Februaries

We took Metro North up to Cold Spring last Wednesday after work, a quick overnight trip to visit friends up there. I wrote this on that train ride north with the intention of maybe turning it into something bigger:

"Three years ago this month I took the train back to the city after a long weekend with Arielle. I was trying to knit a scarf -- one I'd decided would be for Sarah -- in soft warm shades of cream, rose, sky blue.

It was a lot colder that year, in that month of February, and I spent most of the trip back staring out the window at the river drifting by beneath sheets of ice.

I remember trying to describe to Sarah later that week how frozen I felt, how close I felt to cracking. It's funny, the lengths we sometimes go to just to ascribe words to feelings that exist beyond language.

This February is warmer, and more solid, and more calm."

We got back home Thursday afternoon, drenched to the bone after walking through sleeting slushing snow, and made Evan's mother's famous lemongrass seafood stew. Friend Nick was kind enough to drag himself uptown to join us for dinner that evening, despite the nasty weather.

Evan's cell phone rang just as we finished eating and he went into the other room to take the call from his mother. She was calling to tell him that his brother had died that afternoon out in Washington State; that his brother, in an unknowable moment of rage or despair, had killed himself that afternoon, and after that phone call things seemed abruptly colder again, a little less solid.

It's been awhile since I've lost someone -- through a breakup, through departure, through death -- and you forget, somehow, that sense of drowning, of freezing, of being taken by waves of sorrow.

I never met Evan's brother (though I kind of assumed I would) and it's been awhile since I've even been in a role to comfort someone I hold dear. It's not an easy thing, being witness to such loss.

Nick left abruptly during the phone call Thursday evening and we curled in to each other after that, curled into the spaces between us. We talked about Big Love (which we've been watching) and we talked about Llama (who was being particularly ridiculous) and we talked about Tim. We talked about grief, and about having to tell people, and I thought of my mother making phone calls the afternoon that my father died, and how awed I was by her strength (how to stay calm when the recipient of your call drops the phone and starts shrieking) and by her logic (whom to call first so that your husband's parents are not alone when you call them to say their son is dead). And I thought of my brother (the same age back then as Evan's niece is now) coming down the back porch steps, hands covered in flour from baking cinnamon raisin bread, to meet us as we returned from the hospital.

Friday afternoon we ventured up to Fort Tryon Park for a walk in the snow with Erica, who then joined us for tea and hot chocolate. We met Jessica and Andrew for dinner later that evening at the Locksmith, and then headed up to Inwood Saturday morning with Erica for brunch at Indian Road Cafe. We came home after brunch and got him all packed, headed south to Penn Station where we parted ways -- him taking NJ Transit out to Newark Airport, me walking up to El Centro in Hell's Kitchen to meet Jill for margaritas.

It's strange to be mourning someone I never knew, strange to be caught up enough in another family to grieve on its behalf, and strange that February, though so short, seems so inclined to inflict damage. I will be glad for tomorrow's March.