My attempt at writing has been abysmal this year, and so, in honor of a Celebration of Life I just attended — where a woman in her late forties allowed her partner of eleven years to share journals that spanned at least twenty years of her life — I will write.
Most of what I read, at least from the ones I grabbed from 2007 and 2008, was written in thick black ink. Sometimes block letters, sometimes messy-yet-neat cursive, with a randomly placed capital letter that possibly felt more satisfying to write out. Sometimes a page would have a photograph of a person, and next to it, a full page about who that person was to her.
I thought about what it would be like to read about myself that way. A party full of people honoring my friend’s life, and there I am, on the page. My picture, captured in only the way a good photographer can capture someone, and something unexpected written beside it.
What would it say?
I wanted to take pictures of her words, but I settled on one page, where she had copied a quote that was falsely attributed to Nelson Mandela (I learned, upon searching for it). In one journal, she was more meditative. “Noticing,” it would begin, then something as simple as, “The sound of the wind through the trees,” or, “The way the snow is making the town look ghost-like.”
On Tuesday, we are at a family gathering, sitting around an above-ground pool. The blue scratchy liner is under my legs. Owen, the smallest child, sticks his head in the water, and I envy him. I would jump in if I knew where the nearest towel was. If I could trust the feeling of being soaked to the bone afterward on a not quite warm or sunny enough Tuesday afternoon.
I’ve drank too much for the day, too. Maybe the chill would shock me into a more sober-appropriate state. I don’t think I’m embarrassing myself, but what if I am?
I ask Owen, “Would you like to see Martha Washington?”
He laughs and says, “Huh?”
My best friend says, “Chrissy, don’t.”
So I stick my beautifully styled hair and made-up face into the water and let my hair hang perfectly straight and flowing for one moment before coming out like Samara from The Ring, flipping the ends into a Martha Washington.
Owen immediately sticks his head in after me and tries to do the same with his limited length. When he fails, he says, “What the?! How?”
At night, we watch Will play the guitar while Ethan plays a college football game. Will smells like incense. Ethan is playing as Tulane against USF. We happily cheer for him when he beats USF.
“I know you,” Josh says when he greets me earlier that day. He is the middle child. I watch him work beside his mom, making pizza dough for her outdoor brick oven. They are all her helpers in their time of loss, but this moment is particular beautiful because he seems like the most troubled.
All day, children keep moving around the edges of grief. Playing basketball, wrestling, setting up a volleyball net, sticking their heads underwater, setting the table for their mother.
One death was not chosen. One was.
The contrast of this is felt brutally.
Thoughts?