Writing While Grieving 17: Too Long; Didn’t Read
The Story We Have Together
I’ve written a lot about grieving here in the last 11 months, but Stephen Colbert captures most of it in a few sentences while talking about his wife.
The most harrowing idea would be that I would spend any part of my life without her because that would be a level of loneliness and … irredeemable emotional desolation that I could not possibly contemplate, and I understand why old men die like a month after their wives go.
(Link)
Well, it’s been more than a year, but this old man is still here (though as a ghost of my former self).
Of course, I knew the things Colbert talks about before I lost my wife, but hearing his words makes me wish I had confronted the issue more directly while I still had her near, rather than just pushing such unpleasant thoughts out of my mind. Given another chance, I would live with more urgency. I would stop kidding myself that we had all the time in the world and act accordingly, to the point where I’d probably annoy her. I can hear her now saying, “Don’t you have something else you should be doing?”
One thing grief is highly skilled at is digging up regrets. I have an impressive collection now, as if I needed that on top of all this loneliness and emotional desolation. My thoughts on regrets, though, will have to wait for a future post.
Speaking of emotional desolation, here is Aubrey Plaza being interviewed about losing her husband.
(Link)
What Aubrey Plaza says describes how I feel from day to day. When Amy Poehler asks her the dreaded How Are You question, Plaza says that in “the present moment, I feel happy to be with you.”
That’s going to be my response from now on.
Like Plaza, I can only focus on small moments. Such moments are how I get through each day. And yes, it’s still a matter of trying to get through my days. I don’t know when that will end, or if it will. If I zoom out to a larger view, then I become too aware of what Plaza calls that “ocean of awfulness” that’s “always there.”
Yeah, the ocean of awfulness that’s always there will also have to be addressed at some point. But all this does not take away from the fact that when I’m with you, like Plaza says, I am happy to be with you. In fact, it’s more meaningful to me than you know. So if you see me, don’t be surprised if I tell you that.
One last thing:
But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of the story we have together.
(From Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko)
When you are reading a good book, it sometimes forces you to stop reading. When I read those lines this morning, I had to put the book down.
The story we have together. I’ve never thought of it that way before—in the present tense. It feels important. I need to ponder it for a while.
Notes
I’ll be traveling soon for a stretch. I try to post at least twice a week. I can’t promise to keep my usual pace of newsletters going during the next few weeks, but I’ll try. ❤️