Fire and Frost

I'm back at the Bay. I'm sure none of you are shocked by this fact. The high for today is in the mid-50s, but there's a Nor'easter blustering its way toward us, so the wind chill is much cooler than mid-50s. The sandpipers are running in wild, dizzying serpentine lines, skipping in to the foam forming the shoreline, then scurrying away just as quickly. The waves are kicking up, the sand is cold and clammy under my bare feet, and I'm wrapped in the Mexican blanket I've had for 20 years. Braving and embracing it all, because I need this place, and this is where I come when I get full up of feels.

In a recent Instagram post, I said I hoped that someday soon I would find some words that are worthy of what this month has done. I don’t know if I’ve found anything worthy, but the words are dipping and swelling and spilling out all the same. 

October is my favorite month. It always has been. I adore summer, and Christmas is my favorite holiday, but October... October is new moments and old memories, the birth of change and the death of sameness. October is fire and color and frost and fade. It’s smoke and moss and wind and twilight. It’s air crisping up in your lungs and leaves crunching down under your feet, expansive clouds in blue and exuded clouds on your breath. It is everything. 

And my October, my beautiful October, has hurt me this year. Is it ridiculous to feel betrayed by a month of the year, by a calendar, by something that doesn’t know I exist and doesn’t know that I just.needed.peace? 

This year, I hate October. 

I don’t see the new beginnings, I only see the endings. I only see the loss. 

My stepdad passed away on October 10th, less than two weeks after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. It happened so quickly. So quickly that it still doesn’t feel real. I know it happened. I watched it happen, day after day, watched him suffer and waste away, kissed him goodbye and whispered my love to him after he was gone. I watched, aching and heartbroken, and at the same time, perversely relieved that he was no longer in pain, as he was taken from his home for the last time. I was there for all of it. And yet all of those moments feel like a memory from a dream. It happened too quickly. Beyond my comprehension, beyond my ability to believe.

October has been hard. The fire of it has burned me. The frost of it has numbed me. And I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m tired of being needed, even when I need to be needed. I’m tired of not sleeping, I’m tired of not eating, I’m tired of crying, I’m tired of the heaviness of grief weighing me down to my very bones, weakening me in my joints and my shoulders and my spine and my neck. I’m tired of mediating, and monitoring, and mothering, and, oh, please, God help me, I’m tired of mourning.

And I’m tired of complaining. I’m sure there are those around me who are tired of me complaining, too. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. I don’t want this to be the gravitational pull of my life that every day, every thought, and every thing revolves around; but this is what grief does. It consumes. It consumes as surely as the fire and frost of October consumes the last lingering days of summer. 

I wanted these words to be worthy of my stepfather. To tell the story of my life with him, my love for him, and why the loss of him is so monumental. And I will. Someday I will, I swear it. 

But today- just for today, I need to burn. I need to freeze. I need to die with the old and rise again with the new. I need to see the color and smell the smoke and live in what is left of my favorite month, and I need to forgive. Forgive what I can never comprehend, forgive what I can never forget, forgive that so, someday, I won’t be consumed. 

And then... then, the stories, the memories, the words worthy of a man who was a father to me, who lived a worthy life, will be born. Soon.