Philadelphia Trip

Last night, instead of learning the music I was supposed to be learning for the show I’m in, I cried, off-and-on, for five hours. It started the very second I walked out the door from work and ended, pretty much, when I fell asleep.

I choked back the tears on the train, as usual, and then on the short walk from the train station to my home. Along the way, I decided to call my mother whom I knew was incensed by the fact that I hadn’t called her in over a week. The argument that she hadn’t called me either is always a losing one, so I simply told her the truth about my emotional descent. The moment she heard me cry, all was forgiven. I guess I chose that moment to call her because I knew a full pardon would follow.

Before ascending the stairs to my 3rd floor safe-haven, I stopped to chat with my landlord who just lost her sister-in-law (her husband’s sister) to cancer. She had been taking care of her for six months and the woman finally succumbed to her disease a couple of weeks ago. We talked a bit about the ugliness of the disease and she stated that she and her husband would like to take me to dinner. I told her that sounded lovely but made sure she knew that if she wasn’t feeling up to it, she shouldn’t feel pressured by the fact that she had already mentioned it to me. I reminded her of the importance of taking care of oneself in situations such as hers and conveyed my belief in the act of collapsing in my tracks and falling apart whenever I feel the need or want. That’s exactly what I did the moment I entered my apartment.

Last night’s tears were, once again, tears of utter resignation, of crushing despair. The inevitable changing of the seasons seems to have a profound effect on my grieving process, thrusting me downward into pits of anguish and pools of tears reminiscent of those I cried in the hospital upon receiving the news that Chris was being released into the care of hospice and sent home to die.

Sitting on the couch hunched over my oversized rust colored throw-pillow, I cried and cried, tears that seemingly had no end and crying with such abandon felt quite cleansing. I needed to do it. I needed to purge emotion for all of the sadness I experienced and all of the horrors Chris experienced.

I pulled myself together in between my breakdowns to cook dinner, organize schoolwork and talk with a friend on the phone, but the in-betweens did not last long. Finally, as the hour grew late, I tuned into HBO and the last forty-five minutes or so of the movie “Philadelphia”, knowing full-well what I was about to witness on my television screen. With only the slightest trace of trepidation, I sat up and readied myself for the ride.

I’m sure I ignored the actual message of the movie and I want to watch the entire film from beginning to end, but last night, “Philadelphia” was a movie about love and a movie about Chris and me. I watched Tom Hanks’ character deteriorate and I felt his humiliation at the changes in his body, the invasive, visible symptoms of his disease and his battle for his life, or in this case, for his rights.

The movie concluded with his frail body in a hospital bed and his family and friends surrounding him, loving him, each of them telling him they would see him tomorrow.

The sight of him lying in his hospital bed, void of hair, very weak and ravaged by his illness sucked the life out of me. There was something eerily familiar about that scene. The frame, the shot of the hospital bed at the same angle on my screen as Chris’ hospital bed was in life swallowed me up in a grief tsunami which engulfed me so completely that I could do nothing more than experience it and wait for my emotions to release me.

After the storm, I picked myself up, powered off my television and made my way to the bedroom, where I finished out the night in defeated and exhausted tears, fell asleep and dreamed about centipedes.