death valley for jacques

i had opened my diary and copied a post from 1998, written to the last man to break my heart. it was one of the pages Bekah had stolen before she died. A day or two after her death her ex-boyfriend Joe and I were going through the trunk of her car and knock me over with a feather, there's a big sheaf of my diary.

one letter from january 1998:

(all names are changed)
Jan 1998

Hi Dick,
You wrote to me from prison. You were sad and angry and they were treating you like a dog all the time and you are worried that your children will not love you. Your children will always love you. Maybe Daughter is not sure that you love her. Do not stop writing to her. Put your own hurt and rejection aside and send letter after letter after letter even if she does not write back. She will be there for you when you get out. SEE HER.

And stay out of prison for the rest of your life. The pain of seeing a loved one go away, the way Son and Daughter have seen you go away, is not just the pain of your absence. The loss of your counsel and support as they grow up. It is the pain of empathy. They know you suffer, and that knowledge increases their own suffering.

There is one thing you cannot change, Dick. Your children love you. It is immutable. Their anger and hurt may stop them from expressing it right now, but if you let them know, and keep on letting them know, that you love and need them, they will be there when you are out. I know this to be true. I cannot say that it will hold true if you insist on going back again. Though they will still love you, they may choose not to spend their time in that pain. So they will try to forget it.

The best and probably only way for you to keep your children near you is to keep yourself in a place where they can see you, talk to you, etc. Stay out of prison for the rest of your life. You have so many talents, skills, abilities, etc. DICK! you do not have to be a criminal. So don't be. I really believe strongly that this is the best way for you to achieve happiness for yourself as well, but if it is so that your babies' love is paramount to your survival, that is just as important to that.

You wrote an incredibly expressive essay about life inside. Then said, "I can't fucking WRITE!" But you can write, and you can write very well. In fact writing is what will get you through this hell. You know that as well as I do. You also know about astral projection. You know how to concentrate. Stop listening to all the noise around you and within you, and concentrate on the calm core of you. Breath deeply, in through nose, out through mouth. (we just watched "The Karate Kid')

relax. isn't that better? I impart love to you. I do enough crying for you and me, and Son and Daughter, too. I can't see my babies either, now, and it is tearing me apart. I cried and laid around in my underwear all day long today. Without a car I am dead in the water and the judge is going to throw me into the slammer. I am scared. But I am brave. Fuck, what choice do I have? what choice indeed….

You said I must be tired of you. But that was only the second letter I got from you. The rest were postcards sent to some bitch you call "Ms. B" and don't give a rat's ass about. I doubt that I will ever, ever be tired of you, Dick. I know that some of what I have written is harsh. Maybe you needed to hear it anyway. Read every word, and don't just focus on the negative. You have something to look forward to and you have what you need within you to accomplish a LOT OF GOOD. It is knowing that so very certainly that has made it so difficult for me to cope with losing you, Dick, don't you know that? If I thought you were just a loser, I could not pretend to myself that losing you was actually a LOSS. I would have to admit that I would be better off without you. But I always knew better than that. I am not better off without you, I am worse off, and so my pain.

Love.


incidentally, i was wrong. i am better off without him

that's how i spent much of the afternoon, reading the pages bekah read. i found them enlightening. in retrospect of course i have to say that i have a flair for melodrama and hyperbole. but shit, my heart was broke. i just had not had the experience of losing my daughter to murder then. just did not know then, that my broken heart would be forced to endure much, much more.

and still i have it. my heart, i mean...still i have the wonder the will to live. where it comes from i cannot quite say, but i did make another painting this afternoon, after having a long nap with Bekah in my dream, which i cannot recall at all besides that detail.

and adrienne rich is on my mind - that poem, i'll try to find it but anyway she writes, well yes, i'm lonely...and goes on to say but i am okay. that the tree is lonely, the water is lonely, the sun is lonely and so, okay, i'm lonely.
- posted by barbara @ 9/02/2002 11:47:00 PM