14, 2, 18 and 99 matters of time

I am woman who is decidedly not a mathlete, yet I am obsessed with counting. This post is about numbers, those theoretically pure empiric indicators of time’s passage and all that goes along with the slow counting of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and so on to inaccurate infinity. Pythagoras and his mystical manipulations might have been misguided in believing that numbers hold an intrinsic magic, but there’s no denying that they carry unassailable power.

On the surface, they’re just figures. 14 years. 2 years. 18 months. 99 days. But as with make-up, linoleum and Potemkin Villages, a pretty façade can hide a Midas load of loss. This final week in April marks a series of anniversaries. Fourteen years since my ex-boyfriend Will placed a significantly dog-eared copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddharta on the floor, entered his closet, put a needle in his arm, and shot himself up with a lethal mixture of heroin and cocaine. Two years since my long-lost biological father sent me that digital bolt from the blue and claimed his stake in my life. Eighteen months since my ex-almost-fiancé Donny and I split. And 99 days since we last spoke.

The weather of this end-of-April has mirrored the weather of that end-of-April fourteen years ago when I got the phone call that Will had died. It has been freakishly warm, warm in that uncanny untimely way that nearly robs the warmth of its pleasure. April in Gotham should not reach 92 degrees. This year, like that year, spring sprang like a jungle cat and wrapped the city in its furry close embrace. After Will’s death I spent a series of odd, disjointed days as an unwitting drug widow—I had not known that Will had loved me as deeply as he had until his funeral; I had not known that he had considered me The One; I had broken up with him six months before, and I had moved on with the single-minded Acela speed—and every April since then, I have felt Will’s death hanging apparitional. This year the ghostiness has been especially acute. The trees aggressive budding, the acres inappropriate and glaring white bare skin, and my own excess of free time have pushed me further into reverie than I like.

I don’t miss Will, but I do wish he weren’t dead in an ambient way. The loss nonetheless remains.

Two years ago, I woke up, flicked on my computer and found an email from my biological father. I’d not heard from him in 44 years. For about eighteen months, our relationship remained steadfastly electronic; we sent hundreds of fevered emails, almost like those of lovers in their joy. We did not call one another. When he came to the Gotham area, he made no attempt to see me. Our correspondence began with frenzied, gleeful steps, but it soon became clear that I was not following his lead. I was not the dutiful daughter welcoming back her prodigal father with open arms and boundless forgiveness. He bristled, objected, lashed out, and grew petulant. The last I heard from him was in November. He sent me an email whose subject line was “Hoping you’re not wishing you weren’t born.” He was sending me birthday greetings. I’ve not corresponded with him since.

It’s hard to miss someone you never knew. And yet I still miss the idea of a father I’d carried with me from childhood. My biological father showed himself to be untrustworthy, immature and hurtful. The loss nonetheless remains.

Eighteen months is a squidgy time-frame; it’s the only number given here that is not exact, but then given its significance, it could hardly be carved in stone. Here’s the thing: many years ago my stepfather left my mom after she’d confessed an affair. He was torn up and went to see a therapist. He told me a story. “I can’t eat,” he’d said to his therapist. “I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. I feel so much goddamn pain. How long will it last?” He said he expected his therapist to dole out some soulful emo panacea along the lines of “until you come to terms with the bird that is your love’s fluttering beauty,” but the therapist instead looked my stepfather in the steely eye and said, “Eighteen months.”

Eighteen months is the average amount of time it takes an averagely sane human to cope with a loss. And it’s actually pretty accurate. From the evening that Donny showed he was neither living up to his word to marry me, nor was he taking responsibility, I started clock-counting. I knew that the pain I felt was finite and its end was hovering somewhere around a year and a half in the future. For months, I felt tremendous, solar plexus searing pain. I found myself plunged into an industrial-sized vat of I-wanna-die, and I was pretty close to doing it myself. I made plans. I wrote a note. It’s a testament to the power of my friends to my unconscious tick-tick-ticking math that I’m still here, about eighteen months later, feeling fairly free.

Which leads to the next number of 99, the only exact figure I have. It has been 99 days since I last spoke to Donny; I know this because Obama has been in office 100 days, and we last talked the day after the inauguration. 99 Donny-free days have passed, and in that time I have morphed from a person who missed him with a sweet acuity to one who doesn’t really miss him at all. I once wrote of missing Donny like ellipsis, missing these bits and pieces of him, his Jersey twang, his beech-tree smell, his long fingers, the point of his tongue when he laughed. I think of him, of course—how could I not? But it would be inaccurate to name what I feel for Donny as missing. You only miss what you want; I don’t want that man.

And yet I might miss missing Donny. It’s its own oddness, the loss of loss, the strange nostalgia for pain I don’t exactly feel anymore. There aren’t words in English for the faint echo of a loss that has healed. It would be nice if there were. The loss nonetheless remains.

I look at this string of numbers—14, 2, 18, 99—and think of the first few lines of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding     
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing     
Memory and desire, stirring     
Dull roots with spring rain.

If April is the cruelest, and certainly a case could be made that in my life it has a sadistic streak, it nevertheless holds a strange and dogged beauty. Memory and desire do live hand in hand, as much as they die side by side. Time passes, and as it does, it marks us, quiet and indelible as ballpoint pens. We remember our losses, but we also see what has grown because of them. The dead are buried; the living rise; two phrases whose syntax reflect their truth. I am a sum of numbers, both infinite as pain and fixed as healing, and I shall count at least as long as I am alive.

And then, when I am gone, or when you are, the loss nonetheless remains.

Comments

[Cosmic Dan]

April is the cruellest month? C'mon, April is the month when the lilacs and irises bloom. April is the month when the bluebirds return and the goldfinches color truly changes to gold. April is the month (here, in Upstate NY) when the golf courses open for the season. April is the beginning of spring. April can be beautiful, when the cold memories of winter can be brushed aside along with memories that we wish to be eliminated. Let's celebrate the beginning of a new season, not to dwell on the one long gone.

[chelsea g.]

I don't want to brush aside or eliminate memories. You certainly are welcome to do so, but that's not my gig. This week in April has a lot of personal resonance for me, and not all of it is good. Sure there are daffodils and I appreciate them. But that's not all there is, and I appreciate that too.

best,
chelsea g.

[Unnur María]

April is the cruellest month. But to experience loss you must first have loved. Whether that love was based on a real person or an idea. And as the sappy ones say, it is better to have loved and lost...

I suppose it's been about 3 years that I've been your avid reader. In that time I have gotten engaged, broken off the engagement, gotten engaged again, married and divorced. My divorce was hell but even though I could go back in time I am not sure I would do things much differently.

On a sidenote I have been living in Mexico city for the past five months and here April sure is the cruellest month. There may be articles in the media pointing out that more people die here from poverty and crimes than from influensa but the sorrow and fear that you smell in the street these days really makes me feel like giving statistics the finger.

Kisses,
U.

[alphagirl]

beautiful...

[plynn78]

This really struck a chord with me. My Husband of almost eleven years will be moving out this weekend (I know, technically that would be May) a full month after I asked him for a separation. I also lost my father right around this time 4 years ago. Everything seems to happen around the same time. Of course, I also Celebrate the Birth of My youngest this time of Year, so it's not all bad.

On a side note, as I have not said so before now, I really enjoy reading your blog. Thanks.

[minstrel hussain boy]

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

e.e. cummings

take all the time you need chere.

[b]

18 months, huh? I wish I had known that at the time of my breakup in June 2007. People told me it would take me half the time of the relationship to recover from the heartbreak of it ending. The relationship had spanned 18 months, so I expected to be better in nine. But when that March rolled around, I wasn't even close. It took me fully until October 2008 before I could honestly say that the pain had finally retreated, I had come to terms with the loss, and I was ready to try to open my heart to someone new. It promptly started raining men (hallelujah), and I started dating again and soon found someone I wanted to be with.

I just wish I had had the benefit of your dad's therapist's steely wisdom during that dark time. It definitely added to my trauma to think I was taking far too long to get past it, and I thought it meant that maybe I was just so deeply wounded I would never feel good again. Now I know that my time frame for recovery was actually normal and typical. I wonder why 18 months is such a magical amount of time? Uncanny.

Congratulations on completing your own 18 months of hard time. Welcome to the other side, and may you find all kinds of worthy treasures here.

[Sarcastic Bastard]

You are a great, great, writer. I have been reading for awhile now, and I am blown away by this post.

[Frank Montana]

April is when Rwanda went insane with their ethnic killing. For me April is The Masters. Yep it's the Old South at it's best and worse. But you can't beat the beauty of the place. For me it means coming out of the doldrums of winter and the beginning of warm weather. I love nature coming alive and the hot weather. It was a pleasant surprise. Now if only these recurring rain showers would go away!

[hele]

"And then, when I am gone, or when you are, the loss nonetheless remains."

what a beautiful line. it makes the sorrow in my heart converge and as a result hope diverges.

[betty]

Your words replay in my head long after I log off. My daughter is just now starting to explore new relationships with men after a long painful marriage. I am wishing she wouldn't. I don't want her to be in pain ever again. But "love and loss," goes together like a horse and carriage. Damn, why is that? Myself,I have become crusty and immune to the need of a man in my life-- repeated scarring I suppose. I can enjoy April exquisitely alone without listening to some oaf, brush, rinse and spit in my sink every morning.