Sep 17 2012
A Lot Like Birds, the Soundtrack to Closure
This band got me through the weekend. If this show was tonight and not November 27th, I would feel a lot better.
———-
Eight years ago, someone close to me was killed. Not close as in we were good friends, but close in that our jobs required us to see each other’s faces for 8 hours a day. His death has always bothered me because mere days before it happened, I had found myself in a screaming match with his dad – my boss. A screaming match about him, which ultimately led to me and my co-worker Carol storming out and never looking back.
I walked into that job in 2000 with all the naïve confidence and self-esteem of a 20-year-old girl and all I took with me 4 years later was a trauma-derived stutter and a crippling fear of offices which would leave me unemployed for nearly 3 years—the beginning of an avalanche of financial duress which we are still trying to clean up.
(And Henry. I got Henry out of the deal.)
I know his death wasn’t my fault, that’s not really what this is about. And I kind of feel too mixed up and sad and tired to try and explain, because explaining means going into the whole story. And the whole story is a saga, really, which I’m technically not permitted to share, a stipulation of the settlement I was awarded after a mediation with the EEOC.
But, maybe someday.
Eight years later, I still have nightmares about what happened. The flashbacks to the phone call. He’s still alive in my dreams. I still think I see him sometimes when I’m out. (This just happened on Saturday.
That “Oh shit, it’s—-wait. No, he’s dead” heart-clutching moment.) And that is how I ended up standing awkwardly in a Jewish cemetery yesterday morning, looking for a closure which may or may not exist.
I had wanted to do this back in 2004, but I just wasn’t ready. But I needed to see it yesterday. Chooch—had he been born a day earlier, would have shared his birthday with this man’s death day—helped me lay down wildflowers along the gravestone. Chooch kept asking me questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.
I couldn’t stop staring at his picture etched into the marble.
We went to see Speck and Don at the pet cemetery after that, and that’s where I really cried, which is what I have needed to do for weeks now.
Smiling (and laughing like a crazy person) through the sadness only gets us so far before we eventually have to deal with it.
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This song does something to my head but I can’t figure out whether it’s good or bad. I like the song though! And I’m sorry about your weekend. You’re brave for looking for closure. I tend to lock those things in my heart and get slaughtered by them a few times a year.
The singer is the guy who replaced Jonny Craig the first time he got kicked out of Dance Gavin Dance, haha!
Bottling things up is usually my strategy too. But it has been bothering me so much lately that I figured it was time to go and see it for myself. I don’t talk about this stuff because I figure all of my other friends have their own problems, so then this happens.
I am so proud of you! And your friends are always here to listen to you, just like you do for them:) Big hugs<3
Thanks for the gentle push ;)
Loss is the worst. Seconded by fear. Thirded by guilt. Or something like that.
You’ve survived a lot, which means the channels of your mind and heart are deeper than the Average Jane’s. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it means you feel more deeply. Pain hurts worse. Fear is stronger. Guilt is more relentless. Everything is just…more.
Or maybe that’s just me. <3
Love ya.
Danielle, you always provide such wise words, like the big sister I always wanted. It means so much. Thank you for being there!