Always, Ron Vawter

I’m thinking, now always, of Ron Vawter and of lives cut short. I’m coming to the realization that the greatest waves of sadness seem to come to me on the most beautiful days and I can’t help but feel guilty for wasting them with rot and melancholy. 

I’m thinking of Vawter’s heart stopping on that plane, of the end wherever it may lurk. The world is painfully sharp and I can’t seem to stay in one place for too long. What was the weather like the day he died? Did he know it was coming?

Grief. That’s the root of it, of the sadness that chokes me and the water that rises behind my ribs. Grief as I dip below the surface holding my breath. Grief I’ve labeled nostalgia and melancholy and depression. Grief for what? For whom? For Ron Vawter?

It’s not always overwhelming but it is always there. It’s as much a part of me as my chromosomes, my DNA. I don’t love myself because I’m scared of myself, of the gnawing sensation pulling at the back of my skull, of the bile resting on my tongue. The sneaking suspicion that I am not really myself but a conglomerate of all the faces I have seen before, and the fear that I don’t recognize them. I fear I don’t recognize my own reflection in the mirror. I want to, I want to love her, myself, but I don’t know how. I’ve never known how.

I’m thinking, always now, of Ron Vawter, of someone who existed, too, but doesn’t anymore. There’s a string I’ve tied to the pinkie finger of everything I’ve ever wanted to remember. I’m pulled more and more to Ron Vawter’s heart attack. I’m pulled to the absence of pictures of him smiling, to that gap where I need something to be.

I’ve left the breadcrumbs out for myself to find over the years, the hints on how to make a person. I see them, I know they’re there. I just don’t know where I am. Not now, not ever maybe.

I’m thinking, always, of Ron Vawter in some small way. In the corner of my lungs, there breathes a cry for the terminal omen he bears. The line connecting who I think I am to who he once was is taut and stretching a little too thin. The line I’ve drawn between me and those who make me sad on beautiful days is visible in the sunshine and sways in the breeze. Some days, I think it (the grief, the sun, the reflection in the mirror) is sentient, is me.

I’m thinking, still, of Ron Vawter on an airplane, just trying to go home.