Then there are small losses, the changes and little heartaches that seem to happen overnight but have actually been a long time in approaching and they hurt, too. There are the physical changes: the wrinkles, the streaks of gray in our hair, the reflection of tush in the mirror that no longer looks like ours. And the relationships: friends who move on or away, people we vow to stay in touch with but don't until so much time has passed we decide to just let it go, the sibling we wish to be closer to but we somehow don't get around to making the effort. We lose the parts of ourselves we wanted to nurture but didn't until they fall away for lack of food and water.
One of the most profound losses I've experienced was losing my grandmother, and I still miss her so much it takes my breath away at times. I say I'd like one more day with her but the truth is that when that day was spent, I would surely want another. I'd like to sit on her kitchen stool and have a cup of tea with her and talk about her life. I want to know about her early life, what it was like with her parents and siblings. She never talked much about these things and I feel like that whole history is lost now.
I have so many questions I want to ask. Was Nana really as strong and as unflappable as she appeared? Did she really not worry about what other people thought (and could she teach me how to do that?) What was it like raising six children and having a husband die so young? Did she believe in God completely and absolutely or were there doubts? How could there not be doubts? At 48, what did my Nana think about, wonder about, regret? That's my age now and I would really like to know.
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I think about this so much, too (though not as eloquently) - the little and the big, the stuff we know as it happens is shaping us and the stuff that reveals its power only over time, often surprisingly. Losses piling up in every corner. Alas. And yet we go on, right?
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother, whose loss was formative for me, was also Nana. xo
This is very poignant. Who we were/are with that person is also lost when they go...we also mourn that.
ReplyDeleteI thought of Robert Hass's tremendous Meditation at Lagunitas:
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177014
Your writing, as always, so elequent... so beautiful... touching me as though you wrote it just to me. I'm going through a period of losses, big and small.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those people who hangs on to the big losses. Not dwelling on them ~ I make a real effort to hold the good memories close. But often something triggers a memory that seems to suddenly, unexpectedly pierce my heart and take my breath away as though the loss just happened that second. I'm right back in the shock and grief of the original loss.
As you say, we have no alternative but to go on with life step by step, moment by moment.
As for the small losses, the changes we have no control over, the little heartaches ~ I try to ask myself if it will matter (or even be remembered) in twenty years? Or I shed a few tears then start moving again to get on with life. Or I try to face it with defiance ~ refusing to allow it to ruin my day. Of course, sometimes they will trigger the memory of one of the significant losses and I have no choice but to try to withstand the pain washing over me.
"I say I'd like one more day with her but the truth is that when that day was spent, I would surely want another."
Isn't that the truth?
A wonderful post, that I still think you wrote just to me. *Big Squishy Hugs*
Thank you, Lyndsey. Yes, losses in every corner and we somehow dust them off and begin again each day. To Nanas everywhere! I hope yours was a tea drinker, too.
ReplyDeleteHannah, That poem is so beautiful. Everything dissolves. Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry. Merci!
Oh, Dani. You break my heart. Maybe I did write it just for you! I'm near the Atlantic Ocean right now enjoying the ebb and flow of the sea. At times the losses crash over us like great big waves and other times they rush in around the ground below us, all foamy and soft and sad. Then the tide goes out and everything changes again.
Love this. You know I had a really close relationship with my Nana. She died almost 15 years ago and I'm crying just thinking about how much I miss her.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what to do with all the losses -- the feelings, the empty.
I'm glad you're here.
Thank you!
I love when you write about her. I want to sit own on a stool and listen too. This is lovely.
ReplyDelete