Noticing More

Life in a Parallel Universe

There is nothing predictable about grief.

It’s a circuitous, often harrowing route, but there are sometimes surprising supernatural winks that can rescue you in a micro-moment. In this increasingly precarious and disturbing world, these glimpses are even more potent than ever.

Yesterday, as I was pouring my morning cup of Peet’s Major Dickason’s coffee, often the best reason to get out of bed in the morning, I glanced at the side of my refrigerator. I scanned the various magnets from Cape Cod to VCA Animal Hospital, a messy mosaic of the life and times as a mom and her “beamish boys.” Bittersweet and beautiful. A large four-leaf clover magnet caught my eye, with its vibrant shades of forest and lime greens, orange, and yellow.

In that instant, I was transported back there, plopped in that horrible day following Elliot’s death almost seven years ago. Suddenly, I was alone in the living room of my old Lake Highlands townhouse, encased in the opaque fog of devastating grief. I was peeling the colorful magnet off the back of Elliot’s work laptop that was inside the backpack he was carrying when he separated from his motorcycle and landed on the hostile ground 40 feet below. Though I still don’t know exactly what happened on that sunny August Sunday, several bike experts have conjectured that the weight of the computer on his back probably contributed to the dynamics of the fall.

“We’ll come to your home to collect his computer this afternoon,” said the Chief Technical Officer at Global Payments, his employer, when she phoned earlier that day. There was a kind yet contained urgency in her voice.

“We are so sorry for your loss,” she added. “I’m not sure what we will do without Elliot.” I felt like I was caught in some contorted spy-thriller version of my life, a parallel dimension where nothing made sense.

Yet I knew I wanted to keep the magnet because it was a piece of Elliot. And Ian might want it. There were other stickers I could not remove. I guess it’s a common practice among cool cyber-geek types to decorate their devices in this way.

“Don’t worry,” she said when she arrived with a large prayer lily cradled in her right arm. “The operating system is all we need. We can return the top if you’d like.”

The dense web of tiny fractures across the black screen reminded me of his fatal impact. It repelled me. However, the colorful magnet was different. It’s his spirit and has adorned three refrigerators since, but in all that time, I never knew what it meant—a Japanese logo, a computer game icon, or some obscure anime symbol?

I never thought much about it, really—until today, now, at 7:05 am on a Friday, almost seven years later. Why was today the day? His brother Ian never mentioned it either, or if he had, I didn’t remember.

I decided to do a Google image search. Elliot, aren’t you impressed with my technical savvy? I chuckled . . . Wow, I discovered it’s an official Japanese badge that alerts other drivers that there is “an elderly driver” at the wheel, 70 or older, who might have slower reaction times. It’s called a Koreisha Mark and is mandatory for drivers 75 and over in Japan, a place and culture he adored with every cell of his being. Kind of like “baby onboard” in the U.S.

Still, I was befuddled. Strange that I had viewed this daily for almost seven years and never questioned it. El, is this a wink, a mischievous nudge? Elderly driver? I don’t get it. He was far from that, but he had (or has) a penchant for irony, a wicked wit. He was decades away from this designation in his living chronology— literally, anyway.

Perhaps, he was helping me understand the murky circumstances of his accident.

Was it a delayed or panicked reaction to that sharp 90-degree turn, exacerbated by road conditions you had never encountered? Were you avoiding another vehicle or reacting abruptly to the unfamiliar camber? Your reactions were not sharp enough?

These were all plausible explanations.

Through my exhaustive research, I discovered that motorcycles are pretty much always teetering on the edge of disaster. The physics of not leaning or leaning too much into a turn, the nuances of counter-steering just so, or the disasters that can happen with over-correcting at the wrong speed due to the centrifugal force... It's horrifying, not to mention the unfathomable vulnerability of navigating one to three-ton vehicles travelling 70+ miles per hour around you on the same road. Too much.

But, thank you for this micro-glimpse, El. This is a new kind of conversation.

Maybe it took seven years to be ready to digest the truth of the random horribleness of this loss that my aching heart will never fully accept. The grief never goes away.

It just morphs and changes on this mysterious journey that feels increasingly like the real-life manifestation of the Twilight Zone that you, Ian, and I used to devour and inhabit together.

That’s where I live every day, in this “middle ground between light and shadow,” where all these surprising synchronicities and glimpses of grace are defining my new dimension of normal and a new kind of relationship with my Mr. E.

Love you always and forever.