Negative Space

Tomorrow is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. I’ll have to call Mama. It’ll be the first one since Daddy died. She’s going to have dinner with her sister and taking the free turkey she got because the walk-in fridge at her church went out a week or two ago. She was around to take it, and Baptists that feed other people can’t stand to see anything going to waste.

Especially not food. God sends people to hell for wasting food I’ve been told.

I’m glad she’s going somewhere e
lse for the holiday. On Thursday, the house would only feel more empty than it already does.

I’ve often wondered what painters and sculptors meant when they talked about “negative space”. They’ve been talking about for years, but they do so in the argot of artists, who speak a language I don’t always understand.

Now I understand “negative space” in a palpable way.

It’s what’s obviously missing.

It’s the element, that by just not being there, becomes all the more real.

It’s the void that remains while life goes on around it.

This will be a bitter-sweet Thanksgiving. Sweet, because I have been shopping so much that Shannon and I will have our own private feast. Bitter because I miss Daddy.

Life could be worse. Then again, it could be better.

I keep telling Mama over and over and over again that we made the right decisions, that we did what Daddy wanted. She’s not always convinced, and one of us always ends up crying when we talk.

It’s usually me.

Still, I have a bitter-sweet thing to be thankful for: we did right by Daddy.

Most importantly, I did right by Daddy.

Consciously letting go of someone you love, making decisions to end his life in God's time (read: real quick) and then living with the aftermath is no easy chore.

After Rich, my first partner died, I questioned the decisions I made that led up to his death. His situation was hopeless. He had a massive septic infection in his lungs. One that had little to no possibility of treatment.

I had an obligation to honor his wishes, that he not be kept alive artificially, that out-weighed my own.

As I told Mama in the hospital, it'll be the easiest and the hardest thing you've ever done up until now. You'll know when the t ime's right, and you'll do the right thing. You won't be able to do otherwise.

It’s going to be a strange holiday season without him. To be honest, it’s just pure-strange to be without him.

I’ve decided in the aftermath, though, that I can never miss Mama’s birthday again and that I need to buy her something pretty and useless for Christmas. Daddy was always the one who gave her the one present she wanted most.

That one’s on me, now.

We’ve had our problems as a family, and I can’t be responsible for that. What I can do is move forward and try to help Mama do the same. My sisters can fend for themselves. Neither one seems to be open to the fact that Daddy’s gone.

Denial is futile, and it only leads to other problems that can escalate into full-blown craziness. I know because I have personal experience on that topic.

As I see it, my job is to fill that negative space with things that are meaningful. Whether it’s a phone call, flowers or a pretty little sterling pin with Austrian glass I found at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center.

I’m flying in the face of modern art, but I think negative space is vastly over-rated, and something I definitely don’t want or need in my life.

I’m more concentrated on positive ones.