Grief - My Muse

The wither'd frame, the ruined mind, the wreck of passion left behind:
A shrivell'd scroll, a scattered leaf,
Sear'd by the Autumn-blast of grief.

Byron

I sang for Bob's memorial service.
His fraternity brothers flew in from all over.
When we played the duet from Bizet's opera The Pearl Fishers,
they looked grief-stricken.
Cards, letters, tributes poured in.
The Artistic Director from Long Beach Opera, Michael Milenski, delivered the Eulogy.
Bob's Cremains were placed in Jamie's grave.
Mother tossed a rose into the hole where her two sons had been laid to rest.

Mom's den was put back in order. The hospital bed was gone. The couch was moved back into place.
Gillian and Brendan swam in the pool.
It was summer.

On the television, OJ Simpson's slow chase in the white SUV dominated the news.
Jackie Onassis had died May 19th.
Richard Nixon had died April 24th.
I had missed both news stories.

We cleaned out Bob's condo in Laguna. As I sat on his bed, I held the unopened video tape, AIDS What is it and How Do You Get It? I remembered the day I'd gone down to his condo to bring him to the AIDS doctor. He had given me a list of names of people to call. He spoke of various friends and family members.
"He's a prince," he said to me about our cousin, Jimmy. He told me to call his boyhood friend, Gary. The list contained the names of people Bob had worked with in the yellow page industry.
"There's no reason people shouldn't know, " he said.
As I thought back on that exchange, I realized how remarkable it was.


Exhaustion set in. Aids Services Foundation sent their bereavement team to check on us. They told us about grief counseling and said to call if we needed it.
I tried to return to my life as usual
but the heaviness of grief made everything harder.
I was barely functioning.

Three months later - I couldn't get out of bed.
Overwhelmed with grief, I called ASF, who referred me to a grief counselor.
After one session, she recommended I come twice a week for six weeks.
I kept going to her for two years.
I went to a support group made up mostly of mothers who'd lost a son to AIDS.

Mostly, I wrote.
I filled journal after journal.
Writing became my salvation.
My healing.