Bruised

There is a deep well of pain, but it is like an old bruise. I only feel it when something pushes up against it. Really hard.

In the span of two days, I heard from three people who I care for deeply about the loss of a loved one. In each case, I knew the person who died, but not awfully well. I knew each well enough to mourn their loss to the universe, but not well enough to speak to their lives.

But the losses buffeted me anyway. Gently, at first, slow tears welled in my eyes and my heart was full of compassion for my friend who lost her mother, her father, her boyfriend.

Next the circumstances threatened to blow me over.

One is a mother whose funeral the daughter will not be able to attend lest she lose her ability to stay in this country. Damned GOP and their ridiculousness. The rage, the helplessness, the anguish I feel is only a small measure of what that daughter feels.

One is a daughter who has lost now both mother and father in the span of four months. She is in shock right now. She can believably say she is glad to not see either in pain. She is heartened that she and her sister did all that they could to bring their parents comfort in their last days. But the hard road of living in a world without those parents, whose strength and faith and love are measured by their daughters' lives, is just beginning. The first year is shock and rawness, but the blinding pain is waiting just around the corner. The second year will feel like the year of firsts - first Christmas without them, some milestone the grandparents did not get to see, and the need/yearning to have just one more talk about something with mom or dad. I know this road too well, so the pain feels fresh as if someone has just fiercely slapped me across the face.

One is a girlfriend (seems odd to call a grown woman that), a lover, a confidant who lost her love before they could really begin a life together. These circumstances are the ones that spring from my mouth first when I talk about these losses. In some way, they are the lesson: don't wait; live now; do what makes you happy; be with the person who brings you joy. It is remorseful grief, biting like the memory of tripping over something in public but not falling. It is deep and imperceptible to those around you, but it winds its way around your heart, threatening to squeeze the life out of it. This might be why one tries to grasp on to the lesson, cheerfully determined to not have to live this remorse again. But the deep loss of a loved one will not just rest in remorse, it will coil through her body, when she alone causing her body to writhe and her mind to seek oblivion.

I am unable to do more for these people than write them notes to say my heart aches with theirs.

But my grief is so close to the surface that my tears are for my losses and the anguish of grief as much as it is for theirs.