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On the sensation of acute mourning

For three days we existed Elsewhere. A gap in the universe opened up and sucked us in, to another plane, another dimension, a new milky way with brighter stars splashed like dairy on a black sky. 

Everything was heightened in Elsewhere. Colors more saturated, sounds crisper and cleaner, smells somehow more precise. Taste and touch grew nerve endings that tingled and tickled.  Hugs lasted longer, reached deeper, offered more. More. Elsewhere was defined by more. 

For three days we lived with more. Sunshine scorched us with heat, beating and glittering. It was so hot. 90 degrees. 95. 97. When it rained, it rained without relent. Thunder imploded our new universe’s sky. Lightening cracked us open. Our dog, Scruffy, shook and panted. More sun, more rain, more pressure, more panting, more, more, more. 

On our first day in Elsewhere my mommy stood in a black silk top and told a room of 400 people about more. “She was always ready for more!” She read. “Let’s ride further, stay longer, do more! She pushed me to grow and to be more.” My mommy’s voice was steady as she spoke of my mama. The past tense-ness of her words still felt jagged. 

400 people. Imagine the more-ness of 400 people! On our first day in Elsewhere, I stood, also in black, before that same room of 400. My hands and arms and legs and lips shook. I held onto my little sister. 

My mama died and we moved to Elsewhere. A magical, mixed landscape. Pain sharp, acute, dull, and blunt. Love like a starburst, explosive, enveloping, and enchanting. A memorial service. A shiva. Three days. All of it simply, more. More, like my mama, who taught us to be more. 

In Elsewhere, I fell in love. 

With my family, who sang Patti Smith and Led Zeppelin songs on the floor during my mama’s last day. Who gathered like a holiday and ate key lime pie and laughed loudly with raunchy, raucous jokes. My family, who held hands and recited the serenity prayer and watched as my mama swallowed four ounces of life ending medications mixed into two ounces of apple juice. My family, reorganized without her.

With Loren, who played Stairway to Heaven on his acoustic guitar and gave us all melody. Who was so sturdy I believed I’d never fall. Whose intuitive ability to know where to be and when and why was my life-force, my most precious resource. Whose kiss tasted like the promise of a future. Loren, who sat on my mama’s bed the day she died and held her hand and told her, “You do not need to worry. I love your daughter. I will make sure she is ok.” Loren, who we believed. 

With my friends, who drove to me with tie dye and surrounded me in color and fresh fruit. Who sliced mango and dipped Hanes XL Men’s T-Shirts in pink and yellow and red. My friends, who flew across the country and the world and held me so tight I could feel their love against my new skin. My friends, who formed a net beneath me, a quiet but mighty layer with no holes, no where for me to slip through or into or out of. Old friends and new friends braided together and holding me up. My friends, who are really more like family. 

In Elsewhere, my love was more, like my mama’s, and this made me feel close to her. My mama was on my shoulder, in my ear, across my heart. I did not have to miss her too hard because she was so vibrationally present. I loved this about Elsewhere. It made me never want to leave.

In Elsewhere, too, my pain made sense. A room of 400 in black. I shook before them. Their tears were mine. My sister held my hand and held me up. Tents erected in our backyard made space for mourners and bodies hid from the rain and sun, huddled close. We wore torn black ribbons to signify our hearts, torn open. Our pain was physical, our ribbons were proof. 

By definition, Elsewhere could not last forever. It was an aberration. A brief slip into another dimension that would eventually spit us back out to planet Earth. It was a glimpse at a world of more. On the last day of shiva, I dreaded our departure from Elsewhere with an exhaustion so weighty it left me winded.  

We left. I mourned this loss with fresh pain. I wished desperately for a memorial and a shiva to bid Elsewhere farewell. With each passing day the more of Elsewhere felt dimmer and further, my mama dimmer and further along with it. 

I spent my mornings furiously writing down every detail I could remember about my time in Elsewhere. The hot fudge Sundays we drizzled in chocolate and whipped cream on the back porch. The middle school friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade, whose smell was as familiar as her phone number, which I can still dial by heart. The insurance broker who attended the memorial service and told me, “Your mama changed my life.” 

I wrote and tried to tether myself to more and to my mama and to the sensation of knowing so crisply what mattered, as it seemed I did when we lived briefly in Elsewhere. That life could return from the brink, could return from watching my mama drink four ounces of life ending medication mixed with two ounces of apple juice seemed to erode the laws of physics. It should not return. We should not return. Life should not happen as it did before my mama died. 

It happens anyway. A friend turns 30 and outside of the bubble of Elsewhere I decide that I should attend his party, which will take place at his grandmother’s house on Long Island. Loren and I drive to the beach. We write song lyrics and make up melodies in the car. On the first night at dinner, the voices of too many people crowd together in my head and overwhelm me. I excuse myself and take a bath. In the bath, I cry and cry. The water gets salty, like I’ve grown my own ocean. 

The next morning we walk to the beach. I feel so far from Elsewhere. So unnatural doing this entirely natural thing: celebrating the birthday of a close friend. My love and pain clash and crash. My eyes stop blinking and the sun hits my skin at the wrong angle. I want to crawl out of myself but I can’t. 

Then I see the ocean. The water is rough and churning. It is blue and grey and green. It is expansive and with my eyes, I follow it to the curve of the earth. The ocean is so magnificent, so total in its existence, that I no longer want to crawl out of myself but instead to dive directly into this beautiful, bountiful expression of more.

I do. I dive. 

My mama and I spent a lot of time together in this ocean. My mama, in her early thirties, blonde hair, blue eyes, big teeth. Me at two, three, and four years old, salted little limbs wrapped around her neck. “Over or under, Jess?” She’d ask me. “Under!” I’d say and hold my nose as together we dipped under the crash of a wave. We’d come up for air beaming. “More!” I’d shout. “More! More! More!” 

I dive under a wave and I feel my mama with me. Over and under and through the waves, my mama is on my shoulder, in my ear, and across my heart. She is with me in the ocean. 

I feel a surge of heightened sight and taste and touch and sound and smell and love. My mama exists, more exists, here, in this ocean, on planet earth, outside of Elsewhere, in the inconceivable life that will follow. I say to myself, “Over or under?” And then, “More, more, more.”