ManicDDaily

I said goodbye to a dear friend this evening.  I very much hope to see her next week but life and health are uncertain, and it seemed best not to leave things unsaid.

It is always amazing to me how important it is to say things.  Granted, I’m a talker.  (Anyone who writes a daily blog probably has to be.)  But even a “talker” (maybe especially a “talker”) can have a great deal of difficulty saying important things.

I was raised by people, Scandinavians, who did not like to draw attention to emotional circumstances.  I’m not saying that they were cold—but when my father kisses my mother, it is a highlighted, discussed, moment (and never publicly on the lips.) My parents’ parents were the kind of people who blanched even at a reference to where a childbirth took place, and would take great pains to avoid discussion of the deemed uncomfortable.  So, for example, they never mentioned blindness to a sightless cousin, or prior spouses to a divorcé or widow, or anything that might occasion offense, even if it really wouldn’t.

But my parents, for all their inherited diffidence, were somehow able to get the important words out–I love you, I’m proud of you, I’m so sorry that this has happened.

I’ve rarely found those important things to be out of place.   When sadness is in the room—not just there—when sadness fills the room, I’ve rarely regretted acknowledging it, if I can make myself.   It can be extremely difficult to make one’s self—the painful is not just awkward in our culture—human nature would truly rather it wasn’t there.   We don’t want to hurt feelings; we don’t want to do something wrong.

I guess the thing to keep in mind is that in some circumstances, sadness is there no matter what you do, feelings are hurting; things are, in fact, wrong.  Better to take on the unrecoverable moment than to let it drape you in stone; the moment itself is not stone, not lasting.  The acknowledgement of the sadness certainly won’t take it away, but at least it can offer the balm of connection, shared tears, the clasped, dear, hand.