It is often said that when you lose someone by any means that the loss triggers the memories and associations of past loss so that you grieve again those who went before the one you are currently grieving. It is also said that grief is cumulative.
To me, loss is like a little black spot on the sun. The first time. Lose a pet and the sun isn't as bright. Lose a human companion and the spot is bigger. Eventually the spot shrinks to where you don't notice the "imperfection" in the brightness. For whatever reason, I always assumed that grieving a pet felt a certain way, with the same measure of impact, the same kinds of feels. But each pet I have lost has had it's own unique experience. The last cat that died held all the feelings of the others before it, becoming a symbol for all of my cats, and all of my grief, even though it was not mine. But it is overshadowed by the one cat that meant the most to me. She will never be again. And no other cat is going to match her for wits and ability to administer to the soul. There will never be another Spock.
Losing Spock was a total Solar Eclipse that has lasted for years. And that little black spot never went away again. It has been permanent for a long time, nearly 20 years. I have lived with other cats. But I have not had my own. And one of the things that I did not expect to have happen so soon after losing Shayne, was to lose all my Spocks all over again.
Five weeks after Shayne died Saba Nimoy died. Long before he invited his legion of fans to be his adoptive Grandchildren, long before he ever used social media, I had already accepted him into the League of Ancestors. Ever since I was a child he meant everything in the world to me. He was the reason that I survived being bullied; he is the sole reason that my personality was never diluted to suit the needs of the selfish and misguided. In his first photography book, Shekinah, he became the reason that I stopped hating my body. And with that Leonard Nimoy stopped being only Spock. Spock and Nimoy became individuals. Nimoy became my grandfather, Saba. Spock, as always, remained the Brother or Spirit Guide Made Flesh.
I hadn't even processed Shayne's death due to some life interruptions on the home front. So when Leonard Nimoy died the flood gates were open. And now the black spot on the sun is back. The accumulative effect of grief has me mourning my best friend and brother, new admissions to the Association of Dead Ancestors (the division of the League of Ancestors who are more than names on documents by having had significant impact on my life) and..... a cat.
When I named her I never thought of Nimoy dying. I never thought the Vulcan would die. So it never occurred to me that when he did die, I would feel the loss of my best feline friend ever. The spot on my sun is so big at the moment that it hardly seems as if it will ever be bright again. Past grief experience has taught me that the spot will dissipate. But recent loss has taught me that the spot is now a permanent mark and nothing about life is powerful enough to make it go away completely.
I keep doing the things that I do. I keep working. But I have an incredible dislike for being right now. These people that keep dying are anchor points. The more anchors there are heaved from their moorings, the more untenable everything else feels. I dislike a lot of things and have become increasingly intolerant of much outside of myself. Dissatisfaction seems to be a standard. And I wonder if I ever noticed that as a quality of the grieving process before or if it something newly acquired because of the amount of loss and suffering that I experience being as sensitive as I am to so many feelings and experiences. I dislike counting my support beams and finding them dwindling. That is not a thing that you think of as having the ability to recede. They are supports. Pillars are not spendable commodities; they aren't supposed to be disposable assets. And yet.... there they go.
The answer seems to be to replace them. However, the quality of replacement parts is substandard at best. The caliber of people I have chosen and have had chose for me in the League by accident of birth is so much higher than what I find around me now. Some how it seems, I am at the point where either I wander without the physical support systems that have sustained me for so long.... or I embrace the weird.
I could, if I so chose, enable the old gifts again. I could let myself experience the League as tangibly as if they were real. Some of those imaginary friends were not imaginary. I knew which ones were and were not. I knew which ones belonged in the house and to the family and which ones were figments of an easily bored mind. I could, at the risk of looking insane, or losing myself in a half material half spiritual realm, allow them to be more real to me than a collection of wisdom from the echoes of their voices in my head. Or, I will have to embody them somehow. I know how to make the first happen. I do not know how to make the second happen.
Somehow they all have to be combined within myself in a way that allows me to be more own pillar and anchor. I will have to be, somehow, all of what they taught me and continue to teach myself. For whatever reason that seems more improbable to me than the fanciful idea of a League of spirit guides with whom communication and companionship is possible.
And at 4:30 in the morning with sleep closing around me again everything seems pointless and futile. Not only that though... I am beginning to sound like a deranged cultist. I should probably go back to bed.
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