The Highways of Oklahoma
Season two's ninth newsletter paints a picture of the sparse landscape you're left in when you lose someone and grief takes over
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective.
The lore of the Malaysian Airlines plane that disappeared in 2014 seems to have now been accepted by society at large as one of the mysteries that will never be solved. It spawned hundreds of deep dives and essays about potential conspiracies this could point to, about airplane safety standards, and about what it really says about how much we know about life on this planet.
Right from the time I saw the story I was plagued by the thought of the unfinished stories that ensued from that plane taking flight, never to land.
I imagined a college age girl shooting her shot with her crush who was just about to get on the flight. A boy waiting to discuss the plot twist of his favourite show with his sister. A high school girl deciding that she was still mad at her best friend and she would let her suffer a little more before forgiving them. A woman telling her partner that she was pregnant. A man waiting to surprise his beloved with a ring and a song he’d spent the past month learning while she was away.
Unfinished stories, whether sudden or ones you saw coming leave a peculiar aftertaste. You might never know what they knew. They’re never going to know what they didn’t know in the end. In this week’s piece, writer Adriana Beltrano paints a picture of the sparse landscape grief leaves you in.
The Highways of Oklahoma
In other more populated and prominent states, highways are adversarial things, big sprawling roads that stretch from here to there. Their dark asphalt contrasts against everything around them, and at their ends they are abruptly separated from the natural land by white slabs of vertical concrete. They are graphite lines drawn on the faded and crinkling map of America. The highways of these other states host never-ending races to nowhere, or maybe to everywhere. There are no such highways in Oklahoma. In northwestern Oklahoma, faded, cracked roads are barely distinguishable from the bland, grass-less earth which blends into them. Exits are not warned of, and if you weren’t paying attention, you might not realize you were on a highway at all until you get off of it. These old roads barely carve a feature into the great state of Oklahoma. Nothing can truly carve into Oklahoma. No rain, no man, no road. In Oklahoma, you’re just there, and it doesn’t care either way about you.
Thinking of my grandma is hard. After all these months, I still find myself forgetting that she’s gone. The things that were meant to distinguish the road from the curb, namely the goodbyes, are missing. There is always a seconds-long delay, like the gradual stopping of catching up to stopped cars in traffic on the highway. For one moment, I don’t remember. For one moment, she is still alive and sitting in her den in Oklahoma. And then comes a crashing realization that happens quicker than a sudden inhale of air yet feels like it lasts for hours. And in a way, it does. It goes on for longer than hours. It’ll never stop. Maybe it’ll get shorter, until that sting of pain only lasts a fraction of a millisecond, but it’ll still always be there. When I first heard she passed, I thought I was going to die. Like literally die. There is no use in using flowery descriptive words to describe it: I have never been in that much pain in my life. I’ve been through devastating heartbreaks that left me screaming into my pillow, thinking I was in utmost agony. But it was all incomparable to the utter pain I felt about my grandma. I couldn’t even talk about it. My throat was filled with the dust that comes with choking on sobs. The months or so after my grandma passed away were filled with silent, constant tears. Tears had never come so freely. I cried everywhere: in the car, in bed, in the shower, and even in class. But I didn’t dare talk about it. I was the wind whipping along an empty highway; cold, wailing.
We called her Meme. I don’t really know why; I think it was one of those things where the grandkids couldn’t pronounce grandma, so she had to put up with being called a repetition of the word we use to refer to ourselves. But she loved being our Meme. It is so odd to reflect upon how I viewed her as a child. There is a time in childhood when all parents and grandparents are inspirational, mythical beings who can do no wrong, and no one was more wrapped in the shroud of childhood grandeur than my Meme. Her four grandchildren adored her; we wanted to spend as much time as possible with her. She was the source of magic and unconditional love in my childhood. We went on road trips through middle America together. We caught fireflies together. We made silly crafts together. As I got older, we crocheted together, and that childhood idealism of her began to fade. I wonder what our relationship would have been like in the future. She never got to see me as a 21-year-old; she died five days before that birthday. At my party, I felt deeply sick over how she wasn’t going to call me to wish me a happy birthday and how I would never hear from her again, and I cried. How many other events was she robbed of? Would we have danced at my wedding? There is a cleft between life and death. No matter how well you know a person, upon death, they fall silent. They pass through the veil, and try as you might, you cannot reach through to them. Mourning becomes a time to remember all things you wish you hadn’t said and all the things you wish you had. A time to long to be a person who was older, who was allowed more time to sit with her grandma and crochet. A time to long to be a five-year-old again, sticky hand clasped in the rough, map-like purple veined hand of her Meme. A time when I knew what I had before it was gone.
I didn’t get to say goodbye. It’s astonishing to me. This person who was so important to me just seeped out of my life. After she died, all I could think about were the odd little things: the paper-thin feel of her skin, her large knuckles gnarled like the roots of a tree, her distinct gardenia perfume that I now struggle to remember, the way she rushed about, never going at an elderly pace. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was never able to say goodbye. I wanted to rip my hair out with the knowledge that I’ll have to live the rest of my life never able to talk to her and never able to tell her how sorry I am that I didn’t get to have a final conversation with her. When I returned to Oklahoma, she was not there. I had always taken for granted that she would be there, but she was not there, not in her house, not on the roads. It’ll always feel like she should be there, and it’ll always feel like if I just pray and beg hard enough, she’ll come back and I’ll get to tell her how much I missed her. How much my mom misses her. Just like faded road meets and blends into faded curb, a part of me still stupidly feels like she never passed. Like she is still out there, in her house making lists, or exploring Oklahoma on a road trip of her own. A part of me feels like if I look long enough and far enough down the highway, I’ll see her standing there, waiting for me. But her funeral flowers rotted in my fridge when I took them home, so I know that is not the case.
I float over this precipice of the living and the dead. There are no precipices in northwestern Oklahoma. It is flat plain, ever-sprawling and never ending, feet stumbling over feet, wheels tumbling past wheels. It all continues in front of me, dust illuminated by beams of hot, middle American sun. But behind me it is pitch black, a disconnection from childhood, a launching into adulthood both by a marking of time and a marking of death. Do roads and roads to everywhere and nowhere mean anything in the face of the grieving? The highway, that bleak, dusty path snaking its way through beige farmlands, continues to roll along, and my episodes of grief grow less and less frequent, though they never fully disappear. My sadness runs through my veins like the highway runs through its dirt, only stopping to swell up into the tears that occasionally blur my eyes.
-Adriana Beltrano
Abandoned on the interwebs
Abandoned on the interwebs is a new section on this newsletter where I recommend some riveting, spine tingling, evocative articles, books, essays that I’ve stumbled across when I’m left to my own devices on the internet.
What is much - I came across this one by accident and you may think there’s nothing here to connect the threads. But really, when it comes to grief, dealing with pain, living through heartbreak, reflecting on past memories and all that wasn't said, what is much indeed? That's why I kept it in
Andrew Garfield on grief (04:20)- You’ve probably seen this video shared on your social media pages. Maybe you’ve even scrolled past. I’m here to tell you that it absolutely is worth watching and rewatching. The way he says we never have enough time. The way he characterizes grief as unexpressed love. The way he talks about using his art as a way to heal. Watch it.
Before I leave you to dream
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That’s all for this week
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective