Adrift

Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. –Henry James

I felt this wave coming for a long while.

All day and night wind tears through petals of red and yellow tulips. Shingles scatter from rooftops; fence pickets break loose and flutter across the sidewalks as a final spring snowstorm rolls in from the South and the West. In the morning, all the fragile white flakes covering the grass melt beneath falling raindrops as an early thunderstorm unfolds over the prairies. Empty cigarette packs and ripped bits of paper float through street gutters swelling with rainwater. Drenched plastic bags tangled in trees droop and quiver from high branches. Soaked black alleys strewn with blown-over trash bins and white plastic lawn chairs.

After the storms, a dense fog drifts in and wraps everything in a ghostly stillness. No more wind and rain. No more snow. Just tiny puddles on the gray porch and faint wisps of steam rising up from the streets. Branches of Maple Trees weep in the haze, their pale bark streaked with long dark strips of dew and rain. Bright white petals of the blooming Pear Blossom Tree glow beneath the streetlight. Doves call out through the heavy fog. Then, silence. Just silence.

Just me and the silence. And the wave. Always, the wave.

I don’t know exactly when this latest wave of depression crashed in and pulled me under. When I started to falter and fall behind. Sinking. The familiar dreamlike feeling of being the only one moving in slow motion, struggling to keep up with everybody else as they hurry ahead, rushing farther and farther away. Everyone and everything drifting out of my reach, until I’m alone in the overwhelming silence of the wave.

I felt this wave coming for a long while. For weeks, I could vaguely sense it rising, looming. My heart growing heavier and heavier. The oppressive weight of sadness and exhaustion. Avoiding everyone. Isolating. I know these waves well, but I can never find their origin and I can never pinpoint the moment they break over me.

Maybe it was last month in the hills of New Mexico. Along the endless stretch of desolate road that crosses the bleak desert and leads to my grandmother’s old house, where my mother and I spent our spring break cleaning out the rooms to get it ready to sell. Scrubbing floors and washing dust from the walls. Boxing up carnival glass and piles of records. Clearing out heaps of books and old letters. On the back of a wrinkled envelope tucked deep inside an outdated newspaper, I read a message printed in my grandmother’s careful handwriting: I want to escape this body and fly away from here. Washed-out ink on tattered paper. Maybe that’s when I collided with the wave. Maybe it was then.

Maybe it was when I was walking along the low rock wall that surrounds my grandmother’s front yard. Balancing on the gray wall’s narrow edge, a memory of my grandmother from the year she died replaying again and again in my head: her arthritic hand holding onto my arm as we walked through the softly lit hallway of her nursing home, her bones creaking in her withering body like loose floorboards. Fly away from here. Maybe it was then.

Maybe it was near my grandmother’s wilting garden, beneath the bare branches of her forgotten Lemon Trees. Quail running through the faded dead grass. Shadows shattering the late afternoon light. Fly away from here. Dwindling flecks of sun rays scattered all along a pale strip of dusty road. The phantom echo of creaking bones lingering in my head. Maybe it was then.

Now, I am adrift in the wave, treading dreary waters. Still, I know this sorrow will eventually fade. This wave will pass.

And I will remain.