How can I justify, or even describe, the things that won’t leave my head, even
though I fervently wish they would?
And people.
Don’t let’s get started – people who died more than twenty years ago? Why do
they come into my head now? Is it because I brushed scarily close to death myself, just over a year ago, and
realize my time may be shorter than I ever expected?
Can I even go there?
How many deaths, how many realizations? Bohdan, my beloved violin teacher, showed a side of himself to me that I was reluctant to see, but recognized nonetheless. He was what we would nowadays call “inappropriate”. At the end of our lessons (many years ago when the awareness wasn't there yet), he always hugged me, but his hugs were enveloping, almost suffocating, and they went on forever. I honestly wondered if his wife was going to burst through the door (she owned the music store where he was a teacher) and discover us. He talked endlessly about “opening chakras”, but it got especially problematic when he went on and on about “genital chakras” and how women needed to masturbate more. Orgasms would cure anything! This verges on cult talk, reminding me of the Maharishi groping women before the Beatles blew the whistle on him.
But looking back at the last time I saw him, a year before his death, I realize now he had fallen pretty far and was living inside himself. His wife had died, though he refused to admit it (he said there was no death, which I'm having a hard time believing, these days). Grief had worn him down, and he seemed to have lost his purpose, his joie de vivre.
But there was more - I couldn't look away from things that I used to try to ignore. I saw someone who casually stepped on women's boundaries, and it made me uncomfortable. I was kind of ashamed to admit to myself that he creeped me out, and I did not want to meet with him again. No doubt I was able to cut him more slack all those years ago. But you can’t turn back insight – it’s yours forever, and it changes you on a molecular level.
Who else am I finally recognizing as "inappropriate"? Do I HAVE to go into Gabor Mate again? I don’t, but for some weird reason he won’t leave my head. I don’t even like the man, find him cold and dismissive, but it’s just possible that way back in 2005 (yes! THAT long ago), we “had” something, some sort of connection that mattered. A lot of it was through music. But didn’t that end a long time ago, decades? And what about the betrayal: not only stealing some of my ideas and repeating them uncredited in one of his books, but describing me in the same book (seriously, after our so-called friendship in which I shared a lot of sensitive stuff), as “a manic-depressive with a long history of alcoholism. who still attends AA meetings after 15 years.” Obviously describing an emotional cripple in the iron lung of a 12-step program. So much for mutual admiration. He not only pitied me, but shoved me into a category in which he felt comfortably distant (diagnosing and treating addicts on the notorious downtown eastside, even having affairs with several of them - yes, he did that, and got away with it).
Then there is poor Glen, and why can’t I keep him buried? The way he died was so macabre and shocking that I can’t compare it to anything or anyone else. I understand his exit, I see why he couldn’t go on, he had careened in the extremes of bipolar illness for 65 years and was sucked dry. There was a police report filed after he escaped from the psychiatric ward, took a bottle of pills and washed it down with beer, then waited to pass out and freeze to death beside the railroad tracks. The police report described him as 6’2’ and 150 pounds. Glen had always been a big guy, stocky and round-faced, but in the most recent photo of him he looked like someone's ghost, not even his own, with an eerie smile and glazed eyes, and a front tooth knocked out.
No one should have to die like this, but macabre as it was, there was a dark poetry in it. Glen had struggled so hard and had so many suicide attempts that he had spent time in a coma and had brain damage, then had a stroke. His gift with words was diminishing, and that may have been the final straw.
But TWENTY years ago – what is this? I try to live in the now, I try to savor the moment, and most days I manage at least a semblance of it. But meantime, there is all this other stuff rattling around. Insanely, I have thought of contacting Gabor – I even tried to before that disastrous Prince Harry debacle, but if he ever saw it he never responded. Is it something to do with what was going on with me 20 years ago?
It was, mostly, horrible, but eventually did lead to a huge change of direction, a massive shift, and more happiness than I had ever thought possible through the birth of my grandchildren – one born a year for four years. I was in Grandma heaven, and young enough – only 50 – to get down on the floor with them, make glorious messes, take part in hilarious chasing games. I got to be a child again, only I did it right this time. I was the happy child I never got to be.
Now they’re all grown up, and I’m left at another crossroads. So what does my brain do? Go backwards? Maybe that’s it - . I don't seem to have a forwards right now, so I just live in the day. Not a bad deal, but how long can it go on? I wonder if there is another epiphany left in me. The things that fed me for so long are becoming frustrating and inadequate. What’s next?
