Dear Worry

The Deep Well

Dear Worry,

I’ve been mourning more lately. Crying. I think some of it is the weather. The trees are out in full Texas glory, along with the rising heat. Texas summer is in my body. The smells, the rain on the pavement, even the taste of the water out of the faucet. For my body, this has always been home.

My dad is still here.

Each week, after physical therapy, I visit he and my grandmother at the Austin Memorial Cemetery. I sit with them. Listen to the cars out on MOPAC while the birds sing. Just now, the field across the way is in full wildflower bloom. It’s a cemetery, and I never quite know how to really feel about it all, I just try and think about them. Let them know I’m still here. That I know we’re still together.

My grandmother was a florist. Not long ago she sent me a message from the other side: Bring me some flowers. So I did. Fully knowing that the cemetery management wouldn’t like it, and the plant—a red flowering annual— would likely die in the Texas heat. But it’s been several weeks now, and I’m so surprised to find it still blooming, still alive. It’s right between them. It’s roots staying nourished in the already cracked soil. But there’s a spigot nearby, so I’ve made it a habit to water.

“I know,” I tell the little plant destined for ash, “but you’re alive now. And that seems to be the way things go.”

For most of her life, my grandmother lived two miles away on Rosedale Avenue. I park the car next to it. Giving me the same point-of-view I’d had as a kid from inside the house’s lovely nineteen-forties style rooms. Dark and cool inside, the park across the street and neighborhood were always full of people, just as they are now. The tennis courts. The swings. The basketball court.

The pool where I learned to swim isn’t open yet, but I notice a man scurrying about its sidewalk, moving hoses and equipment, as if to prepare.

Outside the old two-story house are two pecan trees. Their shade has expanded along with their height. Today there’s a gardener working on the sprinklers. He goes flippantly in and out of of the back yard—giving me a rare peek past the fence toward the concrete steps we used to climb at the back door.

Inside there are ice cubes shaped like half moons, and tiny coca-colas in glass bottles. There are cabinets full of real silver-ware, and an ironing board that comes down out of a wall. A real crystal chandelier lights the living room where there are built-in-bookcases full of large hard-backed books written by people with too-long names. Longfellow. Wordsworth. Dictionary.

I can smell them.

Cigarettes and dust and old house.

My grandmother is sitting on her chair. My dad is on the red velvet couch that looks like a giant sleigh, and I’m there listening to his heart beat, letting the sound of his voice bring Rest. His arms are around me. His mother and he talk and smoke while I drift off to sleep.

I feel you wanting to protect me. Worried that the grief is too much. Too tied to the next thing and the next, until losing them leads right up to losing my son. What I hoped my for my children. Wondering if I ever made them feel this timeless kind of love where my arms are around them forever.

Love is like a dial inside. I think of my dad carrying me on his shoulders back to the house for lunch. The promise of a movie and dinner together. How everything looked from up there. How vibrant.

I think of everything that is gone…and the dial turns again. The love is still here, it just longs for somewhere to go.

You’re worried the feelings will swallow me. That it’s been so long since I felt that childlike-unconditional-love, that the feeling will stir too much regret. Loss. I’ll get trapped in the thens and all of the things I could’ve done differently. So I listen to you. Let you guard me. Breathe.

I day dream more about the park and the pool and what it was like to dive under water for the first time. I remember my dad swimming with me on his back and imagining that we were like whales. I remind you that Time is like this—back and forth, endless and totally finite. Grief rises, but it doesn’t swallow me.

So I cry.

Sitting in my car, on my corner, next to a house that was my haven. All the summers when I knew for sure that I would see my dad for at least a week.

My grandmother, so elegant, so stylish, turned me on to old movies, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Alfred Hitchcock, and everything else that was on after ten o’clock at night. In the mornings, she rose at nine. Pressed the button on her chrome percolator and sat in front of a large rounded mirror and velvet swivel seat and fixed herself up for the day.

God would I love to talk to her now— about getting old.

I have the same hair as her—even the same funny little wave of curl. The only memory I have of someone telling me I could do something with my creativity was her. “You could be a clothes designer” she said, as I drew a series of dresses on old thin rice paper from her typewriter.

You feel the seat underneath me. My hands on the steering wheel. I bring you back to now. “I didn’t have time for this when they passed,” I tell you. I didn’t have time to really feel it. What I knew it meant. Your grip on my throat relaxes. “You don’t need to worry about these feelings anymore,” I add, “they want to come out.”

I feel my dad and grandmother with me as I drive away. Their hands on my shoulders. My son in the passenger seat. We go by the pool. There’s fresh blue water that’s finally replaced the winter’s dusty white concrete.

When I get home, I squeeze Kyle a little harder. When he hugs me back, I lean in and let everything sink into his arms. You want to resist. Keep me safe. I feel you shielding. Watching. There’s just been so much loss. You want to count it. You want to parse it out. As if to keep parts of me in reserve.

A conservation effort.

I understand. I do.

“How was it?” He asks.

I tune into his heartbeat, and I’m back on the red velvet couch, listening.

I turn the dial up.

“The pool is full of water,” I say.

Love,
Kris