Processing

Not that many posts ago, I wrote about Matt’s (my 14 years dead boyfriend) sister (who we will call D) contacting me on Facebook.   That was in May.  We wrote back and forth a little bit and last weekend I stopped and visited with her for the first time since the day after Matt killed himself.

In the week leading up to the visit, I spent a lot of my spare time reading through the letters Matt and I wrote to each other while he was in the army.  I read all the notes he wrote when we were in high school.  I found ticket he saved for the first movie we ever saw together.  He wrote “First date with Amber, how could I forget?”  I also found a ticket dated two days earlier.  On the back he had written “Two days later, found amore”.  He was a sweet guy.

After Mr. A went to bed last week, I spent a lot of time crying over that box of letters and pictures.  In those moments, I felt like I was reliving the first days after Matt died.  The best way I can describe it was like those Dementors from Harry Potter.  It felt like there was a black hole sucking away all the happiness in my life and leaving only a hollow filled with sadness and grief.

Each night, I took out my box of letters and let myself hang over that hole for a while. I would cry and for the first time I can remember, I let myself be angry with Matt for doing this to me.  Then, I would box up the letters and compartmentalize those feelings  and go back to my normal life.

I was worried that seeing D would make it hard to be able to put those feelings away, but I felt like I needed to do it.  I felt that she needed it too.  Most of all, I think Matt would have wanted us to be friends again.

So I spent a couple hours with D, crying and remembering.  As hard as it was to see D, it was the first time since Matt died that I have talked about him with someone who loved him as much as I did. It was also one of the first times I felt like someone gave me permission to say out loud how much Matt’s death affected my life.  When I have told people about it in the past, I get a distinct feeling they think that our teenage love wasn’t worthy of so much grief.  When D told me “Dude, Matt would have married you, if you would have had him,” it was like someone finally acknowledged that he was more than just a teenage fling. (Don’t get me wrong, that statement was quite the mindfuck as I spent the rest of the day imagining that alternate life.  Eventually I had to acknowledge there is no way to know what might have happened and I have to be present in the life I have now instead.)

I also found out where his remains are (at D’s house) and the fucked up thing his dad wants to do with them.  I told D I would keep them if she needs/wants me to.  And now I know that if she (or we) decide where his final resting place should be, I can be there when his ashes are buried or released or whatever.

It isn’t over.  Visiting with D didn’t make all my grief disappear.  I am still sad and I still miss Matt a lot, maybe even more than before.  There is relief in knowing I can talk to a real person about Matt now, rather than just acknowledging him with a random  blog post to strangers on the internet on the anniversary of his death each year.  It sounds like a small thing, but after all these years, it is huge.  Maybe it isn’t closure, but it is a start.