Comfort

Comfort has been something hard to come by since Alan died. I have found myself talking to him, begging him for some sign that I can understand, to know that he is at peace, to know how to move forward. But the few islands of comfort I have found have been in unlikely places, and not where or how I asked for them.

The first was at his funeral. It was the first time I had seen his body since the night of his death. The funeral home did a decent job of presenting the body, but it was so obvious that he was gone -- that the body was not him. It was like looking at an oyster shell, the oyster gone, and the luminous pearl that was once within shining on our souls from some unseen place. It was so strangely comforting to see this empty vessel, free from a life of pain and anxiety, free from a mind that just couldn't hold onto happiness. Somehow, I knew for that one precious day that he wasn't suffering. I was filled with a peace that I hadn't known in a long time.

I wish that feeling could have lasted forever, but of course, it did not. I sought it out again, and asked Alan just to give me, or Mom, or someone, a sign that I could understand that he was okay. I looked forward at every little thing -- was that a sign? But what gave me that sense of peace again wasn't forward; it was from the past.

After an especially hard evening, I went to bed, practically having given up. Upon awaking in the morning, I had the strangest memory pop up, of a cat Dad owned when I was little. This cat, Dakota, was in many ways a typical cat. It hid a lot. It would show up when it wanted something. And if you were doing something it didn't like, it wasn't afraid to draw blood.

But also, Dakota was strangely patient with me, a four year old kid, letting me pet a bit too hard, even pulling its tail. If the cat fell off a table, it would land any which way, even on its back. It didn't use a litter box -- it went outside like a dog.

Dakota disappeared one day. I was too young, and not really attached enough to the cat to really have any sort of meaningful emotional reaction, but I still remember riding in the car, and Dad telling me that Dakota had gotten run over and was dead. This funny little cat was gone too soon.

I had this realization that morning. Yes, Alan was gone. And there is nobody in the world that is exactly like Alan was, especially not some silly cat from before he was even born. But somehow there were enough parallels to get me to see that some part of that pattern, some part of the quirkiness that was Alan in this life, was eternal, part of the fabric of being, and we would certainly see those funny little threads again.

It reminds me of a piece of music I introduced to Alan this spring. After I showed it to him, he put it on his Youtube favorites playlist -- a record of his listening, a ghost of his life that remains.

I had been listening to it for a lecture I was writing, where I had discussed the cases of Ann Adams and Maurice Ravel. There is a good Radiolab podcast on it. Ravel, some postulate, may have written Boléro under the influence of the early stages of a degenerative brain disease, primary progressive aphasia.

In the piece, the same snippet of melody is played again and again, but each time different, changing timbre, adding or losing overtones, all the while escalating. Alan was like one of these variations, so unique, and yet linked by a strange melody to the whole.

This thought did not take away the pain of losing him, the longing to be with him, to share with him, to help him. But somehow, it put a smile on my face, and a bit of hope in my heart.