Positively Glorious!

You step off the plane into a winter of anger and regret. It’s cold in the town of your youth. Much colder than you remember. It’s more grey than you remember. In fact, there’s very little that’s the same as you remember.

The town of your youth is exactly the same.

Your cousin picks you up at the airport and you decide that the innocuous questions that she asks you are just that. You decide that she’s not a spy, sent behind enemy lines to steal tactical information. You decide to believe that she’s just your cousin, and she’s asking questions that anyone would ask. But you know you’re wrong. Even if her questions are innocent, the information will be carried back to the enemy.

No. Stop.

The answers will be taken to your family.

This is not a battle between members of your family. There are no sides. There are no lines. It is not a battle, but the battlefield after a battle that your mother fought with life. There is one death, there are a lot of wounded people who desperately need care, but the battle is over.

This is the view you decide to take as you answer your cousin’s questions in openness and honesty.

These are all decisions, and it comforts you to know that. You are not being forced into anything, you decide to see the world the way that you do, whatever way that is. This thought gives you strength. As if you can shape the world into whatever you want it to be, and all you need is the desire to do so.

Strange, that a death brings such a thought to your mind.

In the car, you decide that you will look to everyone and honor their pain. You will see them as the wounded person they are. No-one’s pain will be beneath your own. No-one’s pain will be less than yours. You lost your mother, but your cousin lost her aunt. Your aunt lost her sister. You had your mother for all your life, but your uncle, so much older than you, had her for all of his life. Loss cannot be measured and weighed. It can only be felt.

So you decide that you will look to them all and say “I honor your pain, your loss is even more tragic than mine. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

At the house, you dive into a tempest of questions and answers, offers and requests. “Can you…?” “Do you…?” “Will you…?”

You swim in the words as if they were a stream, letting them wash over you and only conscious of the general direction they are flowing. You travel with the flow. You eat, sit, watch, listen. The stream rushes on, and the water is strangely refreshing.

Periodically, your family tries to coax you into the battle. “She said …?” “Well he wants to …?” “You don’t, do you?” “You will, won’t you?” Much of what they say could anger you, or hurt you, or amuse you, but you don’t need it to. You’ve decided that there is no coaxing, only love and sadness.

“Yes,” you say, “she did say that, but she is in a great deal of pain, you are in a great deal of pain. There’s so much pain that I don’t even know what I’m thinking.”

Like water over the rocks, “she’s just hurt, she lost her sister.” Like wind in the shadows, “she’s just hurt, she lost her mother.” You can tell that your answer isn’t what they wanted, but you can also see that they want to believe. At least they want to believe that you believe, that the answer is, well, if not right, then at least somewhat true.

And, right now, that’s good enough. Almost. Some of that pain will be held onto for a long time. And some will feel betrayed because they do see sides, and see that you’re not on theirs.

Yet, for the most part, you’re doing alright. Everyone asks how you’re doing, and you reply by asking them how they are doing, and then listening intently, empathetical, to their tale. You listen to the tale of your family.

There’s a lot of crying. There’s a little bit of laughing. There’s quite a thick curtain of tension.

And there is a funeral tomorrow.

You crawl into bed at night wrapped in sunshine, and finally tell her stories. Good stories, funny stories.

Stories about your family.