Seeing
I went to the eye doctor last week, and he gave me a choice between seeing near and seeing far. When I was younger, the walls between daily flotsam and deeper meaning seemed quite thick.
That is, people didn't talk much about why we're here, or what they care deeply about, or how they love the people who are important to them.
I've been feeling, lately, like there are no walls. Or that it's a thin, translucent curtain. That we duck back and forth between the things that matter and the things that occupy our hands. And sometimes the things that occupy our hands become very important - sometimes they are the things that keep us upright and able to walk.
My friend's mom died on Sunday. I knew she was going to, and he knew she was going to, and I don't think that makes it one iota easier for him. If anything, it's as if she's dying twice; once the long slow crawl toward death, the kicking and screaming (literally, from the sound of it), the pain of her leaving him by inches, against both his will and hers, and nothing either of them could do about it.
And now, the absence of her. He looks like it feels sudden. I don't really know.
He's very young.
I went to the place where he works, specifically to see him. He wasn't scheduled to work, and I knew, somehow, that he'd be there. Because if it were me, that's where I'd be. At a place that feels normal. Where there's something for my body to occupy itself with.
Our bodies really have a lot more say than we give them credit for. It's they who decide when we are leaving, what we can do while we are here, in some cases whom we love, even.
It was with my body that I wanted to comfort him, and couldn't. I am not talking about sex here; merely ordinary affection, which somehow seems like the only real thing I could offer. He's just a friend. He has a girlfriend; she wouldn't be happy about it. I don't want to make a mess. But I did have the strong impulse to take him into my arms.
I think maybe cookies are in order. But they won't do anything, other than say what I would like to say with my whole body. I am so sorry. I am here.
Although I don't know you, I read and appreciate your blog (linked one day from the Harlot). Thank you for so crystalizing things I think and feel.
Some days (not today, thankfully?) I think you are living the life I wish I sometimes had.
Thanks so much for reading (and telling me that you do), Lisa. That last bit makes me think I may be committing the cardinal sin of glamourizing, though. I assure you, it doesn't feel like anything other than an ordinary life.
That's such an interesting notion, of the wall/veil. It's something I notice too. I think it comes from a lack of knowledge, when young, about how to move appropriately between those two worlds, so the separation has to be more defined. It used to mortify and alarm me the way my Grandma, for instance, would one moment be talking crochet and the next moment shifting in her seat and complaining about her hemorrhoids. Bad example, maybe, but hemorrhoids and matters of the heart alike belonged, when I was younger, to the realm of the private.
I'm going away for a week - I shall miss Girlwich but will be contactable by email...