Newman Street

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in sadness. I believe it sticks to walls like ivy, invisible, hanging in places we haven't been in a while. Twice I have set foot off a plane or onto a street and had the grief I left there years before wrap me in invasive tendrils with sudden, swift certainty. Unlike the questions ghosts leave behind, grief is undeniably present.

The first time, I had returned to Kauai on vacation, having traveled there 3 years before that, immediately after a bad breakup. I’m going to go create new memories, I had thought, and give this beautiful island another chance. Instead, as soon as my foot hit the tarmac I found myself angry and sad all over again. I was weighted down throughout the trip; I lightened when I got on the plane to leave; the vines let me go. 

I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in unconscious knowing. I believe sometimes our feet are compelled by musculature beyond our flexing. The second time grief waited in place for me, was this past Thursday. I missed the left I was supposed to take on my way to a museum, and mistakenly continued down Oxford. I didn't know I was walking into an ambush of my own heartbreak, but there I was, staring at the sign for tiny Newman Street - only a few blocks long. Twenty-two years ago I had been there living when my grandfather began dying. July 2024 suddenly evaporated into August 2002 and I was once again 20 years old, already fundamentally sad and growing sadder, listening to my father's voice on a now-laughable top-up cell phone: get ready to leave immediately, Buppa doesn’t have much time.

I was headed into my senior year of college and the year prior had been a rough one. Now I have language for “depression,” “panic attacks,” and “anxiety conditions” but I lacked the assistance of labeling then. Junior year involved 9-11, an overbooked course load, and my grandfather’s cancer diagnosis. By the time I arrived in London that summer, I was regularly waking in the middle of the night shaking uncontrollably from the creases of my hips outward. I was already an exhausted, broken young person, drinking to stay afloat, and not fitting in with the students in my program. I can’t remember making a single friend that summer. In some ways the specificity of death made the blanket-sadness easier - I could aim my finger at grief and land on a fixed point. I wrote a paper to finish one class, was withdrawn from the other, and flew home. 

I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in dogs. I believe certain animals know when a human is in pain, and forgo their own neurosis to take care of ours. I visited my grandfather as soon as I got back. He was still able to speak a bit, we were able to share quiet I love yous, I could pretend maybe he’d rally. After seeing him, I went to the sun porch with his dog, Wilma. Wilma used to lick obsessively, attacking my face or any part of me she could get her tongue on in an endless rhythm. But as she joined me on the couch that afternoon, she sat uncharacteristically still across from me, staring calmly into my eyes as I stroked her face. The wordless tenderness broke me. It breaks me now to remember. 

I stayed home for two weeks, during which I got food poisoning, my car’s alternator died, and I got a terrible cold. I always laugh when the tropes of movies and TV venerate the experience of being in one’s 20s in summer - you couldn’t pay me to return.

I flew back to England for another two weeks for a choral program in the Midlands, but never returned to Newman Street. It wasn’t until July 18, 2024, that a 43 year old woman decided on a whim to go to “The Cartoon Museum,” and instead picked up the abandoned luggage left by a child in London two decades prior.

What is my responsibility now, having reclaimed this mourning? Is it enough to sit with it, write about it? Or is there more I’m supposed to do, having stumbled into my own recollecting by such kismet, such accident?

I don’t believe in signs, but I do believe in confirmations. I believe when things seem to transpire in connected ways, we can rest assured we are in a moment of intentional noticing, and that is fundamentally Good. The Noticing of Newman Street perhaps catalyzed stuck melancholy into fluid grief, allowing time to expand more richly into my present. There may be other pockets of space in this world where sadness waits for me, unfinished. May I meet those places freely, may I meet them as a friend. 

I don’t believe in a solid self, but I do believe this child and this adult walk hand in hand through space and time. I believe we both need to carry one another’s suitcases now and then.