Aloe & Moss

I read an internet thing not too long ago that I’ve not really been able to shake. It talked about people that are sewn into your life and when they leave, they don’t just go – they rip apart the fabric of you.

That was a pretty good demonstration of loss for me. I could see it, what a failure in fabric sewn together looks like. (a hole. It looks like a hole. But more dramatic)

It’s hard to describe to someone that hasn’t had a traumatic loss what it is to lose. Words don’t ever get at the core of the situation. I can dance around it. But I can’t quite describe it. Not really.

One of the reasons I fell out of the writing habit was because this exercise is healing through hurt. Like when your back hurts and you lay on a hard, flat surface and it initially hurts worse but then it starts to feel better… I dread sitting down at a keyboard and screen to write out my feelings and make things worse.

I know it is temporary, and that getting these things out is far more beneficial in the end, but that initial step? Man that sucks.

According to movies and TV shows, water on a keyboard can cause sparks. Last I checked, tears were water and you shouldn’t cry on a keyboard. I mean I do have Kleenex, so it’s not a legitimate visual, but still. You get my point

Now it hurts, and there is a fire hazard, and I’m unoriginal because I don’t really add anything new to this conversation around trauma and grief and loss.

“Rising Cairn” is a 4,000 lb. stone sculpture that is the work of artist Celeste Roberge, a wire-form person filled with rocks. “Melancolie” by Albert Gyorgy is a bronze man slumped on a bench with no chest. Both super famous works that, if you’ve seen the internet, you’ve seen these sculptures. These are opposed imagery. They complement the simultaneous weight of trauma and the emptiness left behind. They each tell half the story.

Art is the visual where our words fail. “Let me show you” is the refrain we give our children when they need to learn a new skill. It’s not with words, it is when we engage in visual communication that we can really demonstrate the inner workings of life.

It’s why we romanticize a shared glance and sweeping landscapes and why Baz Lhurmann has a successful filmmaking career.

I’ve had friends that painted Z’s name into rocks and shells and left them in the wild. Whomever finds them will know they represent an emotion. A visual demonstration that isn’t quite so big and public, but far more personal.

I don’t want to talk about it. I want it acknowledged. I don’t want to talk about it.

But if you can see it, if I can show you? That solution is best.

There is the matter of lives sewn together. These threads of life that were supposed to keep us together until the day I died. Not the day she died. Nor the day he died. These threads failed – everything let lose and unraveled and then all I’m left with is this stupid hole in my life. Life has frayed to failure. That is a visual I can share.

Zero Stars. Do not recommend.