The legacy Glen leaves

touch the house

On Monday morning, everyone left to go back home, and I started shaking.

The letting go of those who had held me while Glen died.

All I could do was shake, and also cry.

It was the pulling under by the sea that everyone talks about when they talk about grief. That drowning. That over and over again drowning.

Glen, who had gasped as he died. Now it was me who was gasping.

So I imagined him.

I imagined Glen, and this is so silly, but I imagined him in the sky.

I imagined him looking down and reaching for me.

I imagined him saying, “Jo. I got you. You’re okay. I’m right here.”

And then I did that thing, that thing of hoping when there’s none, that I had been wrong all along:

He hadn’t gotten sick. He hadn’t started to die. He hadn’t then died. I just needed to focus in a different way, work harder, hope more. If I did all of those things, he would walk through the door, take me in his arms and say, this time unimagined: “Jo, you’re okay. I’m right here.”

But he didn’t, and so I shook. For many hours, and then many more.

I am in the house that Glen built for us. A house with no straight lines. Thick, straw bale walls and round corners. A mud floor. The trees from the land when they burned in the forest fire. Those trees — they hold these walls up.

I am in his shop.

I am running my hands across the walls.

I am looking out the windows.

Now I am standing at his workbench.

Now I am holding his tools.

Now I am starting a fire in the wood stove.

I will spend the next months in Glen’s shop, in this house that he built for us after the cabin burned down, wondering, where has he gone?

I can conjure him, in the wind; in the turning of the days. I know he is there, in the turning, but I also know he is not.

I am lying on the cement floor of his shop. On my back. It is cold. The dust on the floor covers my body. I want the dust to cover my body and I want to be cold.

Tomorrow I will pick up Glen’s remains at the funeral home.

I found an old metal box in his shop, to hold his ashes.

I will bring the box with me to the funeral home.

I will bring Lolo.

I will place Glen’s ashes in the metal box, and I will place the metal box in his shop

until it is time

to let him go.

Tom Lewis generously shared these links of Glen’s work he has taken photos of, over the years:

Click here

and here

and here

to see Glen’s art, and his making.

The legacy he leaves.

I touch the house Glen built for us, and he is right there, touching me.

Thank you, all of you, who have held and comforted us.

Who now hold and comfort me.

xo

joanna