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The conversation started one late night (or very early morning) in the summer of 1994. I was unemployed, between my freshmen and sophomore year at Kansas State, stuck between art and English education. My best friend and I spent those long summer nights driving aimlessly through our small, sleepy hometown. We played amatuer philosopher during those drives, questioning God, the universe, everything.

"I don't want to live forever," I said.

"Neither do I. Not on Earth, anyway."

"No," I said, "I don't want to go to heaven either. I mean, that's just nuts. Forever is a long time."

My friend laughed. "It's not like heaven's just clouds and harps and shit. I don't think you understand what it would be like."

No, it's not like that at all. I've seen death in my life--death and a lot of change. I remember every one of my grandparents' funerals, my father's, my first wife's. I remember standing in the basement of the Warren-McElwain mortuary in Lawrence, KS deciding on a casket for my wife at age 37.

The funeral director, a relatively young woman herself, stopped in mid sales pitch/product description, and said, "You're too young for this."

Yes, and no. And maybe. 

Death is a part of life. Our mortality is what binds us together, and to rob anyone of death is to steal the very essence of what it means to be human. Death is not the worst thing to come for us. Death is our oldest friend. Death reminds us to live, to enjoy, to laugh and have fun, and to love well. Death taught me well from a young age. This is what is the end to which we all must go. This is what gives value and rarity to your life.

I've carried those lessons with me. I have no desire to live forever--and I fear immortality in world not built for it much more than my own death. Maybe heaven isn't harps and clouds and "shit." Maybe I can't comphrended immortality. I do know this: on Earth, I'm happy my time is limited.

It's much more valuable this way.

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If you live long enough, you'll come face to face with some genuine horrors. Death of loved ones, long illnesses, dishonesty and betrayal, heartache (and not the pleasant kind--because yes, I now believe ache can be pleasant)...

If you live long enough, you'll earn a few scars.

I was digging up Mom's peonies at her old house this past weekend when our neighbor sidled to me and said, "If you find any bones, we're not going to call the police."

What?

She laughed. Bones. Memories. Scars we've tried to bury in our own dirt. Painful experiences we've tried to shove down so deep and cover so completely we think--just maybe--no one will ever see them again. We don't have to show our weak moments. We can pretend those hurtful things never happened. We can live life free of the weight of history. No one has to see our scars if we cover them with enough hearty black soil.

But it never works, does it? You spend your life shoveling and shoveling and hoping it will be enough to hide the scars and the bones and memories, but your shoulders stiffen and your hands callous and crack and bleed... And the bones still come to the surface.

All of that energy wasted... for what?

The boys' principal said something wise this morning--kids are much better than adults at being open and honest about their thoughts and feelings if we give them a chance. Adults spend so much energy trying to suppress their feelings. Trying.

So much energy wasted... for what?

If the best of my short stories were about anything, they were about living in the face of pain and disappointment and horror. I've always felt hopeful about them, despite how hideous my progeny might look to a reader. I've always thought they were little stories of hope.

I'm living out loud the best I can. I'll save my energy for love and hope and gratitude. It is a conscious choice--a choice I can make as well as anyone. I'll dig up the peonies, but won't worry about the bones I find. They aren't mine, and I never buried them there.

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I recently started my new job as guidance counselor at McLouth Middle/High School. No, it has nothing to do with the latest Triangulation anthology, but I'll get to that. Trust me.

Enrollment took place last Thursday night and Friday morning. I saw what felt like hundreds of parents and students in a small amount of time (it was probably only a few dozen, but the feeling was there). I changed schedules, enrolled new kiddos, and was just there for a few to vent.

I don't remember if I've ever blogged about "the well" before, but as I'm nearing 1,000 posts, I don't remember a lot I've blogged about. The well, the deep place inside a person in which they can feel emotion, has been my greatest ally in the last eight months.

When I coached forensics, I talked to my team about the emotional battery inside all of us--the well--and how they could draw from that to make their performances work. I guess I was teaching method acting; it's just the language which spoke to me. This year, one senior placed 5th at state in serious solo acting, the highest placement in years. His piece, "Griefstruck" by J.J. Jonas, involved a tragic car accident which wiped out a young man's entire family. The morning of the performance, I looked at my student and asked, "Do you need any motivation?"

We went there. He knew. I knew. State forensics came only a month after Aimee's death.

My biggest ally in healing--and not only healing from Aimee's suicide, but her illness and struggles over the past eight years--has been the well. Mine's pretty deep, and I don't mind drawing from it. It helps me hear other people in hurt. It helps me work with teenagers. In helps me be there for my own kids, even when I'm exhausted and stretched too thin. It helps me enjoy life, too. It helps me love.

Yes. The well is deep.

Triangulation: Morning After is now available. It's the fourth Triangulation book in which I've managed to land a story, and I thank Stephen Ramey and the whole crew. "Scar Tissue Wings" is as much about Max's stint in Children's Mercy last December as it is about a man who cannot die in a world which already has. The well helps me go there. Triangulation has always been about telling the truth even with a strange spin. Some of my favorite stories have been graced to find themselves in its pages: "Dancing Lessons," "The Good Daughter," "The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable," and now "Scar Tissue Wings." This may be the last year for the anthology because the price of producing it has stretched limited resources too far. Please buy a copy so future writers can find a venue for their truths.

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Last Saturday, I stumbled across a picture of Aimee and me dancing at a friend's wedding. It was late 2001, only six months after our own wedding. Aimee's back was turned to the camera, but it was her, wedding hair, red bridesmaid dress and all, while I'm facing the camera. I hardly recognized the boy in the picture--me. My hair was dark and full, my face bone-thin, and my grin full of boyish wonder. I was twenty-six.

Nearly eleven years later, I'm thirty-seven, my hair is a bit more grey, my face fuller, the grin more knowing, the smile of a veteran on the eve of deployment.

There's a line from Pink Floyd's "Your Possible Pasts" (from The Final Cut, their often overlooked last album with Roger Waters) which reads, "I was just a child then, now I'm only a man." I've always liked the song, despite its bleak, rather bitter take on life, and I feel that line more now than ever. I don't know when I became a man--or the man I am--sometime between the photo from that long ago wedding and now. When I look back and think about the years in between, when I think of my journey with Aimee, the birth of our children, our ups and downs, good times and bad, and her death, I realize how much has changed for the boy of twenty-six dancing with his beautiful, newlywed wife.

What would I tell that boy now if I could go back? What could I tell him about what life brought to his stoop, about the challenges he'd face, about the heartache and all the rest?

Keep smiling, I suppose. Love your beautiful wife with as much passion as you can. Life, at its best, is far too short, so live with passion. Embrace it all--good times and bad--and love like your life depends on it.

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And yes, if you're keeping score at home, I'm alluding to Langston Hughes's poem, "Let America Be America Again"--read it. And yes, I did do the proper thing by adding an apostrophe and "s" to the end of Hughes. Firefox spell check be damned!

Anyway, I feel the weight of too many expectations these days. I'm "that guy," the one whose wife died in April, the one who has three kids, the one we feel sorry for but don't talk to for long in the line at the store because, quite frankly, we don't know what to say to him and it makes us uncomfortable to try. I recognize there are expectations for a grieving husband, even though every single book on grief I've touched states each individual's grief is unique, not some perfect lock-step schedule. The books started sounding like a legion of broken records, so I set them aside in late April.

I'm taking two classes at the Lawrence Arts Center. The first, Silkscreen, met on Monday for the initial session. I've always enjoyed creative outlets--and once upon a time I spent a year as an art student on my way to a career as art therapist.

Here's what I enjoyed about the class:

I was just another dude in the room. I didn't recognize anyone, and if they knew me (or Aimee), I was none the wiser. How refreshing.

I'm tired of being "that guy." Aimee and I carried each other in many ways during our 10+ years of marriage. Any relationship has a public and private side--a good friend once told me, quite directly, that I am "that guy" whether I like it or not. He's right, but I still weary of it. I know I will always be "that guy," at least in a small sense. I will always be the guy who loved Aimee and tried to do the best by her, tried to care for her in her darkest times.

No--take out the "try". There's no space for "try". I did the best I could for her; I cared for her through some dark, dark days. It's a little red badge of courage and love and commitment and I'll wear those scars with pride until I fly away one day.

But part of me must eventually move forward from here. I need to be more than that guy--I am more than him.

The dream will never be what it used to be, but it can be more. It can grow, fertilized well by my time with Aimee.

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Every summer, I go through a period of "existential crisis." Not a big, scary crisis as in "life has no meaning," but a baby one, as in "I no longer have a job to do and feel lost." I'm sure it's a common feeling for many teachers, although most might not choose the term "existential crisis."

Again, I defer to Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar with the phrase "existential crisis." While the wikis have their shortcomings, it is a good source of group think and common knowledge. Let's examine the first line of the entry:

An existential crisis is a stage of development at which an individual questions the very foundations of his or her life: whether his or her life has any meaning, purpose or value.

I'm not very fond of the word "crisis." It sounds too much like "emergency," as in, if you don't resolve this crisis, bad sh*t is going to happen. Soon.  Guess what... Bad sh*t has already happened.

I doubt there is any way to be truly prepared for a loved one's death, especially a spouse. Aimee and I chose not to include a unity candle lighting at our wedding because we both felt the idea of two people becoming one was a bit old-fashioned. Here's what I learned after nearly eleven years of marriage: you will become pretty damned entwined with your partner. If not exactly "one" flesh, the you learn the other's moves before he/she makes them. Losing Aimee has caused a major rift in my thinking about myself and my place in the world--in addition to the pain and grief of her death.

All relationships change over time, regardless of how intimate the relationship. But most changes are gradual, even if at times marked with periods of sudden, but small shifts. A death is a sudden, violent change. Think a football thrown to a receiver--the ball follows a perfect, arcing path to its target, and then a defensive player reaches up to tip the ball, sending it into an awkward, end-over-end spin out of bounds. Or think of what might happen to a planet should another object knock it from its orbit.

I'm out of my orbit. I'm the football tumbling out of bounds. Sure, I have plenty of meaning in my life--right now my boys, especially Owen and Max, need me to be emotionally present. Elliot's needs are fairly simple (although ever-present). Fortunately, he's going to day care during the summer to keep a consistent schedule. The other guys really need me right now.

And that is good--it is as it should be.

But my life, my meaning, is more than father to those boys. I've spent so long as Aimee's friend, lover, partner, and yes, caretaker, that I have to reexamine myself. And by "have to" I mean I have no choice. The change has come, regardless of my wishes, and here I am.

So this year's existential angst (a little more accurate than crisis) brings a good measure of "who am I, now?" with an eye toward the future and "what will my life be like a year from now?"

Baby steps, Aaron. Baby steps.

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How do you talk about death with your kids, especially if their mother--mommy--died?

I've wrestled with this quite a bit lately. The boys are doing okay, but I don't want to completely shelter them from their feelings. I don't want to hide my grieving, either, because they need to know it's okay to cry and be angry and sad and...

Aunt Heather loaned me a few books about death/children the other day, one of them being a parable about water bugs and dragonflies. You can find a copy on Amazon or simply read the parable for free online. It's a nice story, and one which I hope reflects how the universe really works. Of course, I have no idea how the universe really works. I wish I did.

Those of you who know me well know how much "existential questioning" I do. Now that Aimee is gone, those questions are heavier. They really pull at me, especially at night when I'm trying to go to sleep or wake up at four AM expecting to hear Elliot (and don't--that kid is a world-champ sleeper).

Last night, I thought of a story I'd written several years ago, "The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable". It's still one of my favorite stories, originally published at A Fly in Amber and reprinted (in slightly different form) in Triangulation: End of the Rainbow--

I like the way it reads at A Fly in Amber... No explanation of what is beyond the doors. That's where I am right now: on one side of the door. Aimee has stepped through and I can't follow. Not yet. I've got more murals to paint before I join her... Too many to count.

And yes, that is a metaphor from the story.

I frame my world with metaphors. 

When I wrote the "The World in Rubber..." I wasn't thinking about death. But it works. It fits perfectly how I feel right now.

I miss you, Ziggs.  

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