I see a small cloud in the sky sort of in the shape of an anatomical heart. I so much want to ask you if you can see it too, or if you just see a slightly muddled shape. So many things I have thought of to ask you since you’ve been gone. And I can’t.
From 21 September, 2018
So this is how Gary and I discovered that he had aphantasia, and that I have hyperphantasia. If you, too, “dream blind” or at the opposite end, “cannot unsee” things, I think you’ll be interested in this and the attendant questionnaire. This article, written two years before Gary died, is what allowed us to truly begin fixing some terribly broken things in our marriage.
Nine months, six hours, and twenty-nine minutes ago, the doctors called your time of death.
You’ve been gone the same amount of time it takes a human baby to be born.
I spent most of today hoping for distraction; trying for oblivion, something to keep me occupied enough to not think. I went to the pottery; that piece I’d hated? I reglazed and put back in the salt. It is gorgeous, Gary, transformed, glowing with a deep intensity and quiet. Nothing resembling calm, no, but definitely Quiet. There is a depth to its finish, a complexity in details that didn’t exist before; details that only came through after another 2300° fire. There is a warmth, there, as if it holds on to some of that fire.
I’m trying so hard to make it through a day without weeping openly, trying desperately to choke down all of the sharpness, and then I think, why? Why bother trying to not feel? I mean, sure, keep it together in public but in the car? The bathroom at work? At home? Why not just melt? Why not just give in? Why try at all?
This is why. Keeping enough of my head level and my hands steady so I can make this. This is why. Bringing this bowl from a hunk of raw clay through three firings, neglect, dispassion, disapproval. This result, this bit of beauty, this is why I need to try.
I know that if you were here, I’d be excitedly explaining to you why this piece is so special, the unpredictability of this perfect a finish. You’d listen, not really getting why I was so excited about something at the furthest extreme, an unorthodox version of beauty, but maybe by now you’d be able to appreciate my passion, even without agreeing with it. Your inability to appreciate so abstract a piece was just beginning to soften when you died. You were getting it.
You were getting me.
I can be happy, with that. That very beginning; I can be happy with that.
I miss you, today and every day. always, your curious girl💜💜
The Salty Widow 