The Weight of the Dead

More than one person has said to me that when a loved one dies, it brings up the memories and feelings of every other death you have experienced in your life. No one said, however, that those loved ones would take up residence in my life, intruding in my thoughts and feelings even more so than when they were alive.
My grandfather and grandmother, who have been dead three and fifteen years respectively, are perched one on each shoulder, taking full advantage of their renewed place in my consciousness, dispensing tidbits into each ear on a continual basis. I hear things come out of my mouth that I know are not my ideas. This goes far beyond turns-of-phrases. Comments, lectures and arguments that I know they would have made when they were alive, in fact probably did, are spewing out of my mouth much like, yeah I’ll say it, projectile vomit. My son and his girlfriend are struggling with life decisions and I hear myself telling them that what they want won’t work, they can’t afford it, it isn’t practical, etc. Argh! This is not the kind of mother that I am. I’m a shoot from the hip, tell it like I see tempered by love and understanding kind of mom. I try not to tell anybody how to live their life. And here I am doing just that. Get off my shoulders, get out of my head!
Meanwhile, my recently deceased mother and father can’t find room on my shoulders, so they have settled in mid-chest. They don’t say much; just make sure that I know they are there. When they were alive I always felt a kind of psychic connection, I could feel them out there somewhere in the cosmos and assumed that when they died, I would feel their absence. There were actually about five days just before my mother actually passed that I couldn’t feel her. Well, I was wrong about feeling an absence. They are with me stronger now that they are dead than they ever were when they were alive. It’s as if they decided that since they were absent the bulk of my life from my life that they are going to stick around in the afterlife and make up for lost time. To their credit it feels as though they have left the pain and other crap from their lives on earth behind, and are now more interested in offering love and companionship. If I was willing to let down the boundaries, brick walls, and various other kinds of defense mechanisms that I was forced to erect over the years to protect myself, their intentions might have some positive effect. But I’m not, so they don’t. They are offering me exactly what I wanted, but not offering it when I wanted it. And that knowledge brings up all the pain I have felt in my life, and it sits on my chest beside my parents.
My beloved Miriam, also recently deceased, my surrogate mother/aunt/loving friend, hovers off to the side, not out of sight, not out of mind, and never irritating or painful. She was no saint when she was alive, and let’s be honest, who would want a saint in their life? Not me. I like deep complicated people with flaws who offer me unconditional love. Her physical absence from my daily life is the most painful of all. With her help I found so much of myself…I don’t know how to explain…I don’t have words. I love her. I miss her. It hurts. Yet I can still feel her.
And these celestial bodies; ghosts; impressions; remnants of memories; whatever they are, they are damned heavy. And their weight hurts. Logic says that the pain will subside, as I move through my grief the strong sense I have of each of these people will slowly drift farther and farther away. Never so far that I won’t feel them, or remember them, but the pain will abate enough to function and continue to live my life. And when that happens, I will still miss them. I will even miss the pain.