being found a second time
People say grief just hits you – you’re going along fine, and then something “sets you off”. On the one hand, this popular notion enrages me because it isn’t true. Grief isn’t some untripped sensitivity. It’s a catastrophic injury, like amputation. Sometimes you temporarily forget about it – your morphine kicks in, and you focus on something else for a little while; maybe you briefly imagine you’re normal again, that life is normal. Then the morphine wears off, or you shift in your seat and wake up the pain, and then – oh, boy. So no, I say to people, you don’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing or making me feel bad. Say what you want. Nothing can make me feel worse.
That said, sometimes aspects of it hit me harder than expected, or in unexpected ways. A couple of months ago I was riding my bike through Gotham, a sunny, cold day, listening to my ipod. (RP always disapproved of Casey riding her bike in traffic and wearing her iopd.) The Kate Bush song “Under the Ivy” came on, and suddenly without warning I was sobbing my eyes out, still peddling across Broadway dodging traffic, thinking: What if someone else comes along to find Casey? What if she is found again, found twice? Could such a thing be possible?
“Under the Ivy” always seemed to be about Casey - retreating to a hiding place, but wanting to be found by the right person:
It wouldn’t take me long
To tell you how to find it
To tell you where we’ll meet
This little girl inside me
Is retreating to her favourite place
Go into the garden
Go under the ivy
Under the leaves
Away from the party
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose
(For me)
I sit here in the thunder
The green on the grey
I feel it all around me
And it’s not easy for me
To give away a secret
It’s not safe
But go into the garden
Go under the ivy
Go under the leaves with me
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose
I’ll be waiting for you
Marky found her first, and M. They even showed her to me, protected her from me, and such a secret place it was, though once the emails started, it took nothing at all to tell him where to find her. I didn’t even know I was doing it, but after only seven emails, (was it only that many?) he wrote her a story that revealed he knew her through and through – Marky crashing through the ivy to the place she’d hidden for so long, longer than anyone knew.
Is it possible – in the world of miracles, in the biggest, hardest heart of God – to be found a second time?
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I posted Marky’s story “The Benefit of the Doubt” under Stories. It isn’t new (obviously). It’s really difficult to open those files. (“Really difficult” would be a herioc understatement.) I also posted Casey’s response…
