My cousin died last weekend. My instinct is to preface it with we weren’t so close when I tell people this. So, I am being truthful about how far down this loss goes. So, they can gage the appropriate reaction. We weren’t so close, and I spend the evening scrolling through his Facebook, thinking about the ways we could have been.
When I think of loss I think of the prairies, so that’s where my mind goes. A far stretching out loss bending towards the horizon and then further still. Perhaps, I will return this summer, stay at the safari inn. The one that has been around since my father was a kid. Perhaps, I will stay in the zebra room and watch cable television and continue to try to make sense of a thing that has no sense in it.
The detail about how he died sticks with me, it reverberates around my skull, and I think about it washing the dishes, and I think about it at the laundromat, and I think about it when I light all the candles in my apartment.
I was reading Upstream by Mary Oliver and I came across this line “terror is naturally and abundantly apart of life.” She was speaking about the owl she would hear on evenings walking in the forest. It was not just the squeal of the animals just before its sharp beak pierced them that stilled her heart, but the shriek of absolute revelry and delight of the owl. Meeting the edge of some mystery, she found that some divine cruelty was cackling and proud. It was as natural as everything else. I underlined this line, and then wrote it down knowing this would come in handy later. Then later came.
I started out the first draft of this newsletter wanting to explore the dimensions of feeling totally and utterly blessed. The week prior was so stunningly beautiful. It shone so brightly and all I could think of was miracle and blessing and gratitude and all I wanted to do was bow down to it all. Nothing crazy or totally out of the blue happened that made me feel such a way. My capacity for awe has always been low, it rarely takes much for me to be shocked at how good life can be sometimes. The weather was warm, I started a new job, and little wishes were coming true. I found a diagram on are.na that felt close to this blessed/cursed experience I had been describing to many people during this time. I had felt neutral for a while, approaching a “false feeling of stagnation,” and then (like magic) I was on the up. I was doing jello shots and singing karaoke with friends and everything felt as if it was dusted with magic(k).
I went over this draft a few days ago and I couldn’t go on with it. I sat down at my desk, then lay down on the floor staring at the peeling ceiling meeting that mystery. It felt dishonest now to finish it. It is not that it isn’t true, this desperate and aching delight at life is as natural as anything else as well. It just another completely contradictory truth is lingering now, one that tugs at the end of my dress like a child trying to get my attention. I could maybe ignore it if I wanted to, but I find it is better to listen when something is beckoning me. No matter how painful.
This is life too, don’t forget, don’t forget. Reality has room for it all. There is this dance and in it contains the depths of sorrow, and terror that whizzes past your ear like a warning shot, and the pockets of joy that reminds you how good life can be. It is all here. As natural as anything else. We are really guaranteed nothing but an experience where we are entangled with others floating, or hurtling, linearly through time for however long. And things are more than unfair and they happen. And thing are unbearably cruel and they happen.
Perhaps healing is making meaning. Many times I’ve seen loss approached with a story. It is really what we story-telling creatures do best. However, right now, no story will make this anything other than what it is. A profound and unbearable loss for those closest to him. I’d rather let it rest here.
signing off
-Thai