Tag: grief

Alone – state of being

Alone – state of being

Bogumil Pacak-Gamalski

You did talk to me last night, first time in a while. Yes, it was a strange night, followed by strange day. Or was it the other way around?  When you are alone, without a set schedule or watch, things do get mixed up easily. Dates especially: Mondays become Fridays, Fridays Tuesdays. So what happened to Wednesday, you ask? Who cares what happened to Wedneday, perhaps I left it on a beach, or on a bench in some park? Maybe it is still in the shower when I saw it last time I was taking a shower? What? Do I not take a shower every day? Maybe not, maybe sometime I take a bath, who cares? You really are asking way too many questions and it is my story anyway. Be quite, just listen.

No, not you, Babycake – I’m talking to my alter ego. You wouldn’t ask such stupid, mundane questions.

But the day or the night when I was still in bed, when I was sleeping, I dreamt of you, I talked to you. Have not done it in a while. I thought that you just let it go, these talks of ours across the boundaries of life and death. Thought maybe there is some allotted time that you can do that and maybe you have used it up. I don’t know. Remember? I am the one still left alive, never been consciously to the other side.

None of it is important really, anyway. I have dreamt of you in my sleep. It woke me up and there you were, next to me. No, I couldn’t see you, but you were there talking to me, you were saying something important.  You said that I have to understand that I am alone. That adjective ‘alone’ stood up as a mountain, a wall impregnable, forest too dense to walk out of it. I was getting used to be ‘alone’ in an adverb form.

Since I came back to our home, our former life here, in this city, this province, I have become very busy in many aspects: walks, friends, beaches, concerts, plans. It was just hard to go back to our home, our street. So I did it very seldom, hoping that it will allow me to function as normal as possible. And it did. Had evenings in bars, laughter, maybe a flirt or two. It seemed normal, I was spared any regrets. It was almost as I would finally get across that invisible line of Doctor Time, who heals old wounds; whose grief becomes first bearable, then transforms itself into a memory. Memory that is sad, but also happy that we did have our time, we found each other among the millions of people. As I was told many times, that it will get easier.

You think that was an expectation too easy, perhaps? I am not, after all, just a single guy ready for the picking and ready for harvesting. Is there anything wrong with it, isn’t it logical, practical?

I have reached to my writings of the early days after you were gone, to the first winter after you were gone and my constant visits to the gravesite in Pictou. Yes, that old ancestral town, where we were going to build our home, and spent the rest of our lives in that home.  We did not.

(notes from my writings after John’s passing by the end of November 2022)

               One year. It is hard as hell. Came to Pictou to spent time on the cemetery where we put your ashes. It’s windy, very cold. Desolate place. There was no one else there, on the cemetery. I know – it is only a stone with your name on it. Yours, your parents, and your baby brother you never had a chance to know. And now, there is also your oldest brother Fraser, who was laid there just few months ago.

Cleaned around a bit, threw away old winter flowers, and fixed things. Fixed things? How to ‘fix things’? Nothing can be fixed, when everything is broken.

Yes, I know that you are not there, not under the ground. You are with me. Forever. I have engraved on that stone myself that you are forever in my memory. I looked at the letters and smiled. In my memory, really? That’s what it all came to? Our Love, our life: to be remembered? How silly words could be, when they try to describe emotions, feelings. But still hoped that many years from now, when all of us, who knew you and me, would be gone – a stranger would wonder to that gravesite and he would think, that the guy who is buried there was indeed ‘non omnis moriar’, that part of him lived in that other guy’s heart. Nice thought.

You and that Love of ours are engraved not on the stone, but in my soul.

Me? I don’t remember who I was before I met you. I was just waiting. Waiting and searching for you – and I have found you.

               Now, now it is almost three years later. I am here, back to our good life on the shores of the other ocean.  Were we had home, a nest, were we had dozens of friends, people we cherished and who cherished us. Some were common, ours; others were exclusively yours or mine.  The two halves of Us were surprisingly very independent and strong, if only by the constant knowledge that the other half is there to make it whole.

I don’t have that knowledge anymore. The other half is gone, it is just me left. The many people I have known, and who sought my presence are still here. Not all of them, granted. Some have left either this life (as you), or this city. But some are still here. None seem to really need me. I am not sure I need them. Of course there is some curiosity, some friendly waving of a hand: how nice to see you again, you are looking good … and so on. I thought that I would need to search for them myself, that I would want it very much. But if I’m always finding excuses and ‘important things’ that prevent me from doing it – am I really?

I have one important friend and strangely enough one with the shortest amount of time we spent in this city before we left for Nova Scotia.  Less than a year, I think. After my dearest nephew had to go back to Poland, but still this young and very mature nephew was my angel in the first month after John was gone. Then my niece with her husband and son came to stay with me. But he, that younger friend of mine from Vancouver somehow helped me in the dark months after I was left alone in Halifax. The rest seemed like eternity. An eternity of being in hell, or waiting for the hell’s gates to be open to swallow my world. At these dark times that younger friend kept me connected to the world and people by phone. Our long conversations were instrumental of me getting the skeleton of myself back into me.

So I did return. To the place of Our home, our happiness. The places somehow were the strongest magnet for me. I submerged myself in going alone, for days on end, on long walks through parks, streets,  squares, building  were we lived, were my mom lived, were I was with my sisters, my nephew and niece. Places were calling me. Yes, places, much more than people.

I think that we all have these special places, sometime in many countries, on different continents. Special places that act as an anchor of ship of life. Where we can drop that anchor and stay safely in some magical Bay of Memories.

It is also a time to untie that line across the sides of our two separate boats: mine and the one belonging to my younger dear friend. He has journeys to make across the sea himself. His journey, not ours. That is also a part of me being alone. My boat is rusted a bit, engines are old. It will still make it though, the last long sailing, perhaps passing the Cape of Hope (not the Cape of Horn), back to original shipyard of its maiden voyage. Then I will rest.

After that rest, I will go alone on many walks to many places (some might not exist materially anymore, but will in my world) that will call me. Solitary walks. It will be like existing in two different dimensions.

One day, No, not in my sleep, perhaps suddenly, out of the blue I will see you taking the same trail or road and walking toward me, and I will stop being alone. I do hope so. Even in a faint split second before the big Nothingness.   

Chalice

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

I have missed you still

I have missed you by

empty night and by

colorless daytime

I have missed you

yesterday on my walk

I have missed you today

when I got up from bed

I have missed you last year

and I’m missing you

this year the same

I have missed you

three years ago

the day you were

gone

I do get up in the morning; get dressed, have breakfast; clean the dishes afterwards and watch some news. I don’t go to concerts anymore or much less than I did in Halifax. It was terrible there, where every street, every park, every store reminded me of us being there together.  It is terrible here, where everywhere I go, I remember when younger us walked together. You are everywhere, and yet I know that you are nowhere. You are gone. Forever.

It was going to be easier they said, and I thought it would. It is not, or it is by the virtue that you can get used to even chronic pain. But the pain is not lesser and it is tiring all the same. After a while you are just tired of that chronic pain. You have had enough and you want to be gone, too. What is the point of maintaining that, which will never ease, never go away?

Oh, I know that mine is not special or rare and distinct. But suffering of others does not ease your pain. That would be a sick perversion. I know that you are no longer have any worries, unhappy days or sadness. You can’t ‘cause you are gone, nonexistent anymore. But it is the memory of you that pains me so much. I am the only holder, only chalice where you exist. For as long as I live, I will be that chalice containing you, and the pain.

Right now I am in the process or refurbishing my life again. Moving to place where we used have our happiest days, decades actually. No, not some sort idyllic frolicking in flowery meadow. A life with its bad days, but live full of love, nonetheless. It did exited me, when I got that idea, and I got struck with realization that I will be walking these trails, street, places as alone, as every day I did since you were gone. Yet, I’m looking forward to it. Strange. Somehow, can’t explain logically how it works, that chalice full of pain will not be as heavy? Or I will understand perhaps better why it is so heavy. Understanding a process might make it easier to go through it.

Yes, there is also that element of egoistic pleasure of ‘coming back home’. Sort of making it the full circle. Of course big part of that circle would be reconnecting with my old friends. Very dear people: older, younger, my age. Somehow our life and love did not preclude both of us from pursuing our own interests and social circles.  Much more on my part perhaps, not by design though or special privileges. I just did.

It will not make me happy in a conventional meaning of the world. It will however (or not?) allow me to live again, smile at times. Smile honestly, not politely.  

I will miss you

tomorrow again

I will miss you

as I did yesterday

I will miss you

till there is no longer

either night or day

in places we have lived

and places we have

never together been

until the chalice will

be broken and the wine

of life will be spilled

My Fort of Love, our Fort

My Fort of Love, our Fort

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

August 07, 24

I went there again. Maybe the last time? My time here is shrinking, time on this land perched over Atlantic, our land. Maybe in a month or so I won’t be here? Hence, I came today. To our Fort of Love, our love, our castle built on sand with solid rocks, boulders.

Yes, it still is here on this wild beach, far away from any venturing tourists. My hidden sanctuary of talking pebbles, tubal music of waves, clouds of black and white sandpipers flying in unison formations as a single body; ever present individual seagulls, pretending to be busy looking for crabs and dead clams, but observing you all the time. When I am there, I am part of that all, not a visitor but rather a feature belonging there. The flora there is very sparce and in constant struggle to survive. The dead ones are giving all their content as nourishment to the new ones. The sea and sand don’t offer much to land creatures. Occasional dead tree from far away bay or island. Not much but nothing is wasted in that austere environment. Meadows and patches of short forest on the land are separated from that spot by a big and deep saltwater lake. Sometimes, when I am tired of playing with the ocean waves, I go for a longer swim in that lake, its surface is always still like a glass. It must be incredibly deep. There is maybe three or five meters of very easy shallow water and than suddenly it just drops like from windows ledge to a dark deep water. I’m always surprised how dark and impregnable to light that water is.

The shore, where the local road ends, has a small, rocky beach. Almost always, if the weather is OK, there is a small group of locals. Three, sometimes a ‘crowd’ of ten even. They don’t come as far as where I am with my Fort. I have seen once or twice one person or a couple venturing there. You need to cross a fast-moving sea ‘river’ (natural canal connecting the lake and the open ocean) to get to my monastic desert.

But they – the locals – know that the Fort is there. It is the only man-made structure. By now they must also know me, recognize me, when I come with the same red folding chair, a stick in hand and a backpack, as I traverse the water like a hermit coming back to his cell. They see me from far away, sometimes wave to me while I gather more rocks to fix the Fort. It did survive fall, winter and spring. Many storms and big waves. But a good monk always fixes his dwelling for the glory of god – and my god is Love.

Do the locals call it a sanctuary? Maybe. Sanctuary of Love. I like it. Our love, anyone’s love. I am not at all jealous of that love. Love doesn’t belong to me. I just tend to it. She is sacred.

Maybe Venus comes here by sunrise and dances naked by the Fort? Maybe all of them, these crazy Greek gods, come: Venus, Apollo, Narcissus, Orpheus. Maybe even Helen of Troi dances with them? With whom Helen would dance? With handsome Prince of Troi or with Menelaus, her husband?  Sappho of Lesbos later explained that choice in her poem, when she argued:

Some say a host of horsemen, others of infantry and others

   of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth

   but I say, it is what you love

and few thousand years later, I agree with her wholeheartedly. But it doesn’t matter with whom they dance. Let them dance with whom they want. Let them lit the mighty sky with pyres hot of flames of passion.

August 08, 24

Hey! Yes, you Narcissus. Come here and sit by me. Don’t cry, don’t drown in unanswered selflove. Go to disco tonight. They have one in the club called Elysium. Go there, dance and let go off sorrows. Kiss someone, make love to someone, anyone for Heaven’s sake! They will appreciate you youth, vigor and looks. Me?  No, my dear boy. I have loved hundreds of times, thousands perhaps, for a day, for an hour.  Until I was confiscated, possessed, taken by Love itself. By that one special Boy. One, who become the air I breath, my blood, my waking up and falling asleep. My song and my poem.

But be aware – Love is immortal, but you are not. When The Boy (or Girl) will go (as everything temporal does) you will be broken in half. Shattered like pebbles on the beach, that are constantly thrown by huge waves until only scream remains, only cry to Heaven. But Heaven will have its gates locked by Death.

Love, dear boy, is not for timid souls. Love is only for brave or insane souls. It is Love that holds the saved obol in your outstretched hand, while pounding with your other fist at this gate. The Gates of time, of mourning, of grief. Demanding, pleading for them to be opened. With that obol as a magic key. Hoping but not knowing what is on the other side: reunion or emptiness, nothingness. Yet knowing now, when you are at these Gates, that even nothingness is better than half-living.

Love is for brave or insane souls.    

The seed of grief is love

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski

I have watched two movies recently. Very different and very powerful on a very personal level. Stirring emotions, and memories. The Spanish “Society of the Snow” produced by Netflix and directed by J. A. Bayona, and the Canadian production of “Good Grief” directed, produced, and written by Dan Levy. Dan Levy also played the main character, Marc.

The “Society of the snow” – let me take you on a journey in time. At the time of the catastrophe, I was 14 years old. A year later a book by British writer Clay Blair “Survive” appeared. A well-known Polish writer or essayist wrote in a Polish literary weekly “Literatura” a piece about it. It might have been Jerzy Andrzejewski, an excellent writer whose weekly column I have always read – but truly I can’t recall now. Yet the story and especially the dilemma of cannibalism versus survival made me write a short piece about it. By that, I was fifteen and of course, as any fifteen-year-old ‘writer’ had a lot to say about the issues of life and death. I sent it off to the editorial desk of Jerzy Putrament, a Polish writer, who was the editor-in-chief of the weekly ‘Literatura”, a major literary and art publication. And he published it. As it was my second publication in a major Polish magazine (the first one was in “Perspektywy”) it cemented my ‘fame and prestige’ among my teachers in my school, but not as much among my classmates, LOL.

I don’t recall if I have read the book by Clay Blair. Not sure if it was translated into Polish. Most likely I never did. But I have seen years later the first movie about it based on that novel. And I wasn’t impressed. Yet the Spanish “Society of the Snow” impressed me very much. The screen-writers (Bayona, Vilaplana, and Marques), the director, and the actors were superb in their austerity of dramatization. Everything was left to the minimum: air, food, movement, and words. Years later, while visiting Mendoza in Patagonia (the ill-fated plane took off from Mendoza on its last tragic leg of the flight to Chile), I took a special bus tour to the Andes and was able to do some hiking at the base of Aconcagua (almost 7000 meters, one of the titans of the world). The outmost desolation of that place there is amazing and overpowering. As far as you can see is a frozen horizon of white peaks and valleys. Can’t imagine surviving there with hardly any provisions for longer than a few days. I felt that the movie captured that feeling very well.

“Good Grief” by Dan Levy. Who doesn’t remember and didn’t love that sweet, funny, and almost useless in practical skills young gay guy in the now iconic CBC series “Schitt’s Creek”, with his father, great Canadian actor Eugene Levy, and fantastic Catherine O’Hara? But Dan Levy playing a grief-strickened, middle-age man in serious drama, tragedy actually? Can he carry it? He did.

I shouldn’t have watch it. But I did. I had to. As I watched his grief, as I travelled with him in his yearly journey of that grief of losing the love of his life – I went through mine. Every silent moment. Every object in his and mine apartment, photographs, furniture. At times I didn’t know if it was Dan Levy or me on that screen. If it was a movie or my memories of last year. No, I didn’t go to Paris and there was no surprise in finding ‘the other lover’. But these are just details, unimportant almost didaskalia of the drama. The differences between the lives of me and John and that of Mark and Luke are just a different shade of the same colour.

As I watched that movie sitting on my (on our) sofa I felt John taking my hand into his and squeezing it gently. I heard him saying I’m sorry, and I wanted to grab his hand, to cover it with kisses. But I didn’t, I knew the hand, his voice would dissipate into the air. So I just sat quietly, didn’t even turn my head, and continued watching the movie. With him undisturbed sitting next to me. As he always did. It felt good. Sad but good. The next morning I went for a drive to a little town called Fall River. I took him there in 2019 to a little Provincial Park, with a forest, by a long, wonderful lake. This time it was wintertime, windy and cold. The gate to the park was closed for the season. I left my car and walked the long trail on foot. The sky was splendid with clouds and sun in crispy air. It was my trip ‘to Paris’. Thank you, Dan Levy, for letting me submerge myself in that grief again.  Grief is hard, is sad. But it also is beautiful, because the seed of grief is love.

After

I couldn’t sleep.   

Didn’t know how to

console You.

How to tell You –

it’s all right, Babycake.

I have survived.

No, it wasn’t Your

fault.

You tried,

You tried so hard.



Do I lie, when I say:

‘it’s all right’?

Yes, I do.

It was

so fucking hard.

I knew it would be

if and when,

but had no clue 

how hard it is.

Didn’t know 

that grief

could be like 

hot lead 

slowly injected 

into your veins.

Like the disappearing

bubbles of air

you have tried 

to squeeze into your lungs

nailed to the heavy

cross of impossibility.

As I watched with terror.

So what was

really the weight

of my grief

compared to that?

How do you compare

the pain of life

to pain of death?

How do you?

What’s the balance ratio

of life in grief

in one hand,

and no life

in the other?

Does a man know?

Does God?