Humans have a need to mark time. A need to commemorate events, the passage of time, milestones. Like birthdays. Birthdays are great. We celebrate the person who was born, and the life we have with them. It's a needed and usually positive ritual.
Tonight was the birthday celebration of one of my favorite family members. Our small but mighty immediate family gathered in a special restaurant for a meal curated by our friend who is a wine and food coordinator, and it was fantastic. But the longer I sat there, and watched interactions of my family -- and particularly, the two sets of father/sons, I became acutely and painfully aware of the absence of both my son and my husband.
They have been gone for more than a decade. And yet tonight the pain of missing them, and missing the relationship that they should now be having, was profound.
How strange that a happy, positive, warm and upbeat family birthday dinner would suddenly turn dark, but so it did (but of course, only for me).
Tonight proved, again, that grief just sneaks up on you when you least expect it. You can't guard against it. I turned silent at the table but fortunately others were oblivious to my darkness and continued their conversations and laughs and celebration.
Have you ever felt alone despite being surrounded by people, especially when they are people you know? It is eerie. Sylvia Plath described that feeling in her seminal work, "The Bell Jar." It is as though the giant glass bell jar descends upon you, shutting you off from others. They see you and you see them. But you are not connected. Not a part of what they are.
That was tonight. And no one saw that the bell jar had come down upon me. Because no one at that table could have had any clue of what it's like to observe the time passages in someone else's life and understand acutely that those time passages with people you love were snatched away from you.
I am not bitter or angry that others have been spared the grief I have endured, and that keeps kicking me down. Each of us has been given our unique life paths. Some paths are easy, some are not. Mine happened to be not so easy.
I've taken to pondering the question of why humans grieve, and why we do not "get over" the loss of someone we love. As a former biology major I think, it must be due to genetics, or evolutionary preference, but in reality, nothing really accounts for it. Only when one injects a spiritual component does a possible understanding happen. Somewhere, in the mind, soul, cellular structure, or all of them, there is a sense that those who are gone still exist in some form and in some place. We wish there was a way to have them with us in the only existence we know -- this one. And knowing they are beyond us is the basis for grief.
We honor the passage of time by notches on the wall to show the growth of children; marks on the calendar to show days passed and days to come; of holding celebrations honoring birthdays and anniversaries. When we cannot make those marks or celebrate those times with those we love -- and know it will never happen again -- we cannot help but feel isolated, alone. Even at a table filled with love and friendship and conviviality, the aloneness captures those of us who grieve. The bell jar comes down again.
Copyright 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment