A couple days ago I was talking with a friend who was preparing to return to her home town to unveil the tombstone for her mother who died a few months ago. She described her sense of dread and profound sadness. Her mom died suddenly and because of Jewish tradition was buried quickly. Everything happened so fast that she didn’t have time to emotionally or intellectually process a critical life event. Just when she had finally come to terms with her loss and gently wrapped up her grief and stowed it away, she found herself unpacking her sorrow while she packed her suitcase for her trip home.
Grief created by loss is always just below the surface of our daily consciousness. The missing piece becomes as important to who we are as negative space is to sculpture. Just when we think we are safe from sorrow’s harm and it can no longer overcome us, something happens to draw us back into the helpless mire of misery.
As I looked through an old box of photos the other day trying to find suitable ones for a father’s day montage, I found pictures of dead people. Not old dead people, young dead people. When I picked up the first one and looked at their goofy antics and smiling face, I sighed and remembered. While I made my way through the pile and set aside the pictures of friends who have died my melancholy morphed into a breathless and weepy heartache. Their photos had been put away and my recollections and sense of loss had been placed beside them. Now, here they were again looking out to me and pulling me back into that time and space in our lives and forcing me to remember how much I cared and how much I missed them. Their addition to my life was meaningful but their subtraction was phenomenal.
Maybe it’s the heat or maybe it’s the way the world is right now that made me so vulnerable to this renewed assault of mourning. Sorrow is like fruit. The new fruit is green and often hard and bitter. We store it in the dark where it ripens and as it softens the juices and sweetness flow into our hearts. As the years pass our sadness congeals. When we least expect it, a phone call, photo, smell or smile causes us to poke at the resin of grief and the juices flow once again.
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2 comments:
Deb, I just read your piece on grief and am sitting here in pure amazement. This is one of the strongest and most perfect descriptions of grief I've ever read. I love the analogy with negative space in sculpture! I have read it twice and don't want to move from my chair and go away from it just yet. I want to share it with people. (Are we allowed to share?) And it gives me words for what I've been trying to find all week. My former mother-in-law is being buried this week, today actually. We haven't spoken in fifteen years. And yet--my children and grandchildren are walking into her funeral as I write this, and I've had no way to say good-bye to the woman who taught me to slice tomatoes. This piece is purely, achingly, unforgettably, wonderful!
Of course you may share it! I'm honored.
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