Before and After

Last Wednesday, Sept. 26, would have been Teddy's twenty-third birthday. We remembered it by writing him letters and interring them in the water. My mother's letter and mine went into the Gulf of Mexico off a rock pier near the Flagship Hotel where he caught a whopper of a bull red fish in January. The surf was wild, the tide high, slapping and splattering against the rocks. The letters disappeared within seconds of hitting the water.

To the left of the pier, two water-slicked brown-skinned boys clung to their surfboards, black hair shining. I felt visited by Teddy and his cousin Ted who taught him to surf. My sister dropped her letter into the quiet waters of Galveston Bay, early in the morning, off the boat ramp where Teddy and his cousin often came puttering in long after dark, water- and adventure-soaked. That evening I felt gratitude for being in a place where my son was always happy, from early childhood to his last visit here. I saw the full moon emerge from behind a bank of clouds, and was pierced by the sorrow of prisoners, unable to see such a night. I thought of the prisons we create for ourselves, rendering us unable to send or receive love.

Yesterday I dug into the mountain of papers I've avoided since arriving here nearly a month ago. Bills to pay, letters to write, official life to re-enter. My eyes froze on a typed to-do list, dated the week before Ted's death — July 25, July 26, July 27, etc. — and I realized that I have no sense of reality pre-dating July 29. I can rattle off the things I did in March, April and May, but I can't remember the flesh-and-blood person who did those things. The truth about grief like this is that life is divided into before and after, with  the stark pulse of reality located precisely in the middle, at the moment when everything changed.

I flew to Denver on Friday for the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association's annual meeting and a cocktail hour session of book signing. I sat beside a murder-mystery writer from Plano, Texas whose ninth mystery in a series crosses over into sci-fi: a woman's family is abducted by aliens, he told interested booksellers, "and turns out, they're not from Mexico but from another planet." When I explained to booksellers that my book was nonfiction, the story of a group of Colorado Springs boys who believed they were part of a secret paramilitary organization with international ties, and ended up murdering three people, they looked at me as if I was from another planet. I discovered that many people are more comfortable on the terrain of imagined murder than the cold, hard place I've visited in Simon Says.

Last night I opened all the windows in my treetop apartment and half-slept to the tune of wind chimes. This morning, shrieks of ravenous birds split the air and I looked up to see a row of chubby sparrows sitting on the storm blinds, peeking into my bedroom window. I remembered who and where I was and got up to face the here and now.

Comments

[suesun]

Even when you write about difficult things, you make them beautiful. That's a gift. I'll remember to come back and visit here often. Thanks for not completely leaving us stranded in the springs....

[Spydra]

You are the female Steinbeck, and I admire you so much.