In response to “Daughterly Musings,” my mother says it will probably even up after I’ve had to wipe her butt for a year later on. She says if she had it to do over again, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten married and had kids, not because those things were bad, but just to do something different (which assumes you can do the whole thing over again using the knowledge gained the first time, which of course you can’t).
She added, “You can’t really say, ‘I’m so happy because I’m married and have kids,’ because then everyone who’s not married or who doesn’t have kids would feel bad. And besides, you’re not married and you’re not unhappy.”
“Not totally unhappy, true. Or if I am, it’s because of my bad personality, not because I’m not married.”
“Right, that’s what I mean,” she happily agreed.
Last Saturday I meant to do my taxes, but worked on my blog instead. In the late afternoon, Tom and I went to see Stop-Loss, about soldiers being recalled to the war in Iraq, which was wrenching. When it ended, I sat in the dark theater with tears dripping down my face. Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish were good in the lead roles. Afterwards, we had Thai food at Bangkok 16.
It turned out that, despite the million times I’ve been angry at her, the Emily-shaped hole was bigger than I would have thought, and I spent Sunday feeling surprisingly grief-stricken about her physical departure from my life.
In between doing things to make myself feel worse, such as thinking of all of Emily’s fine qualities, I also periodically noticed, “Oh, having such-and-such a thought,” and by Sunday evening I felt a bit better. I went to Eugene’s, which was very nice. I sat near the same two people I sat near last week, and it felt quite cozy.
I do wish Emily and I had talked about things much sooner, even at the time of the original ill feelings, years ago. I wish I hadn’t clung to my negative judgments so fervently. What she did seemed wrong to me (and you won’t hear what it was here), but no doubt there are things about me that others think are really wrong, and I’d be crushed if that was all they could see of me.
I wish I’d been much kinder and more forgiving, but I wasn’t, and it’s not one of the choices now to do that, at least in person. What I can do is be kind and forgiving with, say, Tom, or the person who needs my help at work, which of course seems much less appealing. I can also be kind and forgiving with what is happening in the moment.
Eugene spoke Sunday night about noticing what is happening at this moment—the state of our bodies and moods—and not being in contention with it. “Ah, my back hurts and I’m sad.” “I’m sleepy and I feel happy.” Whatever it is. I thought “not being in contention” was a nice way to think of it.
Yesterday morning, as I left for work, I decided to go one better and not think of the loss of the person of Emily as a bad thing to be tolerated or overcome, but as a good thing, somehow: This is what the universe has sent, and I will find a way to be happy with it. This is a tremendous gift the universe has sent me! (I guess.)
And I was extremely cheerful then, and when I ran into the manager of the building I work in, instead of thinking, “Here’s the person who keeps ignoring my requests in regard to bike parking,” I thought, “How lucky! What a nice lady this is! What a lovely smile she has!”
(My life is all about building managers: At home, at work, where I park my bike. That's kind of weird.)
We spoke for a few minutes, and she offered a possible place where we could park extra bikes in the building garage on Bike to Work Day, coming up May 15, and she was friendly and enthusiastic.
Back to Emily, which happens a lot these days, mentally: We are of course friends. We have been for years. But I’m having trouble remembering how to act after having gone through the internal upheaval of the past week. Would I send her a funny email? Sure. Would I call her up to ask a work question and then chat for a bit? Sure, and I have this week and it has been very nice.
But I don’t think I would call her up every 30 minutes, nor tell her that I want to be best friends and come to her house every weekend, because I wouldn’t like it if someone started acting like that with me out of the blue. In fact, I’d call the police: “Police? Send help—I have a stalker!”
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