Joel's Day 2010

It’s just a few days away, this day that seems to mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next for me.  This is the day on which I take stock, on which I measure what I have taken and what I have given, what I have dreamed and what I have realized, what I have run from and what I have faced, hoping for a balance.

The randomness and suddenness of Joel’s death allowed me to understand, intimately, that this is the day we get.  Just this day.  And we may not even get all of it.  So, if I spend this day perseverating about what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next month; if I obsess about whether I’m thin enough, attractive enough, smart enough, hip enough, healthy enough, wealthy enough; if I dwell on all those things I can’t control that may or may not happen, then I have missed the point.  It’s not that I don’t go there, I just don’t stay there.
And it’s not that I don’t have bad moments. Seven years have gone by.  Early on, while it was still fresh, Joel’s death was an easy yardstick by which to measure all the trivial and unimportant events that seemed to flow by me.  Even Africa in the time of HIV/AIDS, as painful as it was, was no match.  Now, seven years later, I sometimes get caught up in myself.  Some days I am just raw ego and heart, with scant protection from the forces around me.  So, my ego gets a little bruised from time to time and my heart, well…

So, every year, between October 31, when I saw him last, and November 18, when he drew his last breath, I reflect on the 365 “this days” I have just had and what I have done with them.  My life was made much more extraordinary by his death.  He gave me that.  In return, I do not take this day for granted.  I want my life to somehow reflect the magnitude of the loss of him.   I fall short, but I have definitely approached some degree of scale.

These 365 “this days” that are just ending have been marked by the evolution of this little house that is somehow more than that.  Until I had Joel, I was out there, spinning- unbound but uncertain.  Having a child tethered me to the planet.  A child grounds you, independent of place and time.  Joel’s death broke the bond and I spun out again.  Six years later, I landed in this desert, in this canyon, in this place of aid, refuge, and safe harbor.  It captured me and will hold a part of me here until this day ends.  I may spin off again, but the tether is strong and will continue to bring me home.  

Odd, I never wanted children.  I lack the emotional maturity to sustain even a relationship.  How much more so the stability to raise a child?  Yet, from the moment he was delivered to me and placed on my exhausted belly after a challenging labor, to the day I spread some of his ashes in the Sahara Desert, he was the most magnificent thing I ever did.  Likewise, I have never had the desire to own a home, to be owned by a home.  I believe I am, at my very core, feral, untamed, and undomesticable, albeit a little less skittish as I get older.  And yet this may be the penultimate extraordinary experience, second only to my life with Joel.   I am not quite sure how I was so blessed to have both an incredible child and an astonishing space of my own, and it is possible that this one will come at some cost as well.  But on this, the only day I get for sure, I am humbled and grateful.

godspeed joel.  you are ever missed.

And to the boys from Baker Street, who made the transition from adolescence to adulthood in our rented little cottage in Petaluma, whose sleeping bodies I stepped over on my way to work in the morning (Xbox controllers still lying by your sides), who became men when I needed you most, I never, not for one moment, forget what you did for me.  You made me better and braver than I would ever have been alone.  On this and every day I get, I am grateful to you. .