I come to this winter season—this icy interlude of cold and snow and thin light–lonely. I am struck by the yawning emptinesses once filled by friends and family and colleagues who are now gone. This year most especially Connie and Tony and Bob. Their time and place in my life differed enormously. I cherished each of them in their own important way.
Their “passings”—an intriguing word that begs the question of “to where”—follows many others. A panoply of the people who I have loved and respected. A chorus, a troupe, an aggregate of folks who defined my choices and opportunities and tastes: Dave; my parents; Dave’s parents; the two history profs who illumined the past; Mike and Helen; Pearl and Delbert; the Sundquists; Alice and Lew; Don and Big Marcella; Ivan; Kermit and Edith; Walter and Merle; Lynn Hafermehl; Kay; Gary; all my dad and mother’s siblings, Dr. Pfanz; Flossie and Lavina and Jessie. I feel a peace in naming the ones I can remember.
Fewer and fewer people who’ve carried me through life—with whom I’ve shared ideas and dinners and pranks and beauty and tears—are alive to keep me in their thoughts. However long in the past some of my friendships, those folks once experienced a small electrical pulse at the word “Marcella.” Not necessarily accurate or affectionate. Nor deep or considered. But I existed—we all exist—for a while in the synapses of those we know. We are known—physically and in the grid systems of each other’s brains and heart. But as we age, as our friends age, our worlds and minds quiet. The living array of people within my circuitry has surely diminished. And I am, especially in this dark season, left desolate by the hollows, the chimeras, once occupied by beloved folks now gone.
When I conjure Connie and Tony and Bob, I see their silhouettes. Not their faces now. But their outlines. The space they occupied in this world. In my world. And it’s that frame, that vacuum, that haunts me. That yawning emptiness that proves their absence but still carries their shape. They have become the unfaded squares of wall paper where once pictures hung. Noticeable by their removal.
Only yesterday, it seems, I shared opinions and observations and laughter with Connie. I heard her voice, blossomed with her caring, and celebrated the opportunities that came my way to share my respect and joy for her. To experience the electrical frisson that was CONNIE! And know that Connie felt that same jolt, that rush of memory and feeling when she thought of me. And we were substance! We could begin and end our visits by hugging each other.
Instead, her outline, the physical space she occupied in our universe is deserted and unoccupied. And the sparks of mind and heart that animated her seem stilled.
There’s a question, of course, that we rarely entertain in polite society: What about ghosts? What about spirits? Is there more energy, more qu’i nestled within those floating outlines than we acknowledge. Souls, maybe? Should we look more diligently or wait more expectantly? Are we less alone than we believe? Who knows?
Grief exists for all sentient beings, I believe. It has shadowed life far longer than I can imagine. It has been sung and painted and shaped into words and molded into clay from time immemorial. Eloquently. Evocatively. Radiantly. I claim no prowess, no artistry in wrestling with loss. Just loneliness. And a commitment to remembering. To flooding those outlines with the stories and images that still fire in my brain—as long as I can. ©
