A FINE YELLOW DUST

It began with the simplest of questions. “Do you have children ?”

The first time I was asked this question after her death I took pause and carefully constructed my response with intent and consideration. Yes. I have three. Have. I have three. There is no past tense when they reside in your heart. I further explain in order from oldest to youngest adding my middle passed away. I still have all three.

He and I, two strangers, had come together on a call because of writing and thought they were to talk about book comps, book development, how to write well, how to write unwell. He was placed in community to help with my writing journey and, as community does, share. Both he an I had no idea that the meeting had very little to do with books, or our thoughts to page. Instead, divine intervention.

When he asked me this common casual question I gave my common rehearsed answer. He paused when I said she passed and I could hear his tone become soft. With breaks in his breath he apologized and then he shook me as he told me a parallel story that I have lived for 3 long years. His son too died, his middle child, in a car accident. As he sang his own sorrowful song I sat in silence as though his lyrics were written by me. He knew nothing about my life as I listened. Our songs were the same. Matching dates and details. Matching timelines and fears. Matching suffering and matching healing.

Nothing about grief has been low bearing fruit. Nothing has come without struggle or complexity for me. I have wained and waxed my way out of relationships, I have accounted for reciprocal care and concern as though my life has depended upon it, because it has. As loss stacked and people left and I left people it was safe to say there were moments that I understood I would privately grieve for the remainder of my days. Fortunately for those left in my life, it’s not an experience they’ve had the disadvantage of having. Here I was, a common question away from looking into the mirror of linear experience.

Surely, this couldn’t be real.

As though I had wandered an apocalyptic world and three years later saw a human, I froze. My nervous system protected my hopes and my hopelessness in unison. My experiences rose to the surface of my throat as he told me of his time in the hospital, his life with him, his life without him. I hung on every word and every similarity and repeated the same story back in my own shoes. The coming together was a soft landing of traumatic events and once we realized we are both humans in the same experience we stopped, us both in tears, to let it all find its way in. There wasn’t much left to say as we had said it all, and said things others couldn’t, and shouldn’t have to. We hung up the phone.

As I sat in my apartment the following days I replayed the tape of us over and over in my mind to ensure it’s validity. My thoughts rested on so many questions. Does he wake in the blue light of the morning like I do and make his morning coffee and sit and talk to him in his head? Does he see his favourite thing and sit with the pinch of his heart, then smile, then cry, and say out loud, 'I miss you so much'? Does he replay in his mind the day he was born and fell hopelessly in love with him, and feel so loved and grateful…like I do? Does his changed life flow through the same peaks and valleys, storms, and sunshine that mine do? And the biggest question of all….does this mean I’m not alone in this? Does this mean there is understanding? In my early days of seeking understanding I had gone to a parental bereavement group to find the eyes of a parent who felt what I felt. Instead, I found a lot of anger and hopelessness. While it has it's place, and has it's honour, that is never how I have felt along this path. I have had an insatiable need to dive into the heart of my pain and love it. I left the group not long after and returned to the reconciliation that this was going to be a solo mission. I told myself that now that I have had the time to write revisions on my life, it was time to let people in. It was time to open the doors with my knowing of what I want and what I don't. The universe was delivering. While the solo mission wasn't entirely over, there was hope on the horizon.

When we reconvened we had both had time to shake off the initial impact and our trajectory was books. He arrived at the coffee shop and we found a corner table. Once settled, silence ensued and we sat. Two writers, speechless. He had brought me some comps to share and put them on the table. As he explained one was written by a friend, he handed me the second, and my eyes instantly flooded with warm tears. The book was titled, "A FINE YELLOW DUST". I was instantly cast back into the part of me that couldn't comprehend what was happening. Her colour was yellow. I explained as much as I could through my disbelief. Her life. Her life was yellow. I opened the book and landed on a poem about cremation and my thoughts watched the tattoo on her skin that read "yellow" become a fine yellow dust. We couldn't talk about pleasantries, books or dailies. We are interconnected by death. We seemed to just want to sit with the understanding. So we did. In every particle of my grief, I was safe and so was he. Human to human.

In the gratitude of this all, if one of us is to fade back into the baron apocalyptic backdrop of grief in which we found one another, and we are to share and pass, I am left with the lightness of knowing I am not the only one. If not, I have a friend and ally. Both, beautiful.

This is my reason for writing. This is my reason to put thought to page. My purpose.

To blanket all the pain in a fine yellow dust, from human to human.

With Metta,

L.