To face or not to face

My client stood near the bottom of the stairs, her arm slung casually over the open rail, her right foot on the second step while I spoke to her about the building process. I was at the bottom of the stairs, on the concrete slab floor facing her square. Then she put both feet down and turned away from me.

We’d just met. She was visibly stressed within five minutes of our meeting and it wasn’t until this moment, 45 minutes in, that I knew why: she and her husband weren’t on the same page and the project she wanted wasn’t the one he wanted.

I was staring at her silently now, I’d stopped talking mid sentence. I’d stopped because while answering her question, she’d turned 90deg away from me; not to look at something, or to think about something … like when you turn away and tilt your head up a bit like a cartoon character to hear someone better … we probably all do it … she wasn’t doing that: she just turned away and ended the conversation. It was bananas.

Until I realized it was what she needed.

There’s another person I know who does something like this and I was transported to an image of a conversation I had with this other person two months prior. This other person would instead close her eyes when a conversation wasn’t following her expectations, or when she wanted something different from the person talking to her, or when she wanted to settle herself down … I don’t actually know why she did it. But I think this closing of the eyes was a focus thing … she was getting nearer to her truth by being alone, removing the distraction of the face in front of her, the emotion, of her collocutor.

My new friend was just done … she wanted out.

The image I flashed on of my wife during our conversation about our mutual finances, post child, post marriage, closing her eyes and looking upward while we talked suddenly made sense. I’d always been annoyed by it, but now … being interrupted like this, by someone turning away … solved this other mystery instantly.

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Stella Blue and Maile, Manzanita Beach

I’m struggling again. My memory is terrible. I’m even more impatient than usual. I’m making mistakes left and right. I’m unmotivated beyond the strong current of my work, a river I step into every day that carries me along. I feel like a frail, bland, hollow version of myself and I’m ashamed I’m not better … better from grief, also a better person … sharper/brighter/more useful.

There is mountains of research out there that suggests men and women grieve differently; I imagine this truth will dissolve as the culture heals from the long-standing gender roles, nevertheless, I’m a product of the former world. This evidence suggests men are more apt to find tasks, or new roles rather than sit and talk to someone about their feelings, that they orient themselves by clarifying the objective situation their loss has provided them and attempt a fix; that women are more apt to need a listener with whom to replay the feelings in an effort to find meaning, balance, regain perspective, to stare into the grief.

I may simply be in the middle of experiencing ‘male’ grieving, wherein my tasking and work distractions that usually float me past the storm of emotions, fail, and the emotions burst through leaving me where I am tonight, with myself and an unpracticed processing mechanism.

I huff big breaths instead of breathing deeply, in and out. (Barbi once suggested those might not be helpful breaths, the big puffs out. I agree, but now I take them as a sign, a symptom of my current mental state). I’m huffing and puffing a lot lately.

This mercurial Grief keeps brushing me around; I cannot see it or feel it coming, I’m never prepared for it’s camouflaged approach. So I’m always off balance. I keep trying to find a place to reset: get a good night’s sleep, have a nice walk, make a really good meal, have a perfect building day. I’d like to turn away from it for a second … catch my breath. Then I think I need to turn into it, but I don’t know how.

It makes sense to me that we find these turning away defenses, turning away from the pain, or annoyance. It makes sense in a visceral way to me today, in my apartment, wondering where my energy is, where my interest in anything is other than watching shows and jonseing for chocolate and avoiding paperwork.

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In February 2020 we knelt on the floor next to Stella’s bed, 6 inches away from her face and stared at her for hours. Watching her breathe, her neck where her pulse was visible, listening to her sporadic murmurings, touching her soft hair, wondering where she was. We couldn’t get close enough to her. She was everything, we had to drink her in before she faded away from us.

We could not turn away.

And with my eldest daughter, my living girl Charlotte, I sit in front of her and wonder at the life. SO strong and forward and brave … unseated from her former self by her sister’s departure, so clearly altered, but moving straight forward; an adventurer leaning in to the buffeting windstorm of loss. She doesn’t turn away from me while we talk, she looks at me so steadily; it’s almost difficult to receive and I wonder why that is. What’s my shyness?

At night, lying in bed, I keep trying to turn right into Stella like Char does me; turn to her like we did those last days of Stella’s life, leaning on her bed, drinking her in. I go in circles trying to find her image, to find one that stays for longer than a second. I stare at the ceiling and make an effort to look at her like I could when she was here but I don’t have the skill without her physical body present. Did I damage my imagination with too many photos the first year after her death? She’s fading. I suppose I’m supposed to shift my needs … I understand that even while I don’t understand that at all.

I imagine floating in space wanting to glimpse planet earth is a bit like this; there’s no choosing the direction you face because you can’t turn, not without something to push off of, and there’s definitely nothing to push off of. You can only wait until your slow turn inward leaves you facing the little marble prize… and then wait again while begin turning away.

I suppose this here is the way I face her: I look at this screen and remember and process through these words. And you can turn in or turn away … you’ve got a desk to push off of.

Be safe.