I’ve been avoiding you—and myself.  I wrote the following during Sang’s wake as a Korean preacher took the podium in front of what must have been his whole congregation.  It’s largely unedited.

Bodies long with

fear

on them. standing

room

◊

only. I

can’t breathe

in this

home of

grieving.

◊

the darkness in

me choking

me—sobbing

−

Surrounded now by the ultimate vocalization of the language that threatened him all his life, Korean—that gave him his first words, that he could never fully comprehend or use, another reason for him to feel less than he was—I’m screaming tears.  The strange sounds are a burden on me.  He was never so strange to me as he is now.  In his life, I understood all his words.

Now I’m reminded I hadn’t heard them all.  All the singing and chanting is pretty.  I recognize the intonations of an Our Father.  But it all makes me very aware of new dimensions to my loss.  There are parts of him and words of his I never heard—and never will.

Time, logic tells me, is what I’m mourning, not Sang.  My self-deprecatory side informs me I’m self-indulgent for groaning so much, as there’s no reason to cry for the dead; it’s all for myself.  Yet, all of me wants him back.  My every fragment acknowledges it.  I feel I’ve lost a life partner.  As much as I would like to always control my emotionality, this is one situation where logic shatters against reality.

As a little relief, I don’t cry as much since the wake on Thursday night.  I knew Sang was gone when I saw his face, peach with make-up, and a wooden cross in his folded hands.  I finished scribbling notes about the service, then collapsed into my grief for the rest of the night.  When I woke Friday, it was near noon.  I had suffered nightmares, and my head ached the whole day from the prior night’s abandoned crying, but I was finally able to hold back crying—usually, anyway.

Only, my leg has started shaking again.  With my wonderful psychiatrist on permanent medical leave, there isn’t much I can do until her replacement can fit me in.

No, I’m being defenseless.  I could have called other psychiatrists.  I even wrote down the contact info to a few in-network doctors.  I didn’t call because I don’t want to talk about my dead sex drive nor, now, Sang.

Life is tiring me out.  What else is there to say?  What will the doctors tell me but to breathe?  I’m screaming wrenching throbbing inside my head.  I can’t tell the difference between grief and depression.  It’s all painful.  I can feel a fear on me.  I want to tear it out by its roots, but its origins are opaque, like a claw reaching through a wormhole.  What else do you want me to say?

I don’t picture him standing up anymore.  Instead, I remember the caked on make-up covering his skin.  The only place the clay mask didn’t cover was the inside of his ear.  The purple-red spot near the ear canal was the only part of him they didn’t touch.  It was a spot they hadn’t bothered with.

I need to know where that spot is in me.