A Day Without Art

I can scarcely believe that today is the one month anniversary of Larry's passing.  Later on I will be taking down the purple fabric that I had draped across all of my art work the day Larry died.  The act of draping my art has been a mourning ritual that I have engaged in for nearly thirty years.  The origins of it are not familial but one that was started by the gay artist group Visual AIDS in Nineteen Eighty-Nine.  I had many gay friends who were artists at that time.  I met most of them during my college days, others I met in the neighborhood.  The Day Without Art project was created as a mourning ritual to honor those artists who had passed from AIDS.  Soon after it was expanded to also honor those artists who were living with the virus.  I began covering my art in honor of my artist friends who died.  As time went on it morphed into a way for me to honor those of my immediate family who had passed from this earth.  Sitting here as I write I can hardly believe that today is the day when I be uncovering my art.  I am thankful that the deep and grievous weeping has for the most part stopped.  The pain has not.  If anything it has deepened the further away from Larry I am.  When his dementia diagnosis came in some months ago I knew my time with him would be finite and I did wonder what my life would be like without him.  I thought about what it would be like not seeing his nesting spot on the bed, his fort in the living room, him not curled up sleeping on the perch in the closet.  What it would be like not to cuddle with him on the floor.  I guess in some ways I was naive about the relative nature of my post Larry life.  Maybe it was because I thought I had more time with him, that I could ease into my grief the way I did with Crook before he died.  Maybe it was because I didn't want to let myself go to "that" place again.  The one where I always go when someone I love more than life itself dies.  Sitting here as I write I'm also not surprised that I have been reluctant to work on my trilogy for some of the same reasons.  Jack has just lost his partner Patrick and is reeling within his grief at the sudden and tragic nature of his lover's death.  Last year I did try writing his truth but I found that I had just glazed over the surface.  I think it amounted to all of about three paragraphs.  Down deep though I knew that at the time I would one day return and walk beside him as we both navigated the depths of his grief, the depths of which I already find myself in.  What do they say about storytelling, write about what you know?
Two years ago I asked a writer friend of mine to do a manuscript read for me.  He had extensive training in the field encompassing both teaching and writing and I valued his input.  He was one of a few that I had asked for guidance.  After he had finished his critique we met for coffee at a cafe in the lower Haight.  The first thing he said when he walked in was, "I can't help but call you Jack.".   I suppose there's a lot of Jack in me and vice versa.  This is why I have been reluctant to bear witness to his grief.  I know that what is his pain will be mine and mine, his.
Writing can be cathartic; however, in the past few days I have been struggling with how one shares his innermost grief, the grief that only he and God bear witness to?  That was one of the beautiful parts of my life with Larry.  He bore witness to the laughter, the joy, the contentment, and the pain.  He was there for the deep sadness, the grievous weeping after Silvia, my dad, and Crook died; he was there for it all.  All the while being present in his body in the way only animal companions can be.  There's something to be said about the unvarnished ability to be free of ones baggage, to be in that perpetual state of grace that animal companions can be when their lives have been untouched by personal trauma.
Lately, I have again been questioning everything about my life.  How did I come to be where I find myself.  Why has life happened in the way it did.  Why seemingly insignificant decisions can grow into life shattering moments later on.  How the effects of trauma talking to trauma can make my life so unmanageable, information that I have readily shared with a few of my sponsees.  Many years ago I had made a conscious decision not to share the totality of my trauma history with many of my close friends. Only a chosen few know.  I made that decision knowing that my history is not for the faint of heart.  My childhood trauma was deeply insane at the best of times, and at it's worst, unimaginable.  To carry that reality in my conscious memory has been challenging.  Carrying it along with my grief......   I'll be frank in this moment about something that only my sponsor knows.  During the first week after Larry's death I thought about suicide.  I guess I'm much like my mother in that way.  After my eldest sibling Muriel passed away at five years old my mother ingested rat poison.  When that did not work she fled across several state lines to her oldest sister in Topeka refusing to come back.  After three weeks of pleading my father had to drive many hundreds of miles to get her and drag her back because she still had my one and half year old brother to care for.  My sponsor calls my thoughts of suicide trauma talking to trauma.  Nothing like having my own words reflected back.  I suppose in reality it is trauma talking to trauma.  The trauma of my multiple layers of deep grief speaking to and with the deep shame of my childhood history.  A lethal combination if there ever was one.  I told him laughingly but also seriously that at least I'm not drinking, drugging, or fucking my way out of myself.  Not that I haven't thought about it.  I have.  Thankfully the diversion from my grief has taken a decidedly more productive avenue of late as I have been doing the repair work around the house that needs to be done.  A much better way of coping wouldn't you say?
I have come to understand that grieving can be such a treacherous journey for me.  And I do my best to bear witness to the authenticity of my journey while taking ownership of it and the emotions that it entails but it can be such a convoluted mess at times.  I guess that is what grief is at its core.  Messy, convoluted, weepy, and full of unexpected emotional sink holes.