Life vs. Existence

Waking up
to another dark morning
People are mourning
The weather in life outside is storming…

Superchick, “We Live,” from Beauty From Pain (2005)

Dearest Rachel –

This song wasn’t the first thing in my head this morning. To be honest – and you’ll hear about it in a minute – there wasn’t much of anything going through my mind as I dragged myself out of bed; feel free to make whatever joke that you like about that. At most, I might have been berating myself for bad timing, as well as bad posture – my back woke me up at four-thirty, screaming at me like a particularly irate drill sergeant, for having slept flat on it, rather than propped up at the forty-to-fifty degree angle I try to maintain in order to keep it reasonably happy – I must have slid down onto the bed proper, which it made abundantly clear that it did not like. In an attempt to mollify it, I set my pillows back into place and leaned back as best I could while I waited for a more reasonable hour to get up and head to the gym (which wouldn’t open for another hour). Apparently, I did such a good job of pacifying it that the next thing I knew, it was past five-thirty already, and I wasn’t going to be anywhere close to beating the (relative) crowds there. So yeah, if there had been a soundtrack in my mind first thing this morning, it got drowned out by… other concerns.

And yet… stepping outside into the dark, wet (but reasonably warm for late October) outdoors brought this song to mind. It’s one of those ones you would hear back in the day on K-Love radio, and seemed to be particularly fond of, although at the time it came out, the whole concept behind it was a bit of an abstraction to us, if we even gave it any thought at all. Sure, we understood the inevitability of death and loss, but it hadn’t really touched either of us all that closely for a long time.

I know you’ve heard it from me plenty of times here, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over how fast it all happened. Your parents, while painful, were more or less expected, given their age and health situation. But then your departure, well… if anything hits more like that first verse, I don’t know what it would be. It might amuse you to hear that, at one point, Larry told me he had considered installing a purple spotlight in the place where the tree that you struck – which has since been taken down for obvious safety reasons – once stood. Since it would be seen by anyone approaching the entrance to the camp, it would be a uniquely gripping visual landmark, but I think it was just a pie-in-the-sky idea that would never have happened, but I’m pretty sure it would have met with your approval (until, perhaps, you saw the electrical bill associated with it, at which point you probably would have told them “Never mind”).

But as with the mother in the song, there’s nothing for us to do at this point but to go on and live our lives. The one thing, though, that nags at me is the very next phrase in the chorus. It’s not enough to “live”; we have to go on to “love”. Life without it really isn’t so much life as it is mere existence. At least, that’s what I found myself musing as I went about doing the laundry before heading out to the ‘office’ this morning after working out. I can do all these things that you used to as ‘your’ part within the household; for all intents and purposes, it’s not that I physically need anyone to get through this day or that – and if I can survive one day without someone, I can survive the next day, and the next, and the next… until I’ve gotten through the rest of my life without the assistance and support of anyone else after all.

But could that be considered living?

And I know you’re going to point out that I have help and support from others – I have family and friends, and close by for easy access, both to and from – and that’s quite true. In that way, I’m a lot more fortunate than most people, when you come down to it. But it isn’t the same as having someone who, apart from my work life, was at my side nearly all the time, able and willing to be there for me, while looking to me to do likewise for her. That is what is missing from my life at the moment, and without it, it feels more like mere existence than actual living. Oh, I’m getting through each day, sure, but life is more than just to be ‘gotten through.’

The thing is, I don’t think I can describe this need adequately to someone who’s never had someone like you at their side. There are those who seemingly see no particular purpose to such a relationship, and are apparently satisfied with their existence as they have experienced it since day one. Others have been with a partner that they consider themselves better off rid of, and thus understandably can’t see why they would put themselves through that a further time. There’s no explaining this lack to them. Which wouldn’t be so much of a problem – everyone’s entitles to their own opinion, of course – other than the possibility that ‘Megumi’ herself might have one of these perspectives toward life (or would it only be existence to her?) And if so, where does that leave us?

I wish I knew, honey. For now, all I can ask is that you continue to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.