From my friend Andrea: "I've loved and lost enough for more than one lifetime." Chas Ryder in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Great movie. Great line.
When we were dating, and I was imagining our life together, when my soul was lonely and missing you and longing for us to be a family, you talked about frying bacon. I told you that someday I wanted you to make me "bubbly bacon". It became a symbol of waking up together, sharing something as simple as breakfast..because breakfast meant that you had slept next to me.
After we were married, every Sunday morning you got up and you made me bubbly bacon. You also made me eggs (I really didn't like the way that you made the eggs, but I ate them anyway. I never told you that I didn't like them, because I liked the fact that you made them for me). You would make my egg soft and always put a toothpick in my egg so I would know that it was my "special" egg.
After you were gone, I don't remember how many days or hours it had been, but I opened the fridge and saw the bacon there. I cried and cried..the ugly cry (I HATE the ugly cry). My sweet, beautiful friend, Louise, called me while I was in the middle of the ugly cry. My heart was breaking. I couldn't stand the thought of the bacon in the fridge because you will never make me bacon again. While I was crying and she was listening, I looked up and she was coming through my door. She just held me while I cried and cried some more over bacon. I felt like God had sent Louise to me at just that time to help me deal with the pain of the bacon.
I visited with you at the cemetery again today. I had to meet a friend who wanted to buy one of my rebozzo's from Mexico. I met her at the Wendy's that was only a few blocks from the cemetery. The roses we left yesterday were already drooping from the heat (it was over 103 degrees today). I kneeled by your grave and cried. I was the only one in the cemetery and it felt as if my sobs echoed over the graves, the sounds of my pain wrapped around the trees and carried on the wind. It sounded to me as if my cries came from some hollow place, as if they had a life of their own that was somehow not even connected to me. I wondered what I must look like? Sitting there on my knees, crying, snot running out of my nose, feeling as if I would drown from the saliva that was forming in my mouth in waves. I felt like I needed to spit so I could keep breathing. But even though I was alone, I wouldn't spit. Even in grief I can't completely let go.
When it was over (he ugly cry), I looked around and noticed that on every single grave, the grass was brown. It was green between the graves, but every grave was brown and the browness was exactly the shape of the grave. What causes that? I wanted to stop in at the office and ask them, but I was afraid they would think I was crazy. I could look across the hill and see each and every grave. And I thought of the chemicals they put in the bodies. Did the chemical leach out of the casket, out of the vault and seep into the ground in the shape of the grave? Death is so ugly.
Sometimes the realization that you're really gone surprises me. It takes my breath away. I can go hours at a time without thinking about it, and then out of nowhere, it's there, this thought that says "my husband is dead, my husband is REALLY dead". My mind knows it, but my heart doesn't believe it. I wonder how everyone else just accepts that you are gone, because I can't. Maybe I will believe it in stages? I don't know. I don't know how this works.
Tonight while I was dispatching for mom's cab company, some guy on the phone told me he was clairvoyant. He said he sensed sadness in me and hummed and drummed and chanted and sent me blue and purple waves of energy and love. He told me my "Sweetie" sent him. It was the "Sweetie" part that got me. You called me "Sweetie". Tru told everyone "My Mawmo's name is Sweetie Fisher because that's what my Popi calls her". You would've been upset because some drunk guy calling for a cab was talking to me for so long. I half listened, half cried and half wanted to believe what he told me. All the while praying that God protect me if this guy was bringing evil into my life.
Today was Sunday. There was no bubbly bacon when I woke up. There was no egg with a toothpick in it to eat before church. But, I bought bacon. I threw away the old bacon and I bought new bacon, so that when I'm ready, I'll fry bubbly bacon for myself, and I'll make eggs the way I like them, but for now, the bacon is in the fridge and when I'm ready, I'll eat bubbly bacon without you, but I'll never eat bubbly bacon again without thinking of my Sweetie.
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