I have mentioned before how difficult it is for me to find the line between being honest and oversharing. I can’t always tell if I’m exercising privacy or being dishonest. I also can’t tell if I’m being vulnerable or just a burden. I guess what I’m trying to preface is that this letter is an attempt at simple honesty where I’ve previously tiptoed around the truth. Forgive me if I stumble a bit. But the beauty of darkness is eventually you stumble into something good.
"Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss." — Rebecca Solnit
I’m sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport thinking about loss. The last time I was in Chicago—the first time I was in Chicago—was ten years ago. I was married then. My grandma was still alive. My puppy hadn’t yet died in my arms.
The timing of my passing through Chicago again seems peculiar. Two days ago was the one year anniversary of my puppy’s death, and Chicago was the first vacation I took just a few months after I got him. I’ve lived without my grandma for a decade which seems unfathomable. And my divorce has been final for a little over a year. If we were still married, our anniversary would be just a few weeks away.
I’m thinking about how weird it is that some dates that used to be full of meaning lose their significance, while other dates you previously thought nothing about suddenly weigh so much. I can’t help it, I remember her death date more than I do her birthdate. And how silly it sounds to mourn the death of November 7th.
I’m thinking about how much history a place is capable of holding.
Optimus came into my life at Christmas in 2012—a month after I started going to therapy because I wasn’t doing well. (& here my hesitancy kicks in. How honest should I be about how unwell I was? If I share the full weight of it will you look at me differently? Will I be dumping too much on you if I do?) Let’s just say there was debilitating anxiety. I found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed every day. It was the first time I voiced there might be trouble in my relationship, which only resulted in me retreating further into my shell.
For years it was me and Opti against the world. He saved me in a lot of ways. Every day before I went to work I would spend a few minutes assuring him that it was okay. Every day I made a promise to him that I’d come back.
We were made for each other. Two peas in a pod. Soulmates. He was moody, spiteful, and so full of life. He was a cat in a dog’s body. He wasn’t especially affectionate unless he really loved you. When I moved to New York I had to leave him with my mom. He had terrible anxiety and I knew the city noise wouldn’t do well for him which probably should have been my first clue it wouldn’t do well for me either.
I was lucky enough to spend the last year and a half of Opti’s life with him. Back in my hometown, recovering from the aftermath of everything, it was once again me and Opti against the world. Every day I told him it was okay, and every day I promised I’d come back.
He got sick one morning out of the blue. October 7, 2022. I stayed up with him all night, massaging his back because you could see how uncomfortable he was. The vet came. She gave him four shots. It turns out he had pancreatitis. Within 8 hours, at 6:30a on October 8th, the day before his tenth birthday, his pancreas ruptured and I held him, his head resting against my chest, as he struggled to breathe. His eyes locked on mine, and all I could do was repeat what I said to him every day, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I miss him. I miss assuring him that we would be okay. I miss waking up every morning to him curled up on my pillow beside me. I miss knowing I was his favorite person. But I would go through all of it again if it meant I got to hold him as he had to leave. I would go through anything if it meant I would find my way back to him.
July, 2013. I’m six months into therapy, making decisions in service of moving forward. I find the trip to Chicago difficult to explain. There were a lot of moving parts to it. I was stagnant in my job. I was lonely in my relationship. I was lost in every sense. But I was trying.
Chicago reminds me of my grandma. Not because she was from here, or ever even visited this city, but she had a major stroke while I was running around these streets. She suffered from strokes for a long time, until she no longer suffered.
I was told she wouldn’t recover from this one, so we drove from Chicago straight to my hometown to see her. And then I went to work the following Monday. I received the phone call at work. I remember so vividly how absurd it felt to be crying alone in a closet. I remember wiping my tears and trying to walk out as if nothing had happened. I remember how I crumbled anyway when I asked my boss if I could go home.
I was having trouble understanding how only a week ago I had wanted so badly to move forward. I was angry at myself for wishing away time like that. I wanted to go back. I wanted to have never gone to Chicago. I wanted to have gone to visit my grandma instead; to have that cup of tea with her that she was always asking me to have. I was too young to understand that time takes things away from you.
I miss her a lot lately, and remembering is all I have left.
But memory is its own kind of death. I find it increasingly difficult to remember how she sounded, but it’s impossible for me to forget how I felt when she hugged me. It’s that feeling I miss the most.
The happiness is tinged with blue. My world, now without you.
I have lived a decade without her. Sometimes I worry whether she would be proud of who I’ve become, but I know there’s no need to worry. If there is one thing in my childhood I can be certain of, it’s my grandma’s love.
Life keeps moving and sometimes it feels like all we do is accumulate loss. I want to be able to tell her I figured out how to keep going, even though moving forward inevitably means leaving behind.
Joan Didion has a very famous line in her book, The White Album, “We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.” A brutal line, a heartbreaking scene. Joan, her husband, and their daughter on a trip to Hawaii, a fragile attempt at keeping a family together.
All of these years later, I can see how Chicago was an attempt at my own Hawaii. I was trying to determine what exactly was wrong with me that I couldn’t find a way to be happy. (Though the further away I get, the more clear this becomes.) I wanted then what I want now—novelty and freedom, and safety. The problem, I believed, lived within me.
There are places we go because we are looking for who we used to be, and there are places we go that remind us exactly who we were and it makes us desperate to forget.
Chicago is a memory I would be happy to forget.
(& this is where I feel most cautious. Relationships are complicated and I am not an impulsive person. I think through things. I take them as far as they can go. But how much of that process should I let others in on? This I can’t find an answer to.)
His ghost followed me for a long time after I moved out. Sitting in this airport it becomes apparent that it still does sometimes. I’m most interested in finding a way to look back without being angry or confused by what I see, and I want to look forward without the anxiety I feel in my attempt at leaving my past behind.
So much of my past involves a person I no longer speak to. I did the math. At the time of our divorce I had spent literally half of my life with him—sixteen of my thirty two years. How is a person supposed to reconcile that? He exists in so many places I exist. To pretend it never happened would be to pretend I never happened.
No, forgetting isn’t an option.
This, I think, is the beginning of looking the truth in the eye more directly. It has been suggested that it might be time for me to acknowledge that this relationship affected me more than I want to admit, in ways I don’t want to admit. It’s probably true. There are wounds I still can’t bear to touch.
I am in Chicago and nothing is like it used to be. Not that I’m here, really. Just in the in-between that makes you think about everything. Time is suspended here, and I am suspended. Everyone around me is moving along, blurring as they rush by, and I am standing still.
History clings to its home, and my history in Chicago is brief but complex. I don’t want to look at my past through the lens of pain, even as I’m aware that I only visited Chicago because I was in pain. I am rich in loss, and it is proof. Loss is proof of life.
This is what I was thinking about at the airport in Chicago.
Your best piece yet!