He Breaks the Night - NaPoWriMo Day #4
I wrote He Breaks the Night when my Uncle Mike passed away. I'm fighting the urge to wax a little poetic about him right now, but I've already dedicated three blog posts to him (Farewell, Uncle Mike, Growing Old & Letting Go, and Uncle Mike: One Last Farewell), so I will refer you there if you're interested in learning just a tiny bit about a very special human being who we were blessed to have with us as long as we did, and I will include a special picture at the end of this blog post that I never even knew existed until last week when I visited with my Aunt Gerri.
It was around the time that David Bowie also left us for a better place, and that's where the "embrace the strange" line comes in, a little play on Bowie's line, "Face the strange." This was a moment in my life where I was just coming through a series of debilitating panic attacks, and embracing the strange was truly the only way to get through the things that were happening all around me and within me.
Not being in control of things. Accepting the fact that we were losing quite a few people in our family in a short span of time (which felt a little too reminiscent of that 2002-2004 era when we were losing very close loved ones left and right). Attending funerals and having to keep it together even when I felt like the anxiety was going to overtake me. Feeling the regret of not spending enough time with someone that I really loved. Forgiving other family members who I had a falling out with in prior years. Comforting others even when the panic was creeping up on me. Really experiencing the loss instead of having to process it later on. I had to embrace the strange. I had no choice.
It was all part of the healing process, and all part of letting go. As you're probably all too aware, letting go is a part of life that you have to master if you don't want to lose yourself in an abyss of anxiety and depression. You can write about it, meditate on it, talk it out, or hold it in until it breaks you apart from the inside out. I choose the first three. Certain losses may have broken some nights, some weeks, some months, or even some years, but I will not let them break my life. I will love with every bit of me, and I will survive until we're all together again, in whatever form that takes.
I miss you, Uncle Mike. I will never forget your advice and I will do my best to live up to your ideals. This one's for you.
He Breaks the Night
This moment has teeth.
The loss is piercing,
the reverberations biting.
I feel the wrinkles as they creep
and I sense the lack of distance
between my breathing and your not-being.
Imagine all the tears we shed
between point A and B.
Imagine all the fun we could have had,
just you and me.
It's all history.
All a mist of a once-possible dream.
But this is a bookend of an era,
and I embrace the strange,
for life and death themselves are change.
Farewell to this unnamed age.
Halloween party, 1989. Left to right, me, my childhood friend Jennifer, and Uncle Mike.
