The Dead

 Many years ago, when I was in college, which seems recent in the stages of my life, I read James Joyce's "The Dead". I think I may have enjoyed my literature classes too much, I'm still afflicted by desire to read from all the powerful writing that was presented to me and still awaits me out there. Even this past Christmas I have been buying so many books I wonder when I will ever find the time to read them. 

"The Dead" was sort of an introduction for me into the community of writing that I have grown most fond of. I can hardly stand the idea of reading a novel and have only read a handful of them, but I love a good short story. The fact is, many times over I will be confirmed in this, novels require some kind of satisfaction that compels the reader to pick it apart. They demand that the writer give them complete tales, satisfactory endings, nay, they wish that the ending fulfill them. But a short story doesn't have to fulfill anything. It doesn't pretend.

Death is analogous of this same short story, novel predicament. Most of us won't die young, and when death does come, we are left thinking of what this life had offered, how it was complete and if all dreams were satisfied and loose ends tied. But, if life is short, and sometimes it is, it has a sort of completeness by default, it gives the one who has left us all here the same kind of respectful courtesy of fulfillment, no matter what lay before. 

"The Dead" had such a tone as the latter, when, the main character has come to visit his family for Christmas and his wife is with him, and the tone is all propriety and foibles of character,  but none too much to take center stage of the plot, where life is happening and the stress is on the protagonist, and it is all the here and now and what the future holds and responsibilities and we carefully look at each, as that is the beauty of the novella, or short story, and then, ...

And then the party is over. And it is a street in Ireland long ago, there they are in a horse drawn carriage, our protagonist and his wife, and as they are drawing close together and the story comes to an end, he somehow asks about her feelings that night and she tells him:

The ending continues in the same vein. It is all she can do to explain her feelings to her new love.  And since he is not a terrible person, he understands.

This Christmas, I had planned to write these beautiful stories for my family as Christmas gifts. The stories were for sure going to be written, because I had had success finishing a painting for my aunt for her birthday. But I pitifully and reproachfully spent the end of the year lamenting the lost canvas I could never obtain, an actual keyboard! I cannot stand to write on paper. A true 21st century woman, I need the luxury of quick edits and all my writing shortcuts, thesaurus and references, are readily available online. So I never did finish them. They were stories to engage the family in remembrances,  sorrowfully and hopefully, because we lost so many during these past years, two just last year. And today, my brother lost a close friend.

 

I have spent a lot of time with my brother these past two years. More time than either of us had time to notice. In fact, we were busy with all kinds of the things which make life what life is, but today, today I realized that I had gotten to know him. When you see through the eyes of another, you have learned to care for them. Just like the story says.

I felt for him today, and my sorrow for him was as if I had lost a friend also, although I confess, I know nothing of his pain. My losses have been trying enough to remember that there is more to loss than the shock and the tragedy. There is the breaking of a bond. My first loss was like Greta's.

I was very young, when it happened to me. And so my life has already been written in chapters, with lengthy books, many losses, triumphs, and lines written across my mind, "I died that day" (Do you know this? from Princess Bride?) And, I haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister. I can smile at these now. 

This morning was so beautiful. In fact the whole day was gorgeous. Not only because of perfect blue skies and delicate winds and tolerable winter temperatures, but the sense of fragileness, that life has offered us the chance to awaken when we could always be lost, never left me for a moment. I am sad, and I drift in and out of it, but I am able to see things clearly today, the way tragedy always awakens us from what bogs us down.

 I decided to remember these things that occured to me today, that loss's sorrow is like a Polaroid picture, that flashes and then slowly develops in front of our eyes. That when I walked from the house after visiting my mother this afternoon into the daylight that coming out was like being freed from jail, there was a sense of having been in something very binding and the daylight was freeing. That when I stood in the store today I could see the same darkened past which knew exactly what the circumstances were, though softened by being removed. That as my brother who always has the window down while we are driving was suddenly cold. That I during these trying times, I always seem to look at the trees, for some reason there is something of a rare beauty in them for me (whereas some glory in flowers and butterflies..). This season is winter, and it was yesterday I noticed the trees were bare and I had looked again at the photos I'd taken of fall. But today the pure twilight sky let a soft light down through the streets and alone there I saw these very tall sketches of nature above me, all stripped and white and black and utterly beautiful. And the sweet wind which lasted all day. Just as lovely as anything can be. It was a nice gift. Not to forget, but to remember.