Some Much Needed Optimism

To balance out my depressing posts:

Somedays, I know I'm going to be okay. Somedays, I know I'm going to be more than okay.

That's all for today, really. It's enough.

Lovesong

I am finding that life with grief can bring about the strangest mix of emotions. Sometimes I feel perfectly fine, even optimistic, only to suddenly feel the deepest sense of loss and fear for the future. Sometimes I can laugh at a joke and then suddenly miss my dad terribly. Sometimes in the middle of an intensely painful conversation, I feel a sense of encouragement and completion.

Most of the times, these mood shifts are bewildering--the constant ambivalence between happy and sad feels far too unstable. A while ago, I went to a party out of town with some friends. I had a wonderful evening, but on the long drive back home I became so incredibly and inexplicably sad. As we drove, we listened to Adele's new album and "Lovesong" came on, a song I'd been dreading through the first ten songs. A few days after my dad died, I was listening to Adele and I seemed to hear the words of this song for the first time. Even though I know it's actually a cover of a Cure song, and it's probably about some ex-girlfriend...it breaks my heart every time I hear it.

"However far away, I will always love you / However long I stay, I will always love you / Whatever words I say, I will always love you / I will always love you"

It reminds me of what I wanted so badly to say to my dad, that day he died. As he lay there in that hospital bed, unconscious, unhearing, unseeing. I desperately wanted to tell him--no, not just tell him, I wanted to communicate to him, "I will love you forever." Since that day those unsaid words haunt me. They echo in my head, they come to me at random moments.

So there I am, driving home from a fun party with two friends, happily discussing one's married life and the other's upcoming wedding, talking about school, work, friends...and I'm sitting in the darkened backseat, quietly crying to myself. I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd said something. I wish I hadn't waited until the friend that I was staying with went to bed so I could weep under the covers in solitude. I felt so, so alone...but I was surrounded by people who would have listened. And I know this now; I knew this then. Yet I kept it to myself.

I don't know why. I have a lot of regrets these days. Most of them are the minute, sorta cliche regrets of grief: "I wish I hadn't been so annoyed that time Dad would NOT stop talking about Maine blueberries when we were at that restaurant in Bar Harbor." or "I wish I'd asked him about his life." or "If only I'd driven to Fort Hamilton Hospital to see him in the ER instead of waiting for him to be moved to University Hospital."

But some of them are regrets for after his death: I regret how I neglect my friends. I regret how self-absorbed I've been these past few months. I regret not trying to find comfort in the Bible afterwards. Maybe that would have made a difference. I regret.

Here's an idea I've been trying to phrase right for the past three months. I'm not sure I've gotten it quite nailed down just yet, but here is the latest version.

Everyone always says, "Everything happens for a reason." Everyone always says, "Maybe one day we'll understand why God took your dad away so suddenly."

But here's the thing. I don't think there's a single "reason." I don't think there are multiple "reasons," either. I think he died because that is life, and bad things happen and people get sick and people die. I refuse to say to myself, "ah, these things I am learning about life, about dealing with grief, about my own strength, about the importance of family and love and friends--these are why my dad died at the peak of his life." I refuse to think, "I see now: God let my dad die so that we could learn valuable life lessons, or whatever."

No. My dad died. And the things I am learning, the painfully beautiful moments that have happened in my life since that dreadful day, are not the reason this happened. God is working in my life so that I can survive my grief. My dad's death is the reason I am learning and growing and (I hope) will ultimately be happy and strong and whole.
It's not, and never will be, the other way around.

 Hmm. I think it needs some work. Three months and counting.

A Chance Meeting (Or Not)

I saw an old friend from a distance at Walmart tonight. I haven't talked to this old friend in...almost two years, I think. As far as I know, our friendship ended because we grew apart, which isn't too uncommon among childhood friends. I think we started seeing the world in different ways, and unfortunately those contrasting opinions were exaggerated when we were roommates for a little while. (Also, I know it's partly because we chose to align ourselves with opposite factions in our old set of friends, back when all that drama was important to us both.)

It's natural for people to grow apart and for old friends to lose touch. It's natural to choose to spend time with people you have a stronger bond with than "we went to Sunday school together." I know this, and I feel no resentment about how we've drifted. I do feel a measure of regret, though. I was passive when I ought to have spoken, and I was unyielding and unkind when I didn't really meant to be.

But there was a time, and it doesn't feel that long ago, when we were incredibly close. We were confidants, we were allies, we were friends. We laughed so so much together; we shared music and movies and dreams.  Our friendship started when we would secretly pass notes during Children's church, and it survived so much for so many years. Then, it just sort of...petered out. The unresolved nature of the end of our friendship has always left me feeling unsettled. I feel like I should fix something, but I don't know how or if it is too late.

Anyways, I saw this friend tonight at Walmart. I was standing at the jewelry counter, helping a customer with a return, and I saw this friend walk out from one of the makeup aisles and then down another. I felt a jolt of shock--I didn't even know they were in the country, much less in Fairfield--followed by total fear that this friend would see me. In general, my first instinct when I see anyone I know from my "real life" is to hide. I'm actually pretty embarrassed that I work at Walmart, with my expensive degree and high GPA and all that. But then she turned away, apparently without seeing me. I finished with the customer and walked back to the fitting room, feeling incredibly unsettled.

My coworker asked why I looked so upset, and as I tried to give the spark-notes version of the story, I realized what is really bothering me. It's not so much that we haven't talked in a couple of years. I recently ran into another old friend, also at Walmart, and it was perfectly nice. It wasn't that I was still mad about whatever I was mad about back in 2009. And it wasn't that I wished we could be close again, and I regretted the missed opportunity to reconnect. Well, not entirely.

What upset me most is that I suddenly realized how hurt I feel that this friend didn't say anything to me, or reach out in any way, after my dad died. I remember thinking, after everything happened, that she and a couple of other people would. Even though we weren't as close as we used to be. I mean, this friend knew my dad as well as I know hers; we were friends for thirteen years. I don't think minor disagreements and not being facebook friends can negate all of those years of friendship. Or how we helped each other survive high school. Or the countless deep conversations we had. Or our adventures. I still care about this friend, I still wish her well. I thought...I had hoped...that she felt the same way.

And I know, without a doubt, if the situation had been reversed I would have been there. If, God forbid, someone in her family died, I would absolutely be at the funeral. I would reach out and offer my friendship, my sympathy, my shoulders to cry on: whatever I could give. Because that's what old friends do, no matter what.
Because it is the right thing to do.
Because moments of sudden tragedy make all of those disagreements, those huge barriers, those devastating social slights, seem like nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

"It was at these times that he began to understand, after all those years of study and performance, of feats and wonders and surprises, the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place."

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay


you know that special moment when you're reading something and suddenly you get an unshakable feeling that the words were meant just for you? Just for you, just at that moment?

"Not All Tears Are An Evil"

I had a really serious cry over my dad just now. I'm not talking about a couple of tears sparked by a particularly sad Iron & Wine song (preferably "The Trapeze Swinger"). No sir. I'm talking about one of those really ugly, painful crying sessions, when your face gets blotchy and snot runs out your nose. The kind when, after it stops, you suddenly realize you're laying sprawled out on your floor at midnight crying over a five-year-old letter.

Mere days after my dad suddenly passed away, I remembered that I had a letter he had written me for my high school graduation. He wrote each of us a letter when we graduated from high school, offering fatherly advice for the coming years. I hadn't thought about or looked at that letter since, well, since June 2007, probably. I knew it was stuffed inside a box filled with other important papers, brochures, tickets, booklets, and cards that I'd collected over the past few years--the paper detritus of my college experience. But I couldn't bear to go looking for that letter.

A few weeks, or a month later, I got as far as taking the envelope out of the box. I took one look at it, saw "Jessie" written in my dad's handwriting, and put the damn thing back in the box.

Tonight, I finally made myself reread that letter. Not because I felt I had to, but because I didn't want to put it off anymore. I was tired of procrastinating the tears I knew the letter would cause. So, I read it. It was rough. Back in spring of 2007, he was hospitalized with (excuse my poor grasp of medicine) an infarction of his spleen--meaning that because of a blood clot, the spleen was almost totally deprived of oxygen, causing tissue death and severe pain. Which is not good. But they were able to fix the problem, and he made a full recovery. Anyways, in the letter, he told me that his recent illness had taught him how important it is to cherish your family and loved ones. Agghhh. I wanted to tell him, "I've learned that lesson too well, mister! Because of you!" But I kept on reading the letter, and it was as though I could hear him speaking to me in his "lecture" voice. Filled with his best hopes and wishes for me, filled with love and good words and wisdom. Infused with prayer, and encouragement, and strength. Signed, simply, Dad.

And I cried, like a baby. Or rather, I cried like a broken-hearted adult who feels like a lost little girl again. A little girl who worships her daddy, who loves the warmth of his hand on the nape of her neck, making her feel safe. A little girl who always does her homework, because making him proud was a reward worth all the hard work. I sat there and cried and snuffled and wiped my puffy, unattractively crying face.

And it was such a bittersweet feeling. With the emphasis on both the bitter and on the sweet. I miss that man. I miss him so, so much. I only hope I can live up to this letter.

"Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."
--Gandalf the White