Can you write yourself into the future?
1 year ago this morning, we had taken our beloved dog’s body to the vet to be cremated.
2 years ago this evening, I went to my mother’s bedside in hospice and told her it was time to die.
3 years ago this afternoon, I trekked out to the Columbia Gorge to finally spread my brother’s ashes (he had died 6 years earlier.).
There is a tight loop of death and sensations of loss in this very tiny window of time in my life. It’s also the darkest time of year — a time when I’m supposed to be optimistic, a time I should be looking ahead. Instead, I find myself in this short but serial eddy of death, almost like the pattern is beyond the possibility of coincidence.
Is there any chance that I have made this loop happen?
More importantly, is there a way that acknowledging the loop can help me build a way out?
Hear me out.
I’ve kept a journal my whole life. In my grade school, it was something out of Harriet the Spy; it was full of gossip and dangerous to everyone. In high school and my 20’s, it was solipsistic and full of consistent themes; I wrote about boys I had crushes on, body image issues, and anxieties about whether I’d ever…
