December 3: Changed His Life, Love, Fear

[E. B. White] was thinking a lot about love.  He agonized about what it meant and how it had changed his life and how it might change it more in the future.  Change always frightened him, even when it was thrilling, and the uneasy blend of fear and excitement was almost overwhelming him now...

I think I am a lot like E. B. White.  White wasn't impulsive.  He didn't court adventure in his life.  He was a thinker.  When he fell in love, got married, became a father, he had to meditate on it.  Put it in terms that he understood.  He wrote about his complex feelings.  Often, he hid behind animal characters, like pet dogs and birds.  He seemed to understand the world better if he viewed it through the eyes of a winged or four-legged or eight-legged creature.


This week, I have been struggling to make sense of a loss.  Every time I step foot in the English Department, I'm overwhelmed by sadness.  I still see people crying in the halls, in offices.  It's as if this place has hit an iceberg and is taking on icy water.  I can almost hear a string quartet playing "Nearer My God to Thee."  This change isn't easy.  It's like floating in the middle of the Atlantic in a life raft, waiting for a rescue ship.

That may sound melodramatic, but that's the best analogy I can come up with tonight.  This afternoon, as I was working in the medical office, a man stepped through the office door.  He was a salesman from a drug company.  I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I stopped what I was doing.  Froze.  I experienced a moment of disconnect from reality, because I actually thought my friend Ray was standing at the counter, looking at me.  In a very faint way, he resembled Ray.  And, for the briefest of moments, I felt like Ray was there with me.

Of course, this all has to do with my state of mind.  How my thoughts have been dwelling on Ray since Thanksgiving.  I was walking to my car last night, and I thought I heard Ray's laugh behind me.  I turned around and saw a crow sitting on top of a snow bank.  That's it.  I know I have to snap out of this blue funk.  Ray certainly wouldn't appreciate being the cause of so much grief and heartbreak.  He'd be telling jokes and stories, making people laugh.

Like E. B. White, I am uncomfortable with change.  All change.  Change through loss.  Change through love.  Change through fear.  I don't like change.  If I were White, I'd probably be writing this post in the voice of a goldfish named Eugene who'd recently lost his friend, another goldfish named Albert.  It's a way of making sense of a senseless situation.  I think all writers do this.  In the face of difficult or confusing emotions, writers turn to words.  Characters.  Stories.  Poems.  Essays.  It's a way to put the universe back into some kind of order.

The stars are realigning.  A new normal will soon be established.  I'd like to believe everything happens for a reason.  Something good will flower somehow after a long, bleak, cold winter.

Saint Marty holds onto that hope.

Don't abandon hope, all ye who enter here

November 28: All the Rest of His Days, Phone Call, Fairy Tale Failure

Mr. Zuckerman took fine care of Wilbur all the rest of his days, and the pig was often visited by friends and admirers, for nobody ever forgot the year of his triumph and miracle of the web.  Life in the barn was very good--night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days.  It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

There's a sense of both incredible happiness and melancholy is this paragraph.  It starts out with the statement that Mr. Zuckerman cared for Wilbur "all the rest of his days"--which gives the impression that Wilbur has already gone to that big pigpen in the sky.  The rest of the paragraph has the tone and feel of To Kill a Mockingbird or the film Stand By Me.  Reflective.  Nostalgic.  Tinged with sadness.

That pretty much describes my day.  Last night, after I wrote my posts about the passing of my friend and colleague Ray, I was climbing into bed for the night when the phone rang.  It was for my wife.  Her friend, Vickie, who has been battling cancer for the past few months, passed away last night.  After my wife hung up the phone, I looked at her and said, "This night really sucks."

I spent the day recording Christmas music with my band.  It was a pleasant, happy distraction.  We played "White Christmas" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."  We laughed and ate homemade oatmeal cookies.  It was a hopeful couple of hours, planning the musical arrangements and imagining the final results.  I was able to get out of my head for a little while.

Of course, now, sitting in my living room, listening to Eydie Gorme sing "White Christmas," I'm right back to my darker reflections.  Christmas music sort of enhances my mood.  Most of the great Christmas songs, sacred and secular, have elements of both happiness and sadness.  Think about it.  "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know."  Or "O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel."  So much longing and want.

That's where I am right now.  Full of all of these complex feelings.  I'm going to try to write a happy fairy tale, but I think I'm going to fail.

Once upon a time, a kindly king lived in a land of perpetual winter.  The king was beloved by all of his subjects.  The peasants.  Knights.  Friars at the monastery.  Nuns at the convent.  Cooks and farmers.  Fisherman and blacksmiths.  Everyone loved the king.

One evening, the king died unexpectedly, and the whole kingdom went into mourning.  Everything was draped in black.  Houses.  Churches.  Schools.  Cottages.  All the clocks in the land were stopped.  Church bells tolled and tolled day and night.

From heaven, the king looked down on his kingdom, shook his head, and said to Saint Peter, "Jesus, they need to lighten up."

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Words to live by