Fourth of July

I boarded a flight in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 16th and immediately put on my noise-cancelling headphones and played “Fourth of July” by Sufjan Stevens. Gratefully, the two and a half hour flight to Portland was sparse, so there was no one else seated in my row. When the song ended, I played it again. And then again. Soon we were in the still-dark sky as it turned from black to blue with the sunrise. I set Spotify to repeat that single track as a cumulation of tears that I’d been holding in since mid-afternoon the previous day finally broke through the dam. I cried the whole flight home.

Losing someone who is still alive is a death by a thousand small moments. Because you can always hold onto hope. There is always the promise that perhaps someday they will return. They aren’t actually dead. They’re living, breathing, going to work, making dinner, and watching movies on the couch. They grocery shop, wash their hair, and take out the trash. They celebrate birthdays and holidays. They have bad days and get sick. They continue to live their life… just without you. Their friends and family get to watch the wrinkles form at the corners of their eyes and the first streaks of gray come into their hair. And you won’t.

It feels silly to grieve someone who has not died. No one really understands it, least of all me. Yet I found myself on a flight home from what should have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience weeping uncontrollably as I listened to a song about a loved one dying. She should have been there in the empty seat next to me in the Greek Theater. I should have had that experience with her. And yet, I did not. I cheered for the show amidst a crowd of strangers and spent a sleepless night in a hotel room with people I met online. The joy I should have relished was stolen from me by the shred of hope that was shattered in her absence. This was not the first time this had happened.

I read a book on grief earlier in the year and found myself jealous of people whose loved ones actually passed away. They have no reason to hold onto hope for months, and in my case years, after losing someone. They know their person will never come back. But in my situation, I had no reason not to hope. She was only a phone call away. Yet, she never called. But what if someday she did? I held onto that hope. I gripped that hope so fiercely that I let it hurt me over and over again. Endless moments of hope shattered by her silence. I wish I could say this trip to LA was the last time I held out hope for her return, but it was not.

The truth is, some people would rather metaphorically die by vanishing from others’ lives than face the darkness inside of them. And because I loved her, I thought she was better than that. I always thought so highly of her, even when ruined hope for her return sliced my heart to ribbons. It’s human nature to hold others to the same standards one holds themself to. Because I would never run away like she did, I assumed she would act similarly. It felt impossible to accept that she was anything but the perfect woman I believed her to be. But as Wanda from the show Bojack Horseman once said, “When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.” I wish I was brilliant enough to write a line like that.

As my plane approached PDX, I began to recognize landmarks outside my window. The flight path crossed directly over where I’d lived in the first year after she decided she’d rather lose me than solve our problems. I saw the place I parked every day for work. My gaze followed the highway out to where I live now, Mt. Hood radiating in the morning sunlight. I flew over the grocery store I shop at each week and felt relieved to go back to my own mundane life of running errands and washing my hair. I wondered if she ever thought about me the way I thought about her. I wondered if she ever wanted to see the creases forming between my brows.

When the plane landed in Portland and we began to deboard, a few of the people seated nearby took an extra long look at me while I gathered up my backpack. I realized at that moment that even though I’d taken every measure to suppress the sound of my crying, it was inevitable that others had heard my sniffles on the sparse and quiet early morning flight. My noise-cancelling headphones and empty row lulled me into a false sense of isolation. The man seated in front of me looked as though he might ask me if I was alright, but remained silent.

I wondered what they thought of me, the lone woman who cried by herself for an entire two and a half hour flight. I’d not slept at all the night before, my eyes were red and puffy, and my blood sugar was perilously low. Haggard, tearstained, sallow, and shaky, I was a sorry sight. Yet no one looked upon me unkindly. I felt no judgement from the onlookers peering at me. Grief is a terrible, ugly thing and many people cannot stand to look at it for too long. But there were passengers on that flight who looked at me and witnessed my grief, even though they knew nothing of its origin. The silent empathy of strangers felt like soothing balm after so much painful silence from the woman I loved.

I still listen to “Fourth of July” from time to time and think about that trip where I listened to it on repeat and wept. But I am finally, at long last, letting go of the hope that kept me tethered to my pain for so long. Sometimes, it’s okay to lose hope. Sometimes, losing hope is the only way to feel better.

Like the deep royal blue of the sky as the last moments of night fade into day, there is life after loss. The darkness doesn’t last forever. A new day will break, whenever you’re ready to welcome it.