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A Parliament of Owls

A Murder of Crows

 

Me: What is that?
Him: Owl. Owl.

When I was younger, there was a film called The Crow that I loved. Heard they’re gonna re-do it.

Always thought that crows were cool. They’re all black, sociable, are one of the few animals that mourn their dead, and seek revenge.

Alison, however, preferred owls. In fact, we have several owl figures in the house, all purchased by Alison throughout the years. She was always surprised when I pointed out that we had other owls here and there.

Her: Oh! I didn’t even notice. I wonder what it is about owls that I like?
Me: What’s there not to like? They’re nocturnal, solitary, eat everything, are highly intelligent, and are quietly dangerous. 
Her: (laughing) I’m going to name it “Reginald.”

The Gymgirl also likes owls, as her family name has a part that means owl in her native language.

As luck would have it, one of the first words from my son is owl. He can recognize both regular and barn owls as owls.

I find the whole thing both peculiar and interesting

Since everything went down, I don’t suffer superstition well. I don’t believe in signs or the supernatural or anything of the like.

But I do like this, somehow. That my son likes owls. It must be Alison in him. This little thing makes me happier than you might imagine.

Did you know that owls and crows are mortal, natural enemies? They will try to kill each other on sight.

I’ve always said that we spend our lives seeking out our tribes. So, perhaps I was a crow that became an owl. Or maybe I was an owl all along.

It’s better this way, I suppose.

A group of owls is called a parliament. A group of crows is called a murder. I’d rather be a party of a parliament than party to a murder.

Current political climate notwithstanding.

Location: The same black desk
Mood: pensive
Music: You were only waiting for this moment to arise

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Closets full of her

Good save, Logan

After all these months, finally decided to clean out Alison’s closet.

Her clothing management was a lesson in urban organization.

She managed to put her entire life into an dresser and a closet measuring 6′(w) x 2′(d) x 8′(h). All her clothes were perfectly pressed and hung. Several had tags on them.

I remember she told me that she was excited to work out and get back to her “normal weight.”

I find people use too many superlatives to describe things. Let me just say these simple true things:

  • The sun is hot.
  • Space is cold.
  • I loved her more than anything.
  • I was in agony as I cleared out her things.

Spent a few days on it. Was pretty mechanical about the whole thing towards the end. With the random tourette’s sprinkled here and there for effect.

Managed to clean up a little more than half of it all before I had to stop. Gave away as much as I could to friends and family. Donated or tossed other things.

Kept far more than I intended. Had the most peculiar thought while I was cleaning it all up:

She’s gonna kill me if she comes back.

Ah, if only.

I’d kill myself a thousand times over if only. But you knew that.


The Gymgirl helped one day. I asked her if her helping me bothered her. She asked me if it bothered me. We both said no.

Caught her crying on the sofa over something of Alison and mine, but she wiped her eyes, cleared her throat, and continued to help. Almost wept myself because of it.

Gymgirl: (later) I wish I met her. I feel we would have been friends.
Me: Sure. You’re nice. She liked to clean stuff up.
Her: Wait, what?
Me: Well, you’re a mess…y person…?
Her: (shaking head, laughing) Good save, Logan.

The Gymgirl ended up cleaning up and tossing out a lotta my junk while I was focused on her stuff. She found my 1999 law school yearbook.

Her: (reading it) I’m surprised at how modern everyone looks.
Me: What do you mean?
Her: I thought the pictures would all be black and white, people would be wearing funny clothes, and the guys would all have waxed mustaches.
Me: (laughing) How old do you think I am?!
Her: (thinking) I was nine when you graduated law school.
Me: (shaking head) Not what I asked.

Location: A clean(er) apartment. For now.
Mood: sigh
Music: A brown headed stranger, with a five-letter name

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Everything turns

Should be a good thing

Before everything went to hell this past weekend, a good friend of mine just had a promotion at work so a whole slew of former co-workers and such got together to wish him well in his new position. It was nice seeing everyone out and about.

As for me, I feel as if I’m running in place. It seems everything I touch turns to s__t in one form or another. This past weekend being a case-in-point.

Everything that should be a good thing – like the birth of a child or his first steps – is followed by some horror or, at the very least, some downer.

Clients are calling me again but it’s always for the most complex of work.

Used to relish the challenge. Now I just wonder if I should get a job doing something mindless and insignificant just to not think about anything at all.

Man, for five days in 2015, I had everything I’d ever hoped and wished for. It’s 2018 and I only have one thing that really matters to me.

Although, to be honest, it is such a wonderful thing:

Me: Who am I?
Him: (pointing to me) Pa, pa!
Me: (nodding) And who is that? (pointing at picture of Alison)
Him: Mu, ma!
Me: (smiling) Oh, that’s my smart boy.

 

Location: still in the basement of my brain
Mood: troubled
Music: And I’m on my knees, looking for the answer

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Alison’s last gift to me

 Everything else can burn


I think that all good relationships have secret kindnesses as invisible string, keeping people together. All bad relationships have secret cruelties as wedges that push people apart.

Alison and I had very little bad between us. The good stuff, man, it was good.

The thing I loved most about Alison and my dad were those secret kindnesses. My dad, for example, told us he loved us every time he saw us.

I’m told not all Chinese fathers do that. Wouldn’t know. What he did with us was all I knew.

Told you once of one of Alison and my secrets. But I’ll tell you again, anyway: For Christmas, we always got each other the same thing every year – a single Christmas ornament.

I always got her some beautiful, classy thing. Cause she was my beautiful, classy thing.

She always got me some funny, goofy thing. Why that is, I dunno.

The ornament you see above is what she gave me in 2013. Cause she knew I loved The City so.

In 2015, before she was diagnosed, she gave me one with a father, mother, and son. I think I actually hugged it.

In 2016, when she had the goddamn cancer, she asked me to come to the room and, with her one good arm, handed me an ornament.

She had asked her mom to get it for me. I stammered out a “thank you” for it and tried my best not cry in front of her.

Even in all her suffering, she thought of me.

God, I cannot think of a fucking thing I ever did in my otherwise unremarkable life to deserve her.

That was the last ornament I would ever get from her.

This year, tried six times to put them up. Couldn’t do it. So I put up the stuff the kid made in his art class instead.

Wanted to take a pic of the ornament from 2016, but that’s a no go.

In case you’re wondering how I’m spending the holidays. I sit alone a lot, when the kid is away or sleeping, and shout obscenities. For serious.

Leigh’s husband said it’s like tourettes. And it is.

You’re randomly sitting down and some memory comes up and and hits you in the face and you scream out, “FUCK!!”

It’s always a memory of some tiny kindness of hers that tears through me the deepest.

The memory of her handing me that last ornament was enough to make me sit down on my cold shower floor  and struggle for breath while the kid mimed “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” outside in front of the tube.

That ornament was her last gift to me. The kid, the best.

If the house ever burns down, I’m grabbing the kid, the ornaments, and my network attached storage device.

The last one because it has stuff like “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” for the kid. And cause it has alla my pictures and videos of my families before we got broken.

Everything else can burn. Just like 2015-2017.

Location: 11 days from the new year, as if it matters
Mood: drowning
Music: My drink’s my only remedy, for pain of losing family,

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The brightest thing I got

My college friends finally got to meet my kid

Her: He’s so chill!
Me: (laughing) It’s funny. So many people use those exact words to describe him.

My college friends never met the kid all this time.

Was always worried about Alison getting sick since her immune system was weakened, and we were never in a social mood all these years. It’s easily been four years or more since any of them have been over.

But I decided that it was time for them to meet him. They’ve all – quietly and not-so-quietly – done so much to support us. The problem with seeing them all is that it just makes everything that much more real.

And I despise my reality so. But I’m stuck in it.

So, I cleaned up the pad, picked up a dozen danishes, some cheese, and some olives, made 14 cups of coffee, eight cups of tea, and laid out alla my mugs. Tried to do it like she woulda done.

Everyone was just great. As I knew they would be. They brought their kids, who were also great with the kid. That’s him sitting on my friend Kathy’s lap.

You can still see my messed up left eye.

On the plus side, only broke down once. Quietly in my blue bathroom. So I suppose that’s a step forward. Yay.

After they all left, I put the boy down for a nap.

Me: You’re a star, kid, you’re a star!
Him: (laughing, shaking head) No. No.
Me: Do you know how to say anything but “no?”
Him: No.
Me: (nodding) S’ok. You’re still my star. You’re the brightest thing I got. Poppa loves you more than a fat kid loves cake. (sighing) Mama too…

Location: my white couch
Mood: struggling to make it to 2018
Music: If you ask me how I’m doin’, I would say I’m doin’ just fine. I would lie and say that you’re not on my mind

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Cleaning up so well

Roaring back

The kid touches the TV sometimes when he sees something he likes. He thinks it’s real, that he can reach out and hold what’s on the screen. It’s cute.

A little while ago, I came across a picture that Alison musta taken right after we got married. It’s of our marriage license, our rings, and the bouquet she had.

I was doing really well, all things considered. My brother, his best friend, and PB met the Gymgirl recently cause we all went out one night last week.

And I managed to get through Thanksgiving without losing it, which surprised me greatly.

Yet, when that picture popped up, found myself touching my cold monitor hoping that I could reach out and hold it. Like I was some stupid kid.

So the rage and sadness comes roaring back and gotta go into my blue bathroom to turn on the water and scream for a bit before going to the liquor cabinet to pour myself a glass of rum.

Found my wedding ring a few weeks back too. It’s like getting repeatedly punched in your soul. Repeatedly.

F__k. I was cleaning up so well.

Me: I’m sorry I talk about her so much.
Gymgirl: Don’t be. I like hearing about her.


Here’s a kick in the head: While drinking my rum with ice, realized that I have a cracked tooth that I musta gotten while wrestling at some point recently.

Man. Can’t even have a goddamn glass of rum in peace…

Location: in front of another cold screen and cold glass of rum
Mood: the usual hell
Music: Hope dangles on a string. Like slow-spinning redemption

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Thanksgiving 2017: It’s time to get up

She’s on Mars and we’re stuck here


Me: Hey, kid. Get up. It’s time to get dressed and go.
Son: (yawns, smiles)

Tomorrow will be the first Thanksgiving without my dad and without Alison in over a decade. Trying to accept that.

Before 2017, I rarely wore black. I think it’s probably because I did so much as a kid.

But since Alison died, I’ve only worn black. It was my quiet way to memorialize her.

Tomorrow, I’ll stop. It’ll been six months since that fucking day and three months since my dad passed. It’s time to accept my new normal.

It felt weird wearing all black and now, it feels weird not.

Everything is weird. I’m weird. Nothing will ever be normal again.


Dunno if I ever told you but Alison spoke fluent Spanish and, by extension, understood French and Portuguese. Thought that was pretty cool.

There’s this song by David Bowie I’ve always liked called Life on Mars. But there’s a Portuguese version I prefer, with very different lyrics.

One part goes:

Se o futuro assim permitir
Não pretendo viver em vão
Meu amor não estamos sós
Tem um mundo a esperar por nós,
No infinito do céu azul,
Pode ter vida em Marte

If the future allows
I don’t intend to live in vain
My love, we’re not alone.
There’s a world waiting for us,
in the infinite blue sky,
perhaps it’s a life on Mars

Always told her that I’d go anywhere she was. Even if it was Mars. Cause heaven wouldn’t be heaven without her, hell wouldn’t be hell with her. But where she is now, I can’t follow, as much as I wanna.

It’s been six months since Alison was taken.

I miss my wife, but even more, I miss my best friend. She was the first person I saw and spoke to in the morning, and the last person I saw and spoke to at night.

I’ll never be the same and I’ll always have a hole in my soul in the shape of her.

But I have to move on with my life.

Because I can’t follow her right now; the boy needs me here and he needs me on my feet.

Me: Get up. (gently) It’s time to get up.

Location: home, surrounded by her clothes
Mood: hard to say
Music: I’m going to want to move to a life on Mars

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Comic Con NYC 2017

Good and irritating things

Been dealing with a lotta admin stuff for myself and the kid. None of it fun or interesting. So I’ve been lax with my updates.

But Halloween’s coming up, which reminds me that I went to Comic Con this past month.

It was just like the last time I went, all those years ago: I got a message one Sunday morning; my cousin and a mutual friend of ours had an extra tix to Comic Con.

So off I went.

Alison was alive the last time I was there. Everything reminds me of her, of course.

When I got there, the place was a madhouse; it took a while to find everyone in our group.

We immediately stopped by a booth where I promptly got flanked and choked.

Couldn’t stay long because I had to pick up the kid.

But it was nice to be outta house and at something fun, if only for a short while.

Back to the irritation.

Me: Ma’am, you’re telling me that my infant son and I are both losing our insurance this month?
Her: (long pause) Yes. Unless I could speak to your wife.
Me: Ma’am, if anyone could speak to my wife again, it’d be me and I’d never let her stop talking. (sighing) Get comfortable. This’ll take a bit to explain…

Location: in front of mountains – mountains – of paper
Mood: irritated
Music: I don’t wanna be me anymore

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Parenting with Logan

Social Constructs

Her: Is that a wine carrier?
Me: Strictly speaking, it’s a rum carrier.
Her: Logan! You can’t use a rum carrier for his lunchbox!
Me: Why not? There’s no rum in it.
Her: It says “rum” right on the flap. What is wrong with you?
Me: How much time do you have?

Alison’s BFF and several of her college friends paid for a preschool that started this morning. One of Alison’s other college friends gave me four bags fulla clothes that ABFF brought back for me. I brought her a beer.

ABFF: His birthday’s coming up. Are you doing something?
Me: Not sure.
Her: Are you getting him a cake at least?
Me: I’ll get him a muffin.
Her: A muffin? It’s his birthday!
Me: A muffin is merely a naked cupcake. I’ll put peanut butter on it for frosting.

The ABFF is a lawyer. Another lawyer friend of mine was giving me parenting advice, despite her not being a parent, regarding my choice of lunchbox.

Her: You can’t send him to school with a rum carrier.
Me: Logically, it’s the best choice. It holds a change of clothes better since I roll them, and can hold his drink and food container more easily. It’s fashionable and will probably be easier to find as it’s taller than it is long. I refuse to raise him with these absurd social constructs.
Her: Didn’t you say, “Communication is what the other side hears?
Me: (groaning) Fiiiine. Let the record reflect my vigorous objection to this acquiesce.
Her: So noted.

Location: 40 mins ago, surrounded by children
Mood: adulty
Music: get up and stand up and climb the rope of hope

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Until the end of the world

A Hole in my Soul

Went to my law firm the other day. Felt weird getting dressed and walking through the doors. They were taking pictures for the firm website and I was touched to still be considered part of the team.

Boss: There’s he is!
Me: Barely.

They ordered pizza which few ate. So I ended up eating an entire large pie all by myself. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting, which is an entry for another time.

Me: If they didn’t slice this thing up, I’ll roll it up like a burrito and stuff it in my mouth.
Him: I believe that.

Saw my family afterward.

It’s weird that I now have a “thing” that I do when someone dies. What a horrific realization: That one has a thing that one does when someone he loves dies.

That thing is clean up. I attribute it to Alison. Whenever something horrible happened, she cleaned up the house. So I do the same, in honor of her – as did my mom.

Her: I can’t believe he’s gone.
Me: (nodding) I’m so sorry, mom.

Here, at my pad, I try to fill my time with the boy or other company.

Gradgirl: I meet a lot of married men in my classes and life. I think that some – all of them, really – would try to be with me if they thought they could get away with it. You’re one of only two married men I met in my life where I felt that you would never look twice at me or anyone else.
Me: I wouldn’t. She’s all I ever wanted. You wouldn’t be here now if she was still here.
Her: I know, Logan. (nodding) That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Me: (thinking) I have a hole in my soul and my life in the shape of her. I’m trying to fill that hole however I can, before it expands and kills me.
Her: (seriously) Don’t die, Logan.
Me: Man, I trying my best not to. I’m trying…

 

(continued from last conversation)
Daisy: (laughs) Not every woman is dying to meet a man with a kid that’s in love with his ex-wife.
Me: (sighing) She’s my late wife, not my ex-wife. She never left me. I never left her. She was taken from me. There’s a difference. But you are right about that.
Her: (nods) Which part?
Me: Me being in love with her. I’ll love her until the end of the world.
Her: (frowns, puts her hand on my shoulder)

Location: my white couch in the living room
Mood: fuzzy
Music: It’s fine by me, if you never leave

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