“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”

William Faulkner

Dad died three years ago.

A simple, sturdy sentence. One that’s true. Without frills.

I read this sentence, my sentence, and still, it doesn’t quite sink in. That he is gone, really gone, and that he has been gone for not one, not two, but three whole years. Am I still in denial? I doubt it, but maybe. I think that something else is at work here. I have a theory.

I never said goodbye.

I was there the evening before he left us. We all were. By his side. I held his hand, limp, almost lifeless. I said many things. Things about how he could let go, finally let go, how we would be okay, how we would take care of Mom. These were impossible, but important things to utter.

But there was one word I refused to say: Goodbye. There was something too final about this word. Something wrong about it. Because I think I knew even then, full of life (Middle Girl was brewing in my belly), awash in tears, steeped in sadness and strength, that Dad would always be in my life. Even if he was gone.

And he is. Gone. In the most literal sense of the word. He no longer sits at the head of the long, wooden table, laughing, telling some silly story for the umpteenth time, pontificating about humans and nature and Leopold and lunch-pails. He no longer dons that Irish fishing hat to walk the dogs in the early morning. He no longer hangs up the phone, his voice drifting into some profound and inky distance, “Morn, morn.”

But he is not totally gone. No. He is here. In my thoughts and my dreams. In my whispers and my words. In my memories and my mannerisms. In my blood and the blue eyes of three little girls.

Today, I’m sad. Of course. But I’m also oddly thankful for my grief. For how it has changed me. For how it has shrouded me with gratitude and awareness and perspective. For how it has made me feel more fiercely. For how it has rendered me a more nuanced person and parent and thinker and writer. For how it has made me a more complicated creature. Because it has. And does.

Grief is a tricky, boundless thing. It seeps and stains, burrows and blinds. But it also brings texture and meaning and beauty. It’s taken me three years to realize this, to get here, but I’m here.

Three years later. I miss him. Quietly. Madly. Differently. Even still. But time and thought continue to work their wild and woolly wonders. Acceptance is beginning, just beginning, to alight.

I never said goodbye. I don’t think I ever will.

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Would you choose grief over nothing? Have you experienced hard things in your life that have changed you profoundly? Is three years long or short or both?

“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody”

Mark Twain

There is a side of me. Maybe just a sliver. It is darker, grayer, swirled and saturated with shadow. There are thoughts and questions and memories there, here, on this side, in that sliver. There is sadness and anger and regret and fear and bitterness and… more, I imagine.

I imagine because I don’t truly know. When Twain says we are all moons, that we all have dark sides which we never show anybody, I think that means we don’t even show ourselves. Is this possible? Is it possible that we have sides or slivers of ourselves of which even we, the moons, are unaware?

I think so.

Some might be bothered by this. By this notion that there is a darkness within each of us, a darkness which cannot be mapped out, or fully known. But not me. I am not bothered. I am intrigued. I am curious. I am thankful for all sides, all slivers. I am emboldened by the idea that there is more of me than even I know.

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Do you buy the idea that we all have sides or slivers (dark, light, etc) that we never show anybody, including ourselves? Is this just another way of saying that there are limits to our knowledge of self and other?

“Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?”

Edward Young

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, I was a little tomboy who wore a Larry Bird jersey to my fifth grade class every time the Celtics had a home game.

Once upon a time, I played the trumpet in an all-boys jazz band and soccer on an all-boys soccer team.

Once upon a time, I made little earrings out of plastic airplanes.

Once upon a time, I asked questions like: What is self?

Once upon a time, I ate mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches and composed songs about Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s bald head.

Once upon a time, I was an original, wacky thing.

Today.

Today I am a thirty-something quasi-bottled blonde. A wife and mother who wears black yoga pants and buys toys and organic produce and stresses about sleep and safety and baby weight.

Today I go on “date night” with Husband and love manicures and pedicures and when my kitchen is clean.

Today I long for the quintessential things: health and happiness. For them. For me.

Today I bemoan the passage of time, how it tricks me and tames me, of how fast it flies.

Today, I am in some ways, so many ways, a copy.

How did this happen?

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Do you agree with the quote above, that we lose our originality as we grow older? Is this just part of growing up or does it say something sinister about conformity? How do you retain some modicum of originality in your adult life?

“I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and one behind.”

George Bernard Shaw

What is success? I don’t know, but I think about it. Whatever it is. Don’t we all want to taste success in our lives? Don’t we all want to be able to look back over the years and conclude that we led a successful, good life? I think so. Maybe. Hmm.

Ultimately, it depends on how we define success, doesn’t it? Is success about reaching financial goals or personal milestones or existential posts? Is success remotely objective or does it mean different things for each of us? Again, I don’t know. I am a mistress of not knowing, it seems.

What I do know is that I like George Bernard Shaw’s sentiment above. Success, to the extent that it connotes some kind of sparkling peak of finality, is something I do not want. Rather, I prize evolution, growth, progress, a constant sense of becoming, of getting somewhere. Maybe success is not a destination at all, but rooted firmly in these things, in these wonderful albeit less shiny things?

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How do you define success? Do you too dread the kind of success Shaw describes? How often do you think about success? Do you think success is something singular and objective or rather something elusive that comes in many flavors?

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”

Kenji Miyazawa

We have all experienced pain in the past. We all continue to experience pain today. We will all experience pain in the future.

These three sentences? They are not meant to depress you. Or me. They are meant to be simple strings of truth, relics of reality. Pain is a part, a big part, of the human game.

So what do we do with the pain we do feel? Do we deny it, ushering it away into the locked closets of our lives? Or do we embrace it, quietly perhaps, sift through its sands, learn from its gritty grays?

Years ago, I would have gone with Option One. Denial. Make Believe. But now? I am all about the big, bad embrace. The honest and harrowing dance in the dark.

Pain as power? Fear as fuel?

Absolutely.

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Do you agree that it is important to embrace pain, to burn it as fuel for existence?