Back to the Start
A few days ago a friend sent me a link to a beautiful song by Coldplay called “The Scientist.” She said it was a fitting metaphor to me and what I was going through. I listened to it that night through headphones and became enveloped by the beauty and power of the melody and lyrics. The lyrics are at a premium, but there was one line that just kept coming back at me, crushing my heart yet warming it at the same time.“… Back to the start …”
I played it once that night and cried my way through it. I played it again the next night with the same results. And I’m going to keep playing it and keep crying because it is such a good hurt. The memories that return to me as the song plays are so special and real and fresh and I need them. As much as it hurts to remember, it feels right at the same time. It’s like sticking your toes in a pool’s cold water repeatedly until you get used to the temperature and eventually it doesn’t feel so cold.
As I write this, I am thinking of several little events that have occurred during the last few days. These have been seemingly insignificant on their own but when I think of them all together, when I think of them along with this song, they become very powerful and relevant.
A co-worker told me he was attending his niece’s wedding over the weekend. He said it was going to be held outside at a place called Glen Park and asked me if I ever heard of it. I smiled and said that yes, I had heard of it. “That’s where I was married,” I said. Then I paused for a second or two and so did he. My eyes teared up and I had to look away and then I had to walk away.
“… Back to the start …”
Yesterday I was downtown walking back to work after filing Coleen’s will with the appropriate authorities. I saw two people sitting on a curb talking and they looked like they were restaurant workers on break. He was in a chef’s apron and hat. She was young with dark hair and dressed in black and white. Just like Coleen looked when we first met. I smiled as I walked past them and then I stopped and turned around when I realized what I had just seen.
“… Back to the start …”
I was cleaning out an old dresser in my garage and came across a stray photo from our wedding day. It had been trimmed and lacquered to a small, decorative piece of wood. It was a photo from our first dance and I was saying something with a little grin on my face and she had her arms around me smiling. She was almost always smiling, she was beautiful.
“… Back to the start …”
Coleen’s email hadn’t been opened since she before she left us and I thought I should take a look at it. I knew her password but yahoo didn’t trust the transaction and asked a security question. “Where did you spend your honeymoon?”
“… Back to the start …”
Those memories of our start are hard for me, maybe even the hardest. We were so young and she was so fresh and sassy. We were falling in love. And now I feel cheated that it’s only me with those memories now, Coleen’s not here to share them. I can’t talk to her about them and hear her laugh, see her reactions, her smile, and hear her commentary and recollections. She would no doubt be able to correct my memory and remind me of the things I may have forgotten.
My emotions seem best checked when I am in the present tense. I do better when I am tasking, busy with some activity. A lot of people offer that as advice, too. “Remember, keep yourself busy. It’ll be better that way.” Like they really know.
I don’t mind staying busy, actually I kind of like it. But I also know that it’s just a cheap disguise to the way I really feel. I can’t help but think the truth to the healing is the confrontation, the dealing with all the memories of the past and the fear and uncertainty of the future. Those memories might seem like kryptonite sometimes but I know how healing they really are. It’s confronting the hurt, it’s going “back to the start.”
And now, three weeks after first hearing that song and being so emotionally charged as the victim of loss in the first two verses, I am hearing the song differently. Maybe I was so blinded by the hurt that I wasn’t paying attention, maybe my awareness is better. But whatever it is, I now realize that I am The Scientist.
I am the one guessing at numbers, pulling her puzzles apart, trying to make sense of things. Asking for her help to love me and haunt me and guide me through my new start. A start without her, a start with a new career, a start as a different me. Maybe I should have put that all together when I first heard the song. My take on that is that I wasn’t ready for that part yet. I had to deal with the pain first, with those wonderful memories, before I could move on to the rest of it.
That seems to be a recurring theme in many of the lessons I have been learning. Visit the memories, look at the photos, deal with the pain. Then move forward a little stronger than when I started.
Here’s the song: