Tag: jus

That time of the year

1 Apr 2013 / Anamaria

Yesterday marked the beginning of a three-week period that I have been quietly dreading for some time now. Easter weekend, one year ago, was the last weekend we spent with Justin.

That Saturday we went to a dinosaur park in the Jura and then took the kids for lunch at Burger King, or as Ben likes to call it, the King of Burgers. It was a lovely day.

Sunday was Easter and we went to the Parc des Bastions with some close family friends. The moms hid Easter treats while the dads distracted the kids, and then after the kids had run around finding their surprises, we sat on the grass and drank Clairette de Die. It was a lovely day.

That Monday morning Justin woke up early and got ready to go to the airport. I told him that if he really wanted me to, I could wake up the kids and we would drive him to the airport. He laughingly told me to stay in bed, so I did. I kissed him goodbye and he left. That was the last time I saw him.

Nineteen days later Betty-Lynn came to my office and told me “Justin passed away last night.” Right at that moment my life fractured into a before and and after, with the time Justin was in Tanzania existing as a kind of interstitial period between the two. That final weekend we spent together as a family, in that city I love so well, remains as my last shiny memory of that glorious before.

I have made it through the first “anniversary” of that weekend. In nineteen days I will make it through the first “anniversary” of his death.

I have survived this. For now, that is enough.

The Wire, again

1 Apr 2013 / Anamaria

I just recently started rewatching The Wire and I remembered how good it is and how much I love it.

Series opening scene:

Justin watched it first and kept telling me to watch it, but I could never get past the first episode. It was too complicated and didn’t lend itself to my usual TV-watching style: one eye one the TV, one eye on the computer, attention usually somewhere else entirely. The Wire demands your full attention and rewards your concentration with visual story-telling at its finest: outstanding writing delivered by brilliant actors. Needless to say, I eventually made it through that first episode and then roared through the whole series, berating Justin all the while for not having told me about this great show sooner.

In case someone out there still hasn’t seen it (what are you waiting for!?), the show’s creator, David Simon, said the show is “really about the American city, and about how we live together. It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals. Whether one is a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge or a lawyer, all are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution they are committed to.”

Over the course of five seasons, all set in Baltimore, the show examines various institutions and the people within them. Season 1 looks at the illegal drug trade, focusing on the police department and the drug dealers. Season changes locations and shows the “death of work and the betrayal of the American working class” as depicted by the stevedores at the Baltimore port. Season 3 looks at the city government and bureaucracy and the nature of reform. Season 4 focusses on education and Season 5 on media and media consumption.

All five seasons are full of great writing and amazing stories, with lines that stay with you long after you’ve finished watching. I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites.

The game is rigged, but you cannot lose if you do not play.
We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.
No offense, son, but that’some weak-ass thinking. You’re equivocating like a motherfucker.
Look, man, I’ll do what I can do to help you all. But the game is out there. It’s either play or get played.
Ain’t no shame in holding on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.
Thin line between heaven and here.
All in the game yo, all in the game.
It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods will not save you.

Lost and Found

13 Mar 2013 / Anamaria

Death is about loss: a statement so obvious it almost doesn’t bear uttering, let alone committing to paper. But until I experienced for myself a profound loss, I didn’t understand how pervasive this loss could be.

When I learned of Justin’s death, I knew immediately I had lost my husband. I soon realized I had also lost the life we had together, as well as the future life we had hoped to one day have. Our path together, which I had always envisioned as a bucolic road rolling towards a distant sunset, disappeared the instant he died.

But these are the obvious things; the things I could have predicted I would lose. There were other losses that I would never have imagined. My guilt over living on robbed me of the ability to do certain things I loved, especially things he had also loved. It is as though his inability to do these things and derive joy from them prevented me from doing them also, lest I experience a joy that he would never experience.

That is how I lost reading. I was always an avid reader, voraciously consuming everything from voluminous tomes to product labels. But after he died I was unable to read more than a few sentences. I would very quickly think “Jus would love this”, then immediately realize he couldn’t/wouldn’t and I would have to stop. And so it went for some time. Eventually I started reading again, but always books I knew he would scoff at, were he around to do so. These books were not what really I wanted to read, but at least I didn’t have to suffer the guilt of reading (much less enjoying!) something he would have wanted to read.

Until today. Today I read an essay on writing by Susan Sontag. It was delicious. It made me smile. It made me want to read and write and submerge myself in words. And not once while I was reading it did I think of Justin or feel guilty that he would never enjoy those words. I simply revelled in the joy of reading, made even more sweet by its long absence.

Death is about loss. But today I understood that it is also about what you (re)discover once you stop reeling from the pain of what is gone. I know it’s still early days for me, but today gave me hope that I might not have lost myself entirely or that if I did, I may one day be found.

J.R., I feared that my guilt and sadness would keep me from my beloved books forever. Melodramatic, I know, but it’s how I felt. But your contagious love of reading rekindled my own. So I will add this to the long list of things for which I am grateful to you. Thank you. Again.

Sonmi-451: I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.
Cloud Atlas