Are You Still Paying Attention?

5 years ago, you could write entire novels without your spine herniating

Hey, you! Are you still paying attention?

Are you thinking about how you are the least deserving of those deserving a letter, and not the first place to begin?

Are you thinking that phrases like “we are learning how to LIVE with grief” sound like utter bullshit but then you’re yet to learn how to live with yours?

Grief, in the US especially, is a competition (just like everything else).

Someone begins to talk about their personal loss and our eyes start to glaze over and wander as we think about whom we have lost as well- measuring that loss against everyone else.

Did they lose someone young with their whole life ahead of them, versus grand-parents who many of us never had growing up? “10 point reduction on the latter!”

What about closeness to the person lost?… Were they really best friends, or did our Americana, Rockwellian, “Be All You Can Be” make the connection hyperbolic over time?

We own our grief. It’s proprietary. We rush towards it with Real Estate signs and land deeds and stick our plot in lots as if we can ever own anything in this existence at all, when everything we know and everyone we love will eventually turn into air and memories.

If most of us what we leave behind are memories, and 76% of people studied for their treasured memories made at least one error in direct recall along the way… Are we leaving behind our legacy, or just an incorrect, foggy, exaggerated impression of the truth that is told and re-told through the loving minds of those we’ve loved until it’s like that game of telephone when the original sentence whispered in a circle of people is nothing like how it began?

You, recipient of this grief letter, are nothing like how you began.

5 years ago, you could write entire novels without your spine herniating to the point of needing surgery (which you somehow distinguish as different from the times it herniates but you can limp along, tilting like Piza, laying flat with two pillows under your legs, barely being able to move for days, upping your risk of lung infections, missing work, being forced to cancel almost all plans, and taking pain meds that no longer work; A railroad off its track).

5 years ago, you weren’t fearful of car rides beyond 30 minutes. Or showers where you have to bend or twist in any direction. Or sneezing or coughing at the wrong time without bracing yourself like that hot guy in ‘Twisters’ (who’s only hot because of his banter in ‘Set It Up’, because banter IS the scientific barometer for hotness).

5 years ago, you had multiple purposes in life that you believed in… and you believed that if you essentially dismantled your very body and slowly died for a cause (not dramatic?), you’d be rewarded by having lifelong best friends and basically that alone. Those who would never need to say your name, because it was their trust in you and allowance of you to be a shoulder for they to cry on that felt like the gift.

“Sometimes you find out that quarters were pennies all along,” another person says in passing.

You were unsure of how you felt about that phrase but you knew it was at least catchy; A chorus for a song you’re yet to write. One you’ll probably never sing to yourself. A hook to avoid.

“Being hurt but TRYING is still something to be proud of”, they added, after the fact, to anyone it could be applicable… And You wrote it down because it felt applicable to everyone. All of us.

Mostly, you.

PART TWO. Continued tomorrow.

(Part One)