It's been nearly a month since I've written an entry. When I decided to start this blog, I was on break from teaching and determined to make something positive of the rest of my life. What a tall order! Each morning I rushed to my office, a mug of coffee in hand, and the thought that this was truly the first day of the rest of my life in my head. I have a love/hate relationship with cliches--sometimes they feel like the only wisdom that lights my way.
I rushed out of bed to break the hold that sleep and hiding has had over me since Al died. Its temptations swirled around me like a fog dulling the edges of shock and pain. I rushed through the fog to my light-filled office and sat myself down to make something bigger and better than my self-involved, isolating grief. But I've found it's easy to backslide. I'm back in school now with plenty of work to justify my temporary abandonment of this project, but I live with a lingering sense of self-betrayal.
Grief isn't just a feeling to work through or get over. It isn't temporary at all. It lodges in the heart and will not be evicted, only hidden away in a remote room with a locked door. At least that's the way our culture has decided to deal with it, allotting it a finite period of acknowledgement. It's taken as impolite to show grief or mention a dead loved one past the allowed time, whatever that might be. I observe otherwise sensitive people turn impassive or quickly change the subject when I try, and I must admit to a certain perverse pleasure in continuing to try.
Al was an iconoclast and provacateur, and while he lived I was often trying to smooth things over and neutralize his thrusts and parries. Now, I like to think I'm honoring him by digging up what people insist on burying from their conscious thoughts--death hangs over us all. I'm not nearly as good at it as he was; I'm restricted by a veneer of niceness that ladies were brought up to hide under in the 1950s. But I do crack its shell as often as I can these days. Breaking through gives me hope for a better future, even as I make myself nervous when I do it.
Other cultures are much healthier when it comes to grief. Sobonfu Some, who comes from Burkina Faso near the Ivory Coast of Africa, tells about grief circles in her village. She says there is at least one always going, with people dropping in as the spirit moves them. There's the Mexican Day of the Dead and the belief that the dead are always with us and not to be feared, but rather included in our daily lives. I've attended services at the Barrio Museum in New York City and was struck by the normalizing of what is, of course, a regular part of everyone's life cycle. I also find comfort in my religion's weekly sabbath Kaddish service or prayer for the Dead, where we speak the name outloud in the presence of the other congregants before reciting a prayer of gratitude for life. It doesn't have to be a relative or friend we're acknowledging; some people rise and pray for the unknown dead who might have otherwise been forgotten.
It's tempting to forget. It's easy to bury oneself in work or other duties and distractions. But denying death denies life. I somehow feel that I'm snuffing out my life force when I edit Al and my parents out of my conversations. They're part of who I am, how I think, and what I feel. Once again, I vow to write and relate from a holistic perspective. And when I backslide, either from a sense of politeness to others or a need to escape from my own experiences, I vow to forgive and try again.
