Wonky but Intact

It’s now about 7:30 a.m. We have to tell Ariana, my youngest daughter in her first semester at college over 800 miles from where we are, that her father is dead.

She has to see the body because she won’t believe it otherwise. I don’t, and I was there.  But she doesn’t answer her phone. Of course, it’s 6:30 on a Saturday morning in her dorm’s time zone, so no one’s going to be awake.

It’s at this point that I realize how relative our consciousness of time is and how wonky my thinking has become. “I have some time,” I think. “Maybe I can just drive down and tap on her window, too. It’s only a fourteen-hour drive.” And I’m gonna do this in an hour of chronological time.

“I’ll check the airlines to book her on a flight out as soon as possible,” Barbara says.

Something has shifted. My daughter of 21 is taking care of me, not me her. And for once I let her. I’ll catch her later; she can catch me now. Thus the dance of grief goes on.

Finally, we have to call. I dial Ariana's cell phone. No answer, but sometimes I think she deliberately ignores my calls. So Barbara tries. Still no answer. We try a few more times, but then realize time is growing short. She doesn’t know it yet, but she has a plane to catch.

Why does it feel like I’m trying to swim through molasses? My brain feels like cotton is muffling its quick responses, and my body is slow and heavy. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to tell her. I just want Barbara and I to know. We can keep this a secret between us and just go on about our lives. If we tell others, it will become real. Somehow, the more we tell, the more real it will be, and I don’t want this to be real.

Finally I have what I’m trying to figure out: “We’ll call campus security to go to her dorm room and wake her and her roommate up. We’ll ask them not to tell her, just ask her to call home.” It’s important that her roommate be awakened, too, we decide, because she and Ariana have become good friends, and you can’t hear news like this alone.

We have to find the number for campus security. The familiarity of Googling is oddly comforting, an assurance that I’m still a capable person somehow. Or even a person. Somewhere I think I thought I would just naturally fly apart without my husband, but I haven’t. I’m still intact.

Intact. Like a male who hasn’t been neutered?  I'm still potent, powerful.  Odd thoughts like this are now common in my head. I can understand how personalities split, for I am quite aware of various tracks of thoughts moving through me simultaneously. One part of me, the Majordomo, is on auto-pilot doing what needs to be done calmly, methodically, precisely. Another part of me is having random bizarre thoughts, some of which are downright hilarious as though I'm in a sit-com or something.  I find myself saying inappropriately comedic things at times that crack Barbara up, and she, too, is experiencing the same dark humor.  All this while there's another part of me continually praying and reciting scripture.   I'm afraid that if anyone knew this about me that they'd heavily sedate me.

Another part of me, though, the lost little girl, is wandering above it all, looking for my husband, Bill, because he’s the one who always helps me through. But I can’t find him . . . anywhere. This part of me is in a panic, and, as always, this part of me is just ignored even though I’m aware the panic is never far from me.

Altogether, though, I continue to exist in liminal space in a swirl of rather disconnected thoughts, but not feeling . . . anything. Which is a blessing.