Flash…
Maybe we have come too close, my crew and I? I cannot say. I only know they saw me through death and divorce; JD through two deaths and the daily struggles of marriage; X through health struggles; JS through the stalking by weird ex-boyfriends of a girl he dated and finally to his wedding of another. It may not be professional to hug and cry at work but we acknowledge we are only human, both frail and strong. If I walk in the office and say I need a hug, six arms surround me. If I see tears forming when passing by, I know to stop and lend a shoulder or provoke a smile.
And when the day is gay, we laugh it up, no holds barred and HR be-damned. JS calls “witness” and I say “oh no, no witness here”. And when I come in grinning, JD says, “don’t you look like the cat that swallowed the canary?” and I say “um yes, I swallowed the canary." Laughing like school girls, JD old enough to be my grandmother in years, young enough to be my sister in her wry wit.
Grief and joy have no time frame; emotions do not understand an 8-5 work day. Sometimes they hit like a ton of bricks and sometimes in gentle smiles. In this life I can truly say I am human, I am a woman and I have not been able to conform to the depths that some desire. In breaking norms and breaking molds, someday I can die knowing I lived in honesty and truth to myself.
Flash…
The man in the back was tall, rail thin, skin hardened and weathered. He was a country man with his gentlemanly ways. I recalled meeting him once, twice I believe and I suppose, like a few others, my simple kindness made an impression as it had on the deceased. The deceased, that I was the bringer of food on the occasion of his wife’s death was cause enough to ask after me time and again, certainly made an impression on me. Well, this tall thin man nodded in kindred spirit, in recognition. I drew hugs from the sister and the niece and nods and smiles from others. The deceased was the father-in-law of one of my employees of almost three years. I had only known her for five and met him as much as his kin. Yet somehow I had been inserted into her life and she in mine. Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living to come together in common cause, to support, to grieve, to show respect for the deceased I suppose, to talk about faith and god. So JD clung to me with words of love, not my employee, my friend.
Flash…
I cry at funerals, when they finally get around to god. “Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but having everlasting life…” what the hell, I just bust out. In reading a bit on Buddhism, I have learned that the greatest joy comes from the greatest pain. Maybe that’s why I’m always so happy, so giggly? I have known more than my share and still believe in magic, in spirits, that life is beautiful. I have lent an ear the past year to so many friends who have had losses and each time I am reminded of my own. Daddy says some people are meant to sit with death, to be there for the dying. I have perhaps inherited this from him in a way only I am there for the living.
