absurd

My sister messages, 11 pm, to inquire about the death of an old classmate. But it’s more than an inquiry. She wants to talk about it, about all of it.

We feel too young to have to worry about dying, but I guess not.

It’s still quite young, I tell her. But is that true? I’ve been surrounded by an unusual amount of loss this year. This is the fourth person under 45 since March.

I find myself frozen in these instances. There is something broken in the way I emote. I’ve known this since my grandmother died when I was 20. In the past I would have offered up prayer, or empty platitudes. What now?

The framework for who am I has been slowly shifting for years. I can no longer attribute higher meaning to love, pain, or loss.  During the earliest hours of last Tuesday, as I tried to read myself to sleep, I re-read “The Tragedy of the Leaves”:

what was needed now / was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester / with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd / because it exists, nothing more

When I read this a week ago, I was thinking more of my physical pain. Pain that in many ways has re-written who I am.

But now I think of my friends Alyse and Melissa, who both lost younger brothers this week. I think of John who passed this summer, and Alex before him. I think of my sister-in-law, who laid her mother to rest last month – Aida, who was beautiful, vibrant, and always laughing, died scared and trapped inside her own mind.  What sense is there in any of it? Absurd indeed.

On my best days I still have hope, though in what I’m not always sure. Maybe it’s in what we share with one another. Showing up for people. There may be a higher power. There may not. But either way,  love can be pretty transcendental.