Stages of Being at Home: Grief

To grieve is to reconcile a sense of loss, re-evaluating yourself in terms of now being without whatever it is you have outlived. But we do so selectively, and surely we have to in the face of all that we could grieve.

Each moment is lost time, lost opportunities or possibilities or potentialities. If one chooses to view it that way, each passing second is the removal of branching potential tracks that life could take, a narrowing of options, or perhaps a fatalistic focusing that approaches something like binding destiny.

But to see things as such is maddening.

So instead we grieve the near-concrete. When I was a child, I understood my great-grandmother's death as not the loss of her, per se (for I have memories! and photos! and heaven to look to!) but rather I understood it as the loss of being able to hug her, to feel her love for as long as I would choose to hold on. That was the threat of death.

While I was at home, I grieved and shared in my family's grief. It hurts to lose and there is a lot of loss we could hurt over. But mainly my family shared the time that is rushing past us, and we love as we choose to hold on.

Grief was just one part of the trip home, and grief is always a part of life going on.

Stages of Being at Home: Rest

Louisville is an amazing city, especially when you visit. There was no work, no commitments, and no deadlines save the flight out. Everything is familiar, comfortable, and pregnant with memories. The same books yet to be read, the same scholarly articles waiting to be filed, the same guitars to be rejoined with the others I brought to CO, all of this makes me feel like I haven't left this life completely behind.

As I travel more and see the sadly homogenized cityscapes (the same Wal-Marts, same fast food joints, same hotels becoming faux-familiarity-inducing landmarks), it is good to see my home not in stasis but rather following a known path.

Even though friends have grown and changed, they are there and we pick up exactly where we left off. I find myself shocked that their love has not waned, and we exult in time passed and time shared. It feels natural but precious still.

Old love letters, ridiculous photos, awards from school, presents and inside jokes, these all just wait there in my room in no hurry to be found. Friends, familiar trees and birdcalls, old bookstores and coffee shops, my family, they all have kept a spot reserved for me still.

And so I sink into them all, thrill to find that I still fit, and I rest.

Arrived

I got up at seven this morning after two hours of sleep and left my bags with the wife of the owner of the hotel. It took fifteen minutes to walk to and find my school, el IES La Sisla. I went to the secretary where a man entered, sized me up and called me ¨Lucas Matthews.¨

So they have been expecting me. I wondered if they were aware of my existence, much less my arrival! I was brought back to meet the male group of directors enjoying a cafe and incomprehensibly greasy churros. These sounded unappealing to my yet-empty stomach, but I received them and dipped the latter in the former, in the fashion of the men. I was of great interest to them at first but receded into the background as they resumed conversation.

My directora found me and speaks a heavily British English, which is charming. I sat in a meeting of English teachers who seemed intimidated to speak to me in my tongue. They (eight women, one man) asked me how I say my name and laughed saucily at my pronunciaton as if I had said something flirtatious.

I attended two classes where the students were very shy, the young girls blushing and giggling to the point of being unable to speak. I waited and fielded questions, like ¨Do you have a girlfriend?¨ (this was the first question, and is much too difficult to answer in my current situation, so I replied ¨More or less.¨) After introductions Sra. Prado sensed my fatigue and let me go a bit early, so I sat outside to write this.

A bell rang and the school exploded with noise from every open window of scraping chairs and pushed desks and closing bags and idle chatter being picked up only to die out gradually when the bell rings once more. This is a different school than mine, no doubt, but the students are still awkwardly stumbling toward pubescence and still sporting the unfortunate bangs and mullets and windbreakers. They kick and threaten and clap and call out ¨Tu madre¨and tease the opposite sex and perhaps I am not so foreign after all.

But this is not home. One teacher asked me where home is and I almost replied, ¨Harding University until she leaves there¨ but on a quick second thought I decided that ¨Kentucky¨was much simpler, even though their only point of reference for this is the fried chicken of which they are enthusiastic devotées.

The students are yelling at me and waving from windows on the second floor, and merely staring from the third. I do not mind being an oddity, for it brings with it the assumption and usually illusion of being special, unique, and valuable. To these I make no claim, but for now I will correct no assumptions either.

Things are getting better, no doubt. I just ate my first true meal in two days, and I feel strong. Now I just need a decent internet connection that can support Skype.

Feel free to comment, to let me know that you are reading. I have no idea if anyone sees this.