yesterday's madness

Yesterday this day's madness did prepare. -Omar Khayyam

Today I am watching a continuing education training in my office, listening to the presenter explain that neuroscience has discovered that the human brain is far more plastic than originally believed. That emotional learnings can be erased and replaced with new learnings. He is describing methods of memory reconsolidation, how we can unlearn the unhelpful things the past has taught us and update that learning into something new. We can release this day's madness through therapeutic erasure.  

He's talking about unlearning stuff like agoraphobia, compulsions, panic attacks, suicidal ideation. Stuff that really gets in the way. But I find myself feeling protective of the pathologies the past teaches us.

I remember Mike telling me once, in our twenties, that it seemed I would periodically twist the knife in my heart that was my dad's death. On purpose. That I wanted to feel the pain afresh. Mike wasn't so sure that was a good thing.  

What would he say now about how reassuring I find the bouts of pain I suffer over his absence? What would this presenter say to the way I welcome the wave of knee-buckling grief when it comes for me, relief mingling with its crash and swirl? Because for me, the acute heartache of grief isn't pathology; it's a sharp tug on a chain of love. It's a reminder of my tether to the past I am afraid of losing, anchored deep in my bones and muscles and organs.  

I know that I am relearning lots of things, and it's a good thing. The time of trauma response is ebbing away, only rarely stirred up in felt ways. I sleep and eat, I send my children off on adventures, I ask for help, I offer help. No one wants to hold onto the emotional learning that makes life hard to live. But still. Our past is a precious thing, no matter the pain we lived then. 

I've been taken up by unsought, shockingly painful grief waves more often than usual over the past few weeks. It's because of a lot of things: I am in a serious, loving relationship and for the first time in well over four years I am considering what partnership might mean for me. It stirs up lots of fears, old (unwanted) learnings from past hurts, tender memories. I started watching Station Eleven (whew), a show and book I had been afraid of for quite some time. Frances has been writing exquisite poems and sharing them with me. I'm reading Homegoing. Beatrice and Gabriel are at Experience Camp, an amazing week-long camp for children who have lost parents or siblings. As we packed and prepared, we talked a lot about Papa. 

And oh yeah, all my stolen writing time this summer has been dedicated to editing a Homemade Time-based manuscript. I'm sorting through a thousand moments, trying to train an objective eye on their shifting surfaces and how I spoke them then. I've changed.  

Time keeps pulling us along; my grief yelps in protest. Art is holding and offering up time's strangeness; my heart takes it in and nods. Yep.

Monday is the first day of school; Frances is starting her senior year and focused on college applications. Gabriel will begin high school. Beatrice is growing fast and furious into a lanky fourth grader. I'm back at work, thinking about what I want for myself professionally and how to sink into this time we have before our family changes in very big ways next fall. I've been seeing us through my boyfriend's gentle eyes, treasuring who and what and how we are right now. 

It's light years away from who and what and how we were before Mike was diagnosed. That's because children grow exponentially in seven years, sure, but it's also because he died. We're different.

I'll take a little madness. Let it conduct me to other times and places. Let nothing be erased. Let it hurt, and let us shine in the hurting.