Don't Cancel Nini

Last night my grandfather, Avelino De Jesus, father of
my father, passed away. My father, Antonio De Jesus,
passed away just 4 months ago.

And my love, Barry Jacobs, has been gone now a little
over two weeks. I have not seen his blue eyes smiling
upon me with love since August 30th.

There is nothing left to say, no words of condolence
which have not already been uttered.

Grief just needs silence. And these deaths have
shifted me to near-catatonia.

I ask myself where the pain comes from, where the
tears come from, why I grieve.

I grieve for my grandfather, but he has had over 80
years of life and was in the advanced stages of
Alzheimers. I grieve for our family who loves him.
But we have been preparing for many years to let him
pass on.

I grieve for my Papa, for all his bluster and
violence, he loved me as best he could, gave me what
he could, and in the end, left me a legacy of strength
and determination.

And I grieve for Barry, for the love we made, for the
hopes we never voiced out loud, for the tenderness and
compassion he embraced me with, for every unique
moment our lips pressed together.

Do we grieve for ourselves? For what is lost to us?
I watch the horizon and the breaking of the waves.
All is impermanence, death is only the horizon we
cannot see beyond with our eyes, and as Kate Chopin
wrote: "The voice of the sea is seductive; never
ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting
the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude;
to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation."

My small boat has been lost in tumult this year,
buffeted by huge waves. I'm a little adrift, no course
plotted, just floating.

I wish there were a song to sing the keening in my
heart.

Carmen