Sometimes we lose things: People, love, pets, our favorite necklace, wedding rings down bathroom drains. I remember one time dropping my wedding ring down the bathroom drain accidentally and the sense of panic and the onset of complete nausea as I watched something precious disappear. It was palpable, a tinny taste in my throat and mouth.
It's no secret that we are all going to die. We don't know when or how, yet we know that it will happen. Sometimes I wonder if it's a blessing of sorts to be diagnosed with something like terminal cancer. You and your family know that the day is soon. You set your house in order, tell everyone you know that they are loved and held so esteemed. And we, the people who get to watch the dying learn compassion, faith, hope. We get to decide ahead of time how we are going to handle someone we love leaving this sphere and being in the hereafter, whatever that may be for you.
So I would like to acknowledge the people who have passed who may be precious to me or precious to people I know. I cannot empathize with your suffering and anguish but I hope that you can teach me compassion.
Ruben O., who lost his 8 year old daughter to cancer. Wade-o, who moved to Canada to be close to his father as he fights Multiple Myeloma. My roomie Tom who lost a friend to Leukemia. Sweet baby sis Boo, who lost her MIL just yesterday to cancer. Her husband loses his mother, her FIL his wife, his true love, we hope. My roomie Shane lost his brother Scott to a car accident as he was driving to pick up his first date. I have two friends suffering HIV. My friend S has a friend who lost both of her sons; one to murder and the other to cancer. A theatre associate and friend of mine overdosed on morphine. He was 20. I sang a song from Peter Pan at his funeral. It's a song about a boy who will never grow old. My friend Shannon, all of 20, died in a head-on collision with a semi-truck in rural Wyoming. The kicker: she was on her way home after traveling to see me in a show.
These are the things that are on the top of my head. I could think of more if I dug further into my past, but none of this will bring them back to us. I just want to know, somehow, that there is method to this madness. Stock religious answers don't satisfy me. So I will try to comfort myself with the thought that I have right here, right now to love people. I KNOW beyond a doubt that I am flawed in this and every other aspect of my life. But I am learning. I hope that I always continue to learn.
Should I ever wear a wedding band again and if that thing should go down the drain, I will remember that it is just a thing; a symbol but still a thing. Instead of panicking, I will grab that man, hold him tight and know that losing the symbol does not make our love any less real.
2 comments:
I'm separated, 35, and a Yank living in Australia, and without sounding bitter, not having a ring is the best. Amazing how a small band of metal is supposed to act like a set of handcuffs, and restrain what we feel the urge to do...when simple love, or respect should work. just my 2 cents worth, which is now about equal to the USD.
"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am me, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well."
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