When sorrow strikes, Boston can be a place of beauty that may act as a balm on the soul. Yet like all cities, it can also be incredibly lonely and forlorn when your companion is missing. This past weekend I was scheduled to spend the arrival of fall in Boston with Kira, but her sister unexpectedly passed away. It was a brutal blow of the universe, in the way that so many terrible things make so little sense.
I had only met Shanica a few times – she drove us home when we were too tired out to make one more block (she happened to be in the area) and she joined us for dinner at the condo one evening. She was always cool with me, and she leaves behind three kids, so this can’t be an easy time for the family, who have set up a GoFundMe to afford the funeral expenses – that link can be found here and every little donation will help.
So it was that my entry to Boston on Friday afternoon was marred with sorrow, and Kira tends to shut off the world and retreat into disappearance mode when she’s very despondent. The same thing happened when she lost another sister a couple of years ago. Everyone deals with loss differently, and I have learned to give her space, while being there in whatever capacity I might be of some comfort or help.
Being alone in Boston is not a new experience, but I haven’t done it in a while. Usually Kira is there, or the twins or Andy, and this unexpected return to solitude coincided with this revisiting of the past in the very same city and haunts.
Boston had already turned the page to fall since our last visit, which felt a lifetime away with its sunny and summery atmosphere. The wind was strong, and untempered by the sweetness of the sea – it must have been a land breeze. A chill struck through the city, even though the sun was out. I hurried into Chinatown for an early dinner to avoid any crowds, and had my first bowl of pho for the season. It’s one of Kira’s favorites, and I thought of her while a parade of dragons noisily marched past the restaurant. This would have been a wonderful fall weekend if life hadn’t gotten in the way, and I wondered how she could possibly be doing after such a shocking and sad event.
Light and darkness demarcated their distinctions dramatically, but nothing was black and white. The city, for all its saturated afternoon color, felt drained into dismal shades of gray. Without Kira, I felt lonely, but instead of panicking or seeking out others, I dove into the loneliness, feeling it keenly, rawly, in ways I hadn’t when I was really alone and on my own. In those days some part of me knew that if I’d acknowledged it, I wouldn’t have survived. I can handle it now, even if I knew it wasn’t good for me to dwell too long. I made the decision to return home to Andy the next morning. It was enough to see me through the dimming of the day.
The queasy period of late afternoon in early fall, when the clock is dragging the light away, felt uncertain and tentative, and the unaccustomed surge of loneliness I felt lent the afternoon a poignant sadness – the emotional embodiment of fall, for which I thought I was prepared and ready, and for which I wasn’t at all.
The next morning I rose very early, as much to beat the line at Cafe Madeleine, as to be back on the road and headed toward Andy, toward home. It was cool again, and sunny, and irrevocably fall.
