I am sad.
I am sad because I miss all those people who have gone before me, my grandmothers and my grandfather, my mother and my father, my aunts and uncles, my cousins and friends. Gone are the days of being able to ask the questions that informed my wisdom. I miss the unspoken love through their glances and their punishing stares. I miss their reprimands and admonishments that have influenced my life and the decisions I’ve made along the way. These loving people have molded me into the person I am. What am I to do? Occasionally I cry, occasionally I lie, and then there are times when I just sit still, unaware of anything around me and everything about me.
I am afraid.
I am afraid because I feel alone. On whom do I lean when I’m too weak to carry? With whom can I scream and bitch and know they will not abandon? Who will set me straight when my path has become jagged? Who will dry my tears? Who will notice and appreciate my insignificant contributions or even my significant ones? Who will unearth the wisdom of their struggles with hopes that mine will be few?
I am angry.
My anger melts into anguish. Who will I love without concern that my love will be abused? What stories have I missed because I forgot to ask? Are there any pre-existing conditions? Who did I forget to tell of my love for them? Did my mother know how to swim? Did she know how much I truly loved her? Did I ask? Did my dad want more of my company or for me to leave him alone? Did I ask? Did I share my stories? Did they want to know? Did I apologize for everything bad that I ever did? Should I have? Did I do anything bad? Should I have known? Did I listen? What did I miss? What did they miss?
Could there have been a few more years, four more months, one more hour?
I search for the pictures that give me complete stories. They are difficult to find. I wait for the words that have been familiar to me all of these years, the silence is filled with hope of messages ethereal. I long for the touch, the familiar smell, the timber of the voice, their footsteps in the distance, their music, their sorrow. Something. One little something that speaks of the life I once spent with them.
I am tired.
I am tired of missing, tired of longing, tired of crying, tired of trying to figure it all out. I am exhausted of going through boxes and rearranging heirloom furniture, stacking more dishes and hanging more pots. I am disturbed that I have to think again and again of who would benefit from some small token of their legacy, yet overlooking the one person that would cherish it beyond life itself. Who would like the sofa? Who could use the crystal vase? Should I give or should I sell? What about the music? Will I ever play that cello that stands stoically stiff in its new and unfamiliar spot? Do I have time to re-string the guitar that’s been unstrung for half of my life?
I struggle.
How disconcerting it is to be happy that my mother died when she did because of her pain and discomfort and the diminished quality of her life. How uncomfortably comfortable it is to say that my dad would have been beside himself, as the distinguished and proud man that he was, had he shrunk to something so little and frail, a weak and unrecognizable man. Can I get away with being almost giddy that my aunt, the closest example of a saint walking on this planet died a timely death because she so wanted to be held in the palm of God’s hand. Which I can with all my mind, body and soul bet that that’s exactly where she is. These are the things we think to say but hardly ever do. Or we say them because they seem so right to say. How do I know that any of this is true? But really, does it matter?
I am not at all disappointed
…or discouraged or disheartened that I feel these things. In fact there is a freedom and a sense of joy that I am able not only to feel them, but to feel them genuinely and without judgment. Those that have died and whom I have loved and miss terribly are the same ones who have prepared me for these moments. And I guess what I have gathered through this last year or so is that they have not left me. All the great of them is inside me. Our language is quiet and familiar, our love is inherent, our relationships are everlasting through spirit and the divine.
What else I know is that in being sad I am filled with promise, that in being angry I can decompress. Being afraid has only to do with what I don’t know, and once I rest I will no longer be tired. I do understand that sometimes I will have to make sense out of uncomfortable things by giving human reason to them and living with uncomfortable things by handing them over to the divine. Believing in the humanness of it and the spirituality in it I can gingerly let go, albeit slowly, those with whom I have spent most of my life. For me to get it there has to be credibility and faith. The best way to be credible is to be honest and the only way to truly deal is to have faith. Faith in the process, faith in the unknown and faith in my ability to be honest and free. God must be with me.
I only hope that as others travel similar journeys that they have the courage, the faith, the joy to give into all that they feel. To not back away from the uncomfortable, to live in the sadness, to be free to feel whatever is necessary. These are the moments that solidify our character and give us the foundation to carry it through no matter how shattering, how tragic, how uncomfortably comfortable it feels to say and feel the most unlikely things.
We can be sad. There is always promise in sadness.
