Bryan’s Blog: EYES
Bryan’s Blog
Two years ago Bryan started a blog for parents who have lost a child. He uses the name Jamey B Sarn which is an anagram of Bryan James. He refers to Sarah as Sahara – an anagram of her first name and middle initial. Grace he refers to simply as G. The pseudonyms allow him to talk about his grief and his deteriorating relationship with Grace while maintaining anonymity.
EYES
June 18, 2000
Jamey B Sarn
I know what Chuck means about grief icons – things that you grasp onto to ground yourself. I have this place I go to every year on Sahara’s birthday. A shell of an old stone house that I stumbled on not long after she died. Every time I go there it’s like stepping through a black hole in space into a place frozen halfway between yesterday and today.
There’s a stone marking a child’s grave on the property. Can you guess the name? Yes, it’s Sahara. What are the odds? I can’t put into words what it means to me. But I know you all understand. Don’t let anybody take away your icons. You have a right to them.
It occurred to me today that G. and I have not made love in over a year. Is there some kind of statute of limitations that applies here? If you haven’t been intimate in a specified amount of time, do you officially cross the line into hopeless? The thing is I’ve always felt so incredibly lucky to be with her that I’d have to be a complete fool to let her go.
So what is it that keeps me here? This is going to sound strange. It’s a look she gets in her eyes sometimes. I see it and I know she’s remembering Sarah. Her whole being retreats into the frame of that memory. I so wish she’d let me in at those moments.
Truthfully, it was her eyes that made me fall in love with her. I’d never seen anyone with such incredible eyes. Sometimes they cut right through you like lasers. She’s staggeringly beautiful when she’s angry. Sometimes I provoke her just to see that look. Is that perverse?
Other times she gets thoughtful and it’s like the whole world shifts all at once. Like the sun going down over a lake in the middle of September when the clouds look like their burning at the edges with the last of daylight. Do you know what I mean?
It has always been her eyes. I could always see her love for me there if I began to doubt. But now her eyes are ocean deep and I can’t find myself in them anymore. Is that the line? When you can’t see yourself in the other person’s eyes anymore? If it is, don’t tell me because I’m not ready to hear it.