continuing

I will continue
writing, crying, cleaning, noticing, wondering
I am no saint; Gil is no saint.  Our relationship was not perfect.  But we were in relationship like two trees who are so close together that they start grafting into each other.  Perhaps greater distance, being a little more centered in my own life might have been "healthier", I might not feel so completely lost and disoriented now.  But I'm glad of the grafting.  I needed it, him, to become the more whole soul I hope to be.
His death is birthing me out into the world of credit card glitches and firewood and (heaven forbid!) machinery, alone, alone alone.  I need to step into being more than I've been before.  Without his death, would I ever have?  Not likely.   Do I want to?  NO WAY!  Birth is painful, not a choice, but it opens up a world of possibilities, another gift from him.

I remember when I finally decided to marry him.  We'd been together for 2 years, and I loved all the joy he was bringing into the lives of me and my boys. But I was terribly ambivalent.  I'd been married for 15 years before and when that ended, I'd felt like I was dying, feared for my guys, never ever wanted to put them or me through that again.  And Gil was soooo different than any man I'd known, not at all like the kind of man that Page/Piper women marry.  How could I ever risk committing my life to him?
I told him that I'd marry him "when I resolved my ambivalence".   But 2 years in, in the midst of a workshop we were doing, I realized,  I was never going to stop being ambivalent,  but commitment wasn't about knowing for sure the outcome, or the weather like quality of my emotions at the moment.  It was about possibilities, would marrying him open up vast possibilities for a life that I'd unlikely experience without him? yes   And it sure did.

Page/Piper women marry intellectuals, with spiritual and introspective leanings, men of authority who know the right way to do things and don't hesitate to instruct.  (obviously it's far more complicated than that but I'm sort of describing my step father)
Gil was a body man.  He played his body like a virtuoso musician.  Sports, music, dancing, he said that was the closest he could get to experiencing the spiritual connection I spoke of.  He felt his connection to the Divine in those moments.  His experience of his body was a psalm.   And he was gifted with the ability to enjoy.  Food, FUN, fooling around, games, people, people, people,  he was a joyful noise unto the Lord.  [listen to Cassandra Wilson singing Soloman Sang from New Moon Rising]

Neither body nor fun were my native language.      And they still aren't .  But he made me passingly bilingual  in them, a great moistening in my life!   And he was safe.  I never worried about him leaving me; I could count on one hand all the times in 27 years where he made belittling comments.  I'm afraid I was not so parsimonious.  But he would call me on it, and work through how he heard my unsolicited suggestions and what my intent was.  He didn't let me get away with too much shit, for which I'm eternally grateful.  He could have pulled me in more,  probably should have, but he didn't.  He freed me, to become so much more than I was when I met him.

So the pain I feel is a welcome side effect of how we grafted our lives together.  And I pray that I can keep the life force flowing through my Gil self so I can keep his wholeness in me, in my life.   Help me, I don't know if I can do it without him.