frequently.  I know he served in the military, but I never asked him about it.  To be fair, I've never reached out much to my neighbor on the other side of my house, it's not Andy in particular.  We just never had a lot in common.

Around the time his wife died, he asked me for help putting a computer together and trying to get his printer to work. He was working on a sort of collage, an orgy of nudes that he'd pulled from clippings.  I showed him how to create his own email account, gave him a brief description about how google search worked, turned off the safe search function (he wanted to look up porn) and tried to advise him on how to find friends and family through the internet.  I wasn't able to hook up that printer though.

Years back, before I ever moved to SF, my experience with MMO's inspired me to say that the internet as a social tool would have a huge effect on people's lives.  I was right then.  I look at my family members and see them reaching out to each other, their friends, connecting.  My mother has hundreds of connections through Facebook that share her interests in cats and bone cancer, and is constantly chatting w people all over the world.

Andy didn't know how to Google Search.  He was from a different era, and one with a different expectation of men as well.   In the end, his interactions were mostly with health services.  Strangers, mostly, who didn't know him.

He died with no friends, and no family nearby, in his house by the ocean.  I think this is what strikes me to the core.  That loneliness.  His awkwardness in reaching out, juxtaposed with his obvious desire to do so.

The house behind the wall will be silent now, at least for a while

The song I put on?  Carry On.