Heart Song by Julia Sneden

Heart Song; Thoughts on loss

The door to the past is a strange door. It swings open and things pass through it, but they pass in one direction only. No man can return across that threshold, though he can look down still and see the green light waver in the water weeds. Loren_Eiseley(1907-1977)

I’ve had enough experience with loss so that I know that it won’t just go away, although as time goes along, it will become episodic, rather than the steady ache I feel right now. She was an in-law, a chum of 45 years, someone I loved. It is going to be very hard to forego the bi-monthly phone conversations in which we shared family news. We used to talk about our splendid children. These days, we talked mostly about our splendid grandchildren.

Missing jumps out at you at unexpected moments: I pick up the deck of cards we so often used at the beach, and feel a pang; I think of her family’s nightly ritual of watching “Jeopardy” and smile: my mind recalls the slap of her Dr. Scholl’s as she walked across the kitchen floor.

I haven’t started talking aloud to her yet, but I reckon that, too, will come. My father has been dead for eleven years, but I often address him out loud, particularly when I’m behind the wheel. . Both of us were highly verbal drivers. I find myself snarling: “Hey, Hank, did you see that jerk?” or, with heavy sarcasm: “Nice turn signal, lady!” My mind hears him responding with a bark of a laugh: “You tell ‘em, Sweetie!” At least both my dad and I kept the car windows up, and eschewed hostile gestures, preferring to let off steam in a safe environment.

It’s a one-way conversation, this habit of addressing the dead, but I reckon it happens because you never really lose them: they just become part of your inner life. I rarely speak aloud to my mother, who died more recently than my father. Heaven knows she was the prime mover in my young life, and very much a part of my adult life. Perhaps we had already covered most of what we would say to one another. Or perhaps, like some mothers and daughters, we could somehow talk without talking.

At times, it seems to me that the mind has its own agenda, and carries on silent conversations without any conscious direction. I don’t worry about those, except that as I age, I occasionally find myself addressing my mind with: “Excuse me; what did you say?”

But I do carry both parents with me, as we all do even long before they die. Once we grow up and leave home, those parental voices resonate in our brains and hearts, whether we want them to or not. And once our parents are gone, even though we can no longer pick up the phone to speak with them, the sound of their voices is locked into our auditory memories. We can pretty well figure out the opinions those voices would express, too, although it no longer really matters whether or not we disagree with them.

What we can’t do, alas, is get answers to questions we never thought to ask until too late. Some things just have to be let go.

In the long run, being lucky enough to have had emotional and intellectual connections to one’s family and friends far outweighs the grief of losing them. It’s easier if one can believe, as my grandmother did, that all your beloveds will be waiting to greet you in heaven. When she was in her late 80’s, someone asked her: “Are you afraid to die?”

She replied, with a smile: “If you knew that the next room was filled with people you love, would you be afraid to walk through the door?”

My version of the Beyond isn’t quite as solidly envisioned as hers. I figure I’ll find out what’s there or not there, one of these days, and in the meantime, I’ll enjoy and work on the next 15 minutes. At my age, those 15 minutes seem to be challenge enough.

It’s not quite so easy to be cavalier when someone you love is diagnosed with what the medicos call “a terminal disease.” Losing a beloved friend or family member seems much harder to me than contemplating my own demise. As we struggled to be supportive when we spoke to her on the phone, I knew that when we hung up, we would weep for the impending loss.

But the dead are gone and we are here, no turning back. So I reach into my memory and my heart; I remember the sound of a voice; I remember wild card games; I remember a tender heart; I remember evenings of laughter; I remember my chum who sang off-key but oh, with what enthusiasm!

My memories aren’t you, dear Sally, but they sustain me. We shared some mighty good times.

Heart Song; Thoughts on loss

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