It was a cross made of red and white flowers, faded and graying. An immense sadness gripped me, thinking not only of the woman (judging from the color of the flowers) who had died there, but for the family and friends who had erected that small, poignant reminder of their lost loved one.
Whether she was young or old I'll never know. But somehow I imagined her to be in her early thirties. I imagined her mother, howling in anguish upon learning of the death of her daughter. I knew for a certainty that her life was forever changed in that moment. A mother myself, I can't fathom how she could continue another day without her beloved child.
We use the word "closure" so freely and so reassuringly in this culture. But closure is a lie. There is no such thing. Yes, as people like to remind us, life does go on, after a fashion. But it is never, ever the same. Emotional scar tissue begins to form around that raw, gaping wound. But the scar lives on, and often it aches like hell.
I couldn't stop imagining this woman's life after the loss of her daughter. Was she physically unable to get out of bed for days, weeks, even months? Did she lose her appetite and begin to wither away? Did she withdraw into the privacy of her home, away from the well-meaning, but painful, questions of friends and family?
How long was it before she felt she could begin to breathe again, to look around and see some small spot of beauty or comfort in the world? How long before that wracking, searing pain began to recede ever so slowly and she had a day here and there that, to the outside world, looked "normal"? For, mercifully, just as the flowers on the roadside cross have faded in the baking sun of the Georgia summer and the cold gray drizzle of winter, her unrelenting pain, though never absent, will also begin to fade.
Your observation and writing skills are without question excellent, which doesn't surprise me at all. Obviously observation is an intergral part of your work, and writing comes across as a joy that you relish. We can bury our feelings easily in modern society with the corporate medias sophisticated communication techniques, which for the weak in spirit are comforting and require little interaction with others. Even ,the Internet, facebook, etc., keeps us in charge of when and how we communicate. We can bury ourselves, literally, within our heads leaving the world at arms length. You have already described these in your own words, but ultimatley we have a need to connect to others in a more intermate manner, I mean in person. Hopefully a friend wants to help, but there is so much loneliness in the world that we are fast becoming totally dependent on technology that will never fulfill the needs we have in times of extreme or even minor traumas. Send flowers, a note of commiseration. See you at the next at the next funeral. Aint I a cynical old sod. Anyway thats my two-penneth.
ReplyDeletePS That really isn't me, but you had described it with such eloquence I could not compete so I chose an opposite perspective.