I've Looked at Life From Both Sides Now

"Great, how are you?"

How easily those words trickle out in an automated response to the tens or hundreds of people who I cross paths with daily and who utter the simple question:

"How are you?"

"Happy Monday, how are you?"

"How was your weekend?"

Good, yours?

Except inside there is something clawing to get out that screams in a pitch that obviously cannot be heard,

"THIS IS HELL AND IT WAS HELL AND IT ALL WAS, ACTUALLY, FUCKING HELL."

I tone down the profanities and say,

"Dandy sure, how was yours?"

But yet, with every inquiry, every innocent, blase question asked more of obligation than actual interest, the response remains the same:

"Oh you know, the usual. You?"

Nobody in this club really ever responds with honesty.

Unless we are talking to the other figuratively and eternally black-shrouded members of the club who all try to carry on our daily lives as to not inconvenience anyone with our grief.

"What did you do this weekend?" is met with, "Oh, watched a movie, relaxed," instead of, "Wailed on the floor when it hit me that he would not be coming through the door after soccer practice and we wouldn't order sushi because we were both too tired to cook while also saying we should probably budget better and eat less takeout."

That's not been happening - kudos to Doordash.

Nobody replies with that.

Unless you're talking to your Soulless Sisters.

I sometimes blame the medications for how mechanical I have been.

Other times I blame dissociation and how I throw myself into work to try and keep my brain so busy that it does not have time to break down.

If something keeps moving at an unnecessary speed it will take longer for it to stop.

To Crash.

Just keep going.

Fuel it with Zoloft and see if it will run until it physically cannot anymore and just...

Stops.

Things moved so flawlessly with us.

A perfectly functioning machine; a beautiful tragedy in the end, really.

I have seen both sides of it all.

Black and white.

Never in the middle.

I think most of my life has always been that way.

16 weeks and one day.

Those are 16 weeks and one day more than I thought I could survive without you.

I do not know how the body and mind do but they have.

Busybusybusy until it breaks down.

I have been told by one of my Soulless Sisters that my break is coming, it just has not come yet.

But there have been many times I have thought I would break.

But yet I have not.

So I keep moving and going and breathing and existing.

How is tonight?

"Great. How is yours?"

Comfortably Numb

16 weeks.

16 weeks without you, without your smile, your laugh, your goodnight kisses, your "hi there" when you would call or come in the door.

16 weeks since I stepped into that house knowing it was my first time stepping in without you and that when I had left it was the last time I would see you.

That sidewalk outside of the airport.

Kisses.

"See you soon. I love you."

Paris-bound.

Not knowing how the last time really is the last time but we cannot have a concept of that when living in the now, can we?

We should have been getting back from Golden Sands this week.

Packing the bikes on the back of the car and laughing our whole way with Colton as he told us, "There are no rules in Marystown!"

5 nights in that small, stuffy cabin but there was nothing else on this earth more perfect than waking up there and heading to the beach with you both and spending the day in the sun and the water with wonderful, fun people.

I'm on autopilot now.

Work is insanely busy.

Stanley is here.

This house.

I joked to a friend that I feel like Noah from "The Notebook" with my plans for this house, stripping it and painting, rebuilding, buying artwork, making it ours in the hope you would come back like Noah did for Allie.

But you can't come back.

You said we needed to rid ourselves of the old artwork because it had been yours without me and now it was time to buy new, our artwork for our house.

Yet I still have it all.

Remnants of Christmas paper still taped to the back of the aluminum artwork that hung in the living room from when we wrapped it like a present, with a shiny silver bow, to decorate for Colton.

You had said you had never really loved Christmas.

But you did now and wanted to make it special.

Every Christmas with you was special and I dread the first one without you.

Our Christmas tree with ornaments from Fogo and Jamaica but the Eiffel Tower one from Paris will never make it there because it is sitting on your grave.

I dread everything without you.

Stef and Ryan are home and we should be heading out to stay with mom and dad as mom recovers from surgery, you helping dad fix the bird houses and yard, meeting Ryan and Stef for the first time like he had planned.

But I'll go alone now.

Well, not alone - Stanley is coming.

Your mom looked at my tattoos this week and said, "Don't put him all over you."

But you ARE all over me.

You are all over me without ink, without hours in that studio.

You are all over me and all through me, in every day and second, in everything I do.

Medicated autopilot.

I feel like someone standing outside my body, looking at this shell and propelling it forward to do tasks I have to do.

I forget what okay feels like and I forget what happiness feels like.

Now I just am.

When two RNC cruisers parked outside my yard last night I went back to those long hours waiting for one to show up and how it felt when it did, the sergeant coming through the door and the way her face dropped as she sat at the table, our table.

"Is he gone?"

She did not speak but her eyes - her eyes told me and us that you were.

And that was a hell nothing in this world could have prepared me for.

16 weeks.

Medications, broken sleep, paint colours and new appliances.

And you should be here.

Sometimes I go to my car and I scream as loud as I can and I scream about how unfair all of this is and how beautiful you were.

And then most times I sit and exist.

Blankly.

I wonder where I should put your Andy Worhol banana that sat so lovingly in the corner of the kitchen counter.

I wonder where I'll put our Sailor Danny prints you mistakenly ordered on paper instead of canvas and told me I was never allowed to let you order important things ever again.

I wonder where I'll put our "Brad & Dwan, Jamaica 2022" carving you asked me to pick and we stood holding hands as the rastafarian carved it by hand.

I wonder where I'll put my love for you.

I feel so medicated that I am mechanical, moving through motions and not knowing how to live this life without you.

In this house that your best friend's grandfather built that has the grey siding and black trim I always said I liked and you said it was beautiful but worried it would fade.

If there is anything I have learned from this hell on earth is that nothing fades.

The love I have for you certainly will not fade.

And I just wish, in some way, we had known and I could have told you everything you mean to me and how deeply I love you.

But we never really know when the last day may be.

And so, I exist.

I have become

Comfortably numb.

Lord Stanley

I was never really the same after my dogs died.

I lost Sid on Thanksgiving weekend in 2019.

Claude passed over Xmas in 2020.

My boys were my world.

For so long it was just me, Sid and Claude in our little apartment, making it day by day.

Their fur dried tears.

They listened intently, no matter what I said.

They were the gentlest, sweetest friends.

Sid was my best friend for 11 years.

Claude for 6 as he was a senior boy when he chose me.

Sid the Kid and the Frenchman.

Their names adorn the wall of the shelter that saved them and allowed me to have my life blessed with the two sweetest creatures to have ever lived.

 Brad was a dog lover.

Vinny came from the Rescue League in New Brunswick and he always called him his first child.

Where there was Brad there was Vinny; later, where there was Brad there was Vinny and where there was Brad there was me and where there was me there was Claude.

Brad was there when Claude took his last breath and, as the receptionist at the vet clinic said, "You'll have another, you have too much love to give not to," he laughed and said, "I'm hoping I can give her a place for that love now."

And he did.

Until he was taken away.

There is a saying that grief is love with no place to go.

And I believe that.

Two days ago I watched a video from the same shelter that had saved Sid and Claude - Beagle Paws.

Brad supported my love of beagles and Beagle Paws.

We fostered over snowstorms and he had asked just weeks before he was stolen if I would like to set up a monthly donation to support a senior beagle.

The seniors always had a place in both of our hearts.

At 3 minutes in there was a senior beagle who lifted his sleepy, silver head.

His name is Stanley.

Yesterday I went to meet Stanley and his little senior eyes held so much love.

Today I am Stanley's foster mom and he is snoring by my feet, cuddled on his new bed.

Later we'll have a nap, cuddle in some blankets like Sid, Claude and I loved to do and take a walk around our new neighbourhood.

Brad and I had said when Claude and Vinny passed there would not be more dogs.

Our hearts could not handle the loss and what it meant to say goodbye to your best friend.

I've said goodbye to my three best friends now.

But I don't think he would be upset that I made an exception to our rule.

Grief is love with no place to go.

There is a place for some of that love to go now.

No new home is complete without some beagle hair in it.

And I've achieved what every hockey player dreams of -

I've won the Stanley Pup!