Face Time

Saving face. Putting on a brave face. The face of a watch. Face time. What a varying range of descriptions for one simple, 4 letter F word. If you look up the word "face"on dictionary.com, there are 56 different explanations for the word. It goes from examples of the word as a noun, a verb, and an idiom.

To give something a face, is to give it an identity. It is recognizing individuality...it is admitting it's real.

Facing something without filters on...without a means of coping can be an excruciating part of the human journey. To face something, or someone with hands open, and the white flag of surrender blowing above your head is one of life's undesirable, fatal collisions. It's calling out the truth from its hiding spot. It's shining a light on a debilitating monster...it's being honest.

I have witnessed many things in my life. I have witnessed the irreverent waste of life itself, as I have observed on more than one occassion, the life of an addict. I have faced the fact, through much turmoil, animosity, and insane resentment that there is one hard and fast rule in life...you can't change someone. You are responsible for one persons happiness, health, direction and servitude..and that my friend, is YOU.

Facing all you feel, without a distraction, is the mark of a brave soul. It's not a meaningless choice. The resolute decision of an empassioned heart can move mountains...it can change the world. When life gets ugly...when your scars identify you for a time....when the healing begins...that's when the face of a situation grows more gracious. The investment in personal integrity increases authenticity.

Tonight I faced a road. An actual road that I haven't driven down in a very long time. It's been 3 yrs, and 4 months. The first 2 yrs and 10 months are irrelevant to the story, it's the last 6 that have marked my avoidance. I have been trying to remember every minute of time with Michael. I have been locking away all of the laughs, the cheeky off colour comments..and some of the most soul bearing conversations of my life. I have put them away for safe keeping... quietly facing them for solace, for reason...for flashes of relief from my flexing identity...I am the bereaved. I have avoided that road...because it feels like the last precious memory that I haven't gotten to. I have kept it there, on a winding country lane next to a sleepy golf course. I couldn't bear to think, that maybe there are no memories left....maybe I have recalled all of the great things that made him who he was...and who we were....and now it's gone. So I didn't go down that road, until tonight.

I felt this blog post coming on tonight...something about facing those things we don't want to. I was driving home, and hit a major traffic jam, and veered off the highway to take another route...and that route, took me down Ellis Rd. I grinned in silence as I realised...I have to drive that road...there isn't another way. So I did it...and I talked myself through it...I remembered a crazy night where we sat in the car, and watched the sun come up over the golf course...and I cried as I drove past the mist of that memory...and I cry as I write this.

The face has open wounds on it...desperate for healing. Desperate for time to administer a salve of acceptance and recognition...it was all real. I will continue to face things that hurt, not to punish myself, or to create more grief...but to do one thing...and that for Michael is this:

I will never forget you. xo