In those early days of grief, short on sleep, forgetting to eat, I felt as though I were in a liminal state, not quite alive myself, which made me feel remarkably close to Steve. During that same period, I was continually having amazing encounters with strangers—people who would pop up and offer help, whether at the post office or grocery store, or just say something kind. At the time, I never doubted that they were embodiments of him.
One day I met a man with the name of an angel. He was French. His accent was so thick it sounded fake. We got to talking and I told him what had happened. “You’re going to be fine,” Emmanuel said right away. “Something bad always leads to something good.” He spoke from personal experience. His partner had died six years earlier. But he did not use that word, died, as he told me his story. Nor did he say passed away, a euphemism I had come to hate. Instead, Emmanuel said, “When my partner disappeared …”
I knew this was not a case of poor English, a bungled translation. Still, I had to say something. “You said ‘disappeared’—”
He nodded.
“That’s exactly how it feels for me, too.”
One might think that for someone who has lost a partner or spouse, nights would be hardest, loneliest. For me, this was not the case. I was used to being alone at night, the only one awake. I didn’t even have more than the usual trouble sleeping after the first few weeks. I suppose this was partly because Steve and I had never been bedtime cuddlers or spooners, so I was not missing something I’d once had. That said, it was a long time before I was able to take his pillow from his side of the bed. I did not dare. The night after he died, I found that a sliver of light from a streetlamp shone through the blinds just so and cast a single yellowy tendril across his pillow. It was the opposite of a shadow. Which is as clear a definition as I can come up with for the soul.
With morning, the light was gone, and I found the days empty and agonizing. It would take about three years for this feeling to pass—a thousand days, give or take—people who had been through this told me. As it turns out, they were right. What no one said is something I discovered on my own: A thousand days is a thousand nights is a thousand chances to dream about him.
Usually it went like this: Someone digs up his corpse and initiates CPR; he revives in an instant, no problem. I see him walking, talking, a latter-day Lazarus with a flattop and a beautiful body and a crooked grin. Back from death but unchanged by death, with one crucial difference: He does not recognize me. It is I, not he, who has been transformed.
For a while, I tried going on dates—dinner, a movie, that kind of thing. I met a few nice guys. But I could not disguise my lack of interest. There was one man I saw for about a month. His name was, you guessed it, Steve. Even though we had been intimate from the start, we didn’t end up spending the night together until the fourth week. I can still picture the moment when he turned over to go to sleep. His back, illuminated by moonlight, reminded me of the disappeared Steve’s.
That was the last time I tried that for a long spell. From then on, I would send them home or, depending on the situation, leave myself. Insomnia was my excuse: I would rather not-sleep in my own bed, I explained. This was not altogether true. I would have liked to stay but could no more imagine falling asleep with someone else than I could imagine falling in love again.
Curiously, though, the reverse sometimes occurred: I would be with a lover, before I made my exit. I’d have him wrapped in my arms as we talked in the aimless, dreamy way that lovers do, like two analysands to an unseen Jung. A pause stretches into a long lull and I hear that unmistakable change in breathing—he has fallen asleep, and improbably, I feel responsible, as though I, of all people, possess the arms of Hypnos. It seems like a small miracle. But here’s the rub: As I draw him closer and nuzzle his neck, I cannot help remembering what the Greeks so wisely knew: The god of sleep has an identical twin, Thanatos, the god of death.
Spring Shadows
BLACK CROW