sonambulance

Feeling kind of dreamy at 4am, though not from actual dreaming. I woke up with a toothache and got the opportunity to quietly walk the empty halls of the Galt House, thinking about how it's okay that Jamie's gone. Yesterday—Jamie's Day—comingled my life with the lives of so many other people who shared and delighted in him on this Earth. And it was hard to let him go, but it was very comforting and rich to walk into their worlds, beside them.

There was an underlying joy and a camraderie in his service, and in the simple hugs and shared faces, so many of them etched with sorrow—I felt like I got to look deep into the good souls of so many people who felt like I did; that we missed and loved Jamie, but that paradoxically, he was the one who had brought us together.

Walking the empty halls of this hotel, I found my way to a beautiful grand piano, with a throbbing lower register, thought of Jamie, thought of the sublime visitation playing of Rachel, and managed to pick out Brian Eno's "Another Green World," a timeless melody which has been ever-present in my ears ever since we … started saying goodbye. That pensive melody, to me, is one of complete and perfect reflection. It is the soundtrack of the mindful observer, it is the soundtrack of Jamie. It is not sad, though it strokes my sadness gently, comfortingly. Like you stroke a sleeping cat.

I'm still sad, as I've said before, because—selfishly—I miss Jamie. I can't believe he's gone. And I've bristled at those words maybe in the past because that don't seem to … really communicate anything. I've heard people say them before when there's been death in their lives. But I know them first hand now and I, too, find myself saying them: I can't believe he's gone. I'm grateful for Jamie's day, as full of tears as it was, it was also full of smiles, full of life and joy, and full of new and old friends. I'm grateful for the service and to the community process of mourning that made yesterday simultaneously so hard and so comforting.

We sleep in the mornings,
We dream of a ship that sails away,
A thousand miles away.

"The Spider and I"

Brian Eno

Miss you, Jamer.

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