Ours
What we could not accomplish in life we managed from opposite shores, love diminishing the ocean between us into the space between clasped palms.
On a Wednesday I saw a new dermatologist, part of a plastic surgery center operating within a white house at the end of my street. My walk took less than two minutes for a skin exam I scheduled more than a year ago.
Inside the lobby was plush, downplayed upscale. There were at least four receptionists, only two of them looking as though they had anything to do. I followed a nurse through a maze of treatment rooms, each marked with beauty-chasing procedures. Face and breast lifts, hand surgeries, laser treatments, botox, liposuction, and various reconstructions.
As a new patient, my medical history had to be documented, a task that has become a game of truth or dare-I-tell-a-lie as I decide just how much this particular practitioner really needs to know about me. Any medical conditions? Like what, I asked. Diabetes, high blood pressure. No, nothing like that. Have you ever had surgery? I pause then say, I had a hysterectomy in January. She made a note and then asked, Are your periods still regular?
I am thankful I am here to only have my skin checked.
As I walk home I realize that I no longer think about my hysterectomy every single day, and when I do the thought is less tangled up in emotional barbed wire. Such is the process of healing, the beautiful scar of resilience.
In the evening I scrolled past a meme that said “No Womb, No Less” and shared it to my stories. Weirdly this experience has felt akin to losing a loved one. In the beginning when the news is new, everyone is sad for you. Then no one knows what to say so often they say nothing. Then comes the period of time where everyone forgets and moves on and you feel alone as you live days defined by loss. This is how it goes. I’ve done it too. We are all human.
You might be thinking that an organ is not a human. It’s not even an organ I needed. The world is full of women glad to be rid of their uteruses - White Pants Forever! - and I wish I was part of their club rather than feeling as though I was forced to sacrifice a member of my family, to cut away living tissue that was not only part of my physical body, but soulfully connected to my identity. It belonged to me, was meant to be part of me for my entire life. Or, if you believe in fate, I suppose it wasn’t meant to be.
One of my earliest memories is of my father losing his mother. I was four years old, creeping out of my bedroom to hide behind the couch, peering past the upholstered corner to spy on my parents at the foot of the fireplace. My father was weeping, my mother stroking his arm, whispering soft words. I had never seen his body make such a shape, the lines of his limbs all wrong. I had never heard such sounds, foreign and terrifying, for they taught me that the world could be an unstable, unpredictable place.
Before this moment, I did not know that fathers cried. After, I did.
A decade later on a random afternoon, he told me he missed her. The admission caught me off guard, caused me to see him anew. He missed his mom. I saw a shadow of those same lines sitting at the dining room table. His aura was specific and thick, a radiation of sorrow as though I could smell the burnt sulfur of sadness. Grief. An experience with a name. I was too young to fully comprehend the devastation of such a loss but I felt deeply for him, a frozen, electrified bolt of melancholia. I could not imagine not having a mother. I could not imagine not having a father. He was living proof you could exist without either. Proof that one day, I might live this existence, too.
I will never forget when my brother first spoke to me from the beyond. He’d only been gone a day. I was in the shower, breaking down, my hands pressed against the wet tile as though the pressure might plug the gunshot in my soul.
It’s ok, Liz.
Clear as a bell. From inside my head, my heart, my very spirit, my brother’s voice rang with pristine clarity, a single raindrop from a clear sky. I ceased weeping. We’d been estranged when he died. I had not spoken to him for more than a year, did not know if I ever would again. Mental illness mixed with trauma has a way of wrecking relationships, and I’d withdrawn myself for the sake of self preservation, both selfish and necessary. Was it the right thing to do? I’ll never know, but it’s amazing the way history repeats itself for my father had done the same with his sister. Those blistering tirades at the end of phone lines and scrolling middle-of-the-night texts were not really them speaking, rather the crossed wires of a chemically-confused mind, a complication of accidents, damage done by years of substance abuse.
But here he was, sounding like his true self.
It’s ok, Liz. I’m ok. Everything is ok now.
I spoke back and as I did I was filled with a sense of calm, a blast of love so pure there was no room for anything other than a tangible belief that he was not only not gone but somewhere free, and wild, and true. Everything else had fallen away. All that was left was the beautiful, unmarred essence of his core - that delightful, quick to smile, sparkle-eyed boy who chased me through sun drenched fields collecting box turtles in our Radio Flyer, who comforted my midnight tears with cool washcloths, who gleefully played whatever game I’d dreamed up that day, including unearthing a skunk den just to see if it really had a white stripe like in the cartoons.
At that moment in time our father had been gone for 9 years and I’d never once heard his voice or felt his presence. He was simply. Gone. (Until one day he wasn’t, but that is another story.)
My brother taught me that our relationships, our love, do not have to be lost by loss. They can be transformed, transmuted into a new substance, a different kind of energy, and they may still be very present if we open ourselves to them. If we tune inward and lean forward and listen very, very carefully. I can say with a full, open heart, we are no longer estranged. What we could not accomplish in life we managed from opposite shores, love diminishing the ocean between us into the space between clasped palms.
I spent nearly all of July listening to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), an album I’d been unfamiliar with during its original release in 2010. Oh how I wish I’d had these songs when I was 19, but listening to them 20 years beyond that tender, chaotic time of big feelings, wild mess, and sophomoric mistakes has been incredibly healing. It is a little like being spoken to from the beyond, the songs’ characters helping me see my younger selves through kinder, more compassionate eyes. I am learning to love these younger selves, to forgive them for their blunders, ignorances, and misgivings, and in doing so, I am finding a profound forgiveness for all the players of my past, including myself. It all brought me here and here is where I am meant to be.
There’s a line from “Ours” that sometimes passes through my mind in the middle of the night.
And life makes love look hard.
When you let all that we call life fall away, Love is present, so magnificent in its shine, you can know, even if only momentarily, that it’s there all the time, without ever needing to be earned or deserved, bought or traded for. No cosmetic procedure necessary. No womb or any other part, no less. It’s ours. Has always been. Will forever be.
It’s ok, says my brother. I’m here.
He is love. And so are we.
Thank you for reading, friends. Wherever you are, whatever you are up to, be well and know that you are loved.