Interment

     Before my mom died, she made her pre-need arrangements.  She wanted to be cremated, wished not to have her ashes scattered but rather to have a memorial, something permanent.  A family friend who does woodworking made for us a beautiful urn, and when the time came my father and I kept it in our house in a place of honor, often with flowers and photos.  She had reserved a niche in a mausoleum, but we just kept things that way.  When I grew up and moved out Papa left it up to me to bring the urn to my new apartment, which I did.  I lived in my first apartment for 7 years, then moved last year to a new place.  Shortly after the move I was feeling a lot of fresh grief.  I was living now very close to where I'd grown up, I was also living alone for the first time in a long time since my best friend had been my roommate for the previous 3 years.  Maybe these were factors.  Sometimes grief just seems to renew itself spontaneously, triggered by unexpected details. 
      I was learning to play and sing this new song by Dave Matthews, "Gravedigger," that really moved me.  There's this poetic device he uses to begin each verse: a name, and years of death and birth.  "Cyrus Jones, 1810 -1913..."  invoking a picture in my mind of the traditional grave marker we provide for our loved ones, and I suddenly had a yearning to have that for my mother.  I wanted there to be some place for her where people passing by in a cemetery would see "Lois Roop, 1954-1994."  There seems so much significance in that simple description of a lifetime, such poignant simplicity.  I thought of the urn sitting near me in my bedroom where I was playing, and thoughts and feelings started swirling around about how I've felt over the years. 
     Over the next few months I did a lot of thinking, remembered that there was a reservation in the cemetery, and with a lot of help from Papa, we made arrangements to inter her cremains finally.  I was ready for that.  She would be laid in her final resting place. 
     This past summer my mother's sister,Aunt Ruthie and my cousin Sarah made plans to travel from their home in California to my cousin's wedding in Georgia and to visit me in Florida while they were out east.  My father and stepmother also joined us, and we had an unexpected opportunity to do this interment with Papa, Ruthie, and Sarah. 
    Being an adult now, I was able to have a bigger part in the interment, to make decisions, to physically place her urn in the mausoleum.  The timing seemed perfect, and my closest family was there with me. I feel grateful, and relieved.  Grateful to have my wonderful family, and relieved to have fulfilled my responsibility to her physical remains.  I feel like they're safe, now.  And more significantly, I have a place to go ceremonially, to set apart from ordinary life, to visit, pay respects, honor anniversaries and birthdays, and see her name,  forged in bronze, a visual reflection of her importance.

On Intimacy

I get lonely.  I want to be close to someone, to have a person who really knows me deeply.  She knew me like I was just a part of her, a satellite being. Another Her in a smaller external body.
    I used to have these really intense friendships when I was a little younger, where I felt compelled to share as much as I possibly could with them.  After my first serious romantic relationship imploded, mostly, I think, from that need to be so intimately close, I began to change the way I interact with people.  I still share intimate things with my friends, but not like I used to.  I feel independent, but I feel lonely.  My conversations are usually more about me listening, and when I talk a lot, it's more often about more non-personal topics.  I'm much more comfortable having male friends, because the emotions stay farther below the surface, usually.  However, I find that men are more emotionally sensitive than I used to think.
    Now I have a boyfriend who knows me as well as I think I can be known, because he can handle that in a way that never quite worked out before.  And I keep forgetting that he knows me so well.  I continuously feel like we just met, just fell in love, and I've felt like that for nine years.
    I live alone.  That usually surprises people.  I've chosen a man who is not going to live with me, marry me, have children with me, any of the things that most people see as major goals in life.  We live in an illusion of frozen time.  Just dating, nothing serious, just that I love you so much you feel like a part of me, and now and then you say something that reminds me there's really very little about myself I haven't exposed to you.  It's terrifying to be so close to someone now, and I fear his death in a presently conscious way far too often.  At least I can keep this distance from him physically, our lives mostly separate.  This unconventional relationship even serves to lead me to feel more distant from my other friends and family, because they don't understand this part of my life that is so significant.  When one has a spouse, people can go "Oh, right.  I know what that means.  I can understand that relationship."  This is, like, so weird that I don't even talk about it much.  Part of that is because I don't have anything wrong I need to talk through.  I usually talk with my friends about their relationships because they're having problems.  So no problems equals very little discussion.  That makes it seem even more unusual, but increasingly I'm hearing that people think we're "perfect."
    It's the best I can do, that's all.  If I share my soul with him, I must not share my home with him.  That would be too much.  I've shared a home with roommates with whom I've rarely spoken.  It's one or the other, not both.
   Before ending, I'll just address that the idea of ever having a child of my own is unthinkable.  I couldn't bear that kind of closeness.

Phases

         "No one sings me lullabies, and no one makes me close my eyes, and so I throw the windows wide and call to you across the sky."  -Pink Floyd

     Grief lingers, and I have to learn to accept that it is not a phase to get through or over.  It is a part of life that continues until one's own death.  At least until then, I don't know what happens after that.  Maybe in some people's lives grief doesn't begin as early, a loss has not yet occurred, so there are those who are my age, my peers, who have not entered this phase, but at some point most people live long enough to outlive somebody they care for very much.
     So, yeah, it still hurts, and I'm 28 now.  I no longer expect I'll ever be over it.