The Lost Summer (Two Lives Gone)

IHAVE BEEN REFLECTING ON MY LAST PIECE SINCE I POSTED IT - I HAVE NOW EXPANDED IT INTO MUCH MORE OF AN ESSAY - I HOPE IT MEETS WITH YOUR APPROVAL

My wife is knee deep in going through my mother in law's life in photographs, in letters, in scraps of paper saved in drawers and closets. This apartment now silent except for the hours each day my wife spends sifting through its contents.

From the day in late June my sister entered the hospital and remained there for almost four weeks, coming home only on the day she would pass, to her funeral the next week,  followed immediately by my mother in law's final decline and her death two weeks ago, this summer has treated my family with unrelenting harshness.

I now mourn the loss of this season, not its end. For I never felt its warmth on my face, never got sand between my toes, never sat beneath a starlit sky or experienced thunder and lightning race across my universe. For me, it has been a blur of hospital rooms and hospital beds, of speaking of what was and trying to avoid what is, of eulogies and memories of better days.

To each season there is an allure. But summer has always been most precious. Ever since the first days of the last day of school, summer has meant a freedom from certain burdens carried the rest of the year. A time to relax, to dream, to bask in the joy of moments suddenly unencumbered. Gentle smiles beckoning in ways they do not in harsher light.

And the absence of all of this is much more intense than I could have imagined. Each day smells differently. Tastes differently. Each block I walk looks not as it should. Each person I speak with, every interaction takes on a different meaning. I carry my sadness with me wherever I go and I am certain the world is aware.

As late June wandered into July and July became August, there were no transitions. No getting lost in the Boys of Summer as I have since my thoughts were first mostly fully formed. No wondering if the weather would welcome or rebuff my plans for the day. No road trips. No speculations. No contemplations. Nothing but wall to wall concern. A most unwelcoming groundhog day.

I know life goes on around me. The traffic jams to and fro. The river, the bridge, there each morning and every evening. But my world consists of nothing more than signing in, getting my badge, my permission to take the elevator to what awaits. My back reminding me that sitting too long will not sit well with me. Seeking quiet from an unrelenting, never ending storm. But knowing that quiet is the thing I most fear.

Two lives ended with me but a few steps away. Ended but a few weeks from each other. A few feet away from each other. A few heartbeats away from each other. A few yards away from where my family resides.  

There are seminal periods in each of our existences. Times when we believe we are in control of our environment. Others when, as it has recently been for me, it seems there is nothing we can do to alter the landscape. When no matter what we would wish, we are hurtling towards an inescapable, inevitable conclusion. It is a sense of helplessness, a feeling of being witness, in slow motion, to an unfolding disaster. And shutting one's eyes does not make it go away. It remains the only image we see in our desperation.

So it was with my sister's passing. The hospital an enemy I faced day after day. I could not plead with it for mercy. I could not ask it to consider any other possibility but the one it had already determined for the person it was holding against her will and the will of those who loved her. I could not break its grasp on my sister, not make it loosen its hold until it had taken its pound of flesh.

There are precious few whispers of summer remaining. Recently I came upon the first tree whose leaves were harbinger for what waits just over the horizon.

As fall beckons, it will bring its own beauty, its array of colors, its cooling breezes and cooler nights, a testament to its ability, to our ability, to adapt, to constantly be different than we were before. To recognize that change occurs, and brings with it endless, if different, possibilities. This season will soon be but memory. It is nature's method of explaining the human condition. I will recover. I am recovering.

I love summer and everything it means. But not one that has  delivered only sadness and loss. And a million photos stuffed in every nook and cranny of an apartment now without an occupant.