Messages for Hanna

When my brother died, I withdrew from everyone for a bit, took relief in being sent to Iraq a few months later, as it allowed me to avoid facing the grief. I’d done the same with my mom who passed decades earlier. It doesn’t work, of course. The hurt just tags along, like an old injury, and for a really long time I thought that was a bad thing. I read a line recently somewhere saying, “grief is love that doesn’t have anywhere to go”, and I guess that’s about as good as I have ever felt about this, because I could never find any of the romantic wisdoms that I hear pain ought deliver, nor any other benefit in losing good people from my life permanently. It’s just less enjoyable to be alive without them. We all want to comfort the people we love, and I love you, without ever having met you, because you have given me a small piece of myself that I was looking for through your suffering. I know from much experience that I have no skill for easing suffering in others, just a knack for suffering with them, and every time I have had such a privilege, the collision has gifted me another piece, and I am one step closer to possessing that grace to love the world without me in it, a kind of love that may finally take my fear. There are no wisdoms I can offer, even recycled, for folks who are suffering, just lots of love with no place to go. I am a collector of this love now. I have stacked it, kept it like a garden. I paint shit paintings and write bad poetry and cry ugly cries, and it all goes in the garden to be tended, as love should always be. I’m surrounded by it, so I’m surrounded by them, the folks I’m grieving. This is such a gift. Words are empty, but I hope you can feel me leaning in, loving your pain too. I hope against hope you are going to a place I may some day go, so we can hug and share stories about the collisions we are made of. You knew some of the most beautiful people.