January is such a hard month for so many people. I wanted to find something light and entertaining to say, something else, but instead this topic tugs and nudges at me today.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along…
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
~W.H. Auden
I woke up to such sad news a year ago this week: the loss of a dear aunt, one of my mom’s younger sisters. While it’s taken me this year to post about it here, I’ve been thinking of her often—of her hilarious laugh and great humor, her devotion to family traditions and good food, her brilliant mind, her compassion, her long and valiant efforts to stay aloft before deciding she couldn’t go on any more.
Suicide leaves its own mark on grief, I’ve noticed. I couldn’t stop thinking of this Brueghel painting, the Auden poem, and Icarus’s unnoticed plight. There is that Auden-like knowledge that, at the same moment someone you love was struggling so profoundly, you were peeling potatoes in your kitchen, wondering whether you had enough milk for tomorrow. How everything turns away, oblivious. Your heart breaks over and over as details and “if only” thoughts emerge and at the same time you feel protective about talking about such a taboo, tender topic.
Unlike the Auden poem, everything does not sail calmly on. Yes, eventually the healing starts but your soul fits a little differently in your wiser self. You resolve to watch more closely, to not turn away. You pledge the world your vigilance, to sit watch from a self-appointed lifeguard chair to spot others who might be profoundly, desperately struggling. Over time, for me, the prevailing mental image has turned from the Icarus scene to a different one.
I imagine her on a long hike with us, over peaks and valleys and across long stretches of desert. She finds the journey difficult and debilitating but she keeps persisting at it, even adding more to her load by stopping to support and carry others along the way. As time goes by, she grows depleted and finds herself unable to go another step, unable to see or even imagine cool green meadows ahead. I’m going to go ahead and head home, she says. We look up from our dusty boots, unable to see or even imagine what it might feel like to be walking in hers. She turns, we turn, and head in different directions, aiming for the same place.
This is too simplistic, I know. It’s too pat to account for either the complexity of her experience or the range of emotions we feel—especially those felt by her now-grown children and new grandchildren, who will bear the vastness of her absence in the months and years ahead. I do believe in mercy and supreme compassion and that, after her long and brave daily struggle, she has found some cool green meadows.
But I’m still really sad about it.
. . .
I don’t know what the questions for this post should be, let alone the answers. Just know that, if this is something you’ve experienced in your family or if you’re feeling distraught yourself, you are not alone.
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