The
Cost of Living
I watched her from a distance, my old friend, as she crossed the room with her long, flowing skirts swirling around her ankles. She danced on her toes as she spun her arms in the air in a pirouette, then tripped lightly over her feet. I laughed as she laughed.
Her skirts were always swaying this way and that as she moved playfully along, never stopping.
She never stopped.
Her skirts just so characteristic of her personality, brightly colored with flowers and lace- a mirror of her soul. She said they made her happy, and I never questioned it because I always thought- how lovely to always surround yourself with such genuine beauty and elegance.
She turned and looked at me over her shoulder before spinning again, reaching above her towards the very top shelf of an old oak bookcase and grasped ahold of a worn out shoe box I'd never noticed before. It was held together with yellowed tape, and the lid was slightly warped, so that it popped open on one corner. A string was tied around it like it was a gift, the bow done up neatly on top.
She
stood there on her tip toes, paused, then gently brushed it with her fingers as she reached for it. I saw her shoulders droop just slightly
as she grasped it, then gingerly, but delicately, pulled it down into
her arms.
It
was then that I noticed- perhaps for the first time- the grey wisps in her
unruly hair. She stood there holding
that worn out box, not looking up. When she did turn back towards me, I could see
her lips pursed together, but she did not look up and I could
not meet her gaze. I longed to see the
story her eyes would tell, but she did not show me.
Quietly,
I got up and slowly walked to her. If
she was aware of my presence she did not show it, so I reached out tenderly and
my fingers barely brushed that worn out box before she jerked it away from
me clutching it tighter to her body.
But in that moment- that first slight touch- I felt an ice cold, almost electrical shock that shook me so fierce that I was uncomfortable with its presence. I wanted to rip it from her arms and throw it away forever.
WHY would she keep such a horrible thing much less cradle it against her
like a lover?! I demanded answers, but she was still quiet and just stood there
without acknowledging anything from me.
“Please”
I begged with my fists closed tight and struggling with desperate impatience “what is
this? I don’t understand.”
“These
are…” she paused before starting again “My memories. My past. Who I am.”
“How
is that possible?” I gasped, shocked at the revelation. I stared at her uncertain how to continue, my
head spinning faster than I could keep up with.
I had FELT what was in that box.
While it had not hurt me physically, I had felt its screaming, its strength,
its intense depth that threatened to overtake my understanding of how I had
perceived my own capabilities. It wasn’t
pain, but it hurt, and it threatened my peace- HER PEACE! I could feel myself opening
to things I had never known existed and I did not like it.
“Why?...”
I stuttered uncertain what to say next.
She
sighed a long, deep sigh then gently stroked her hand across the lid delicately
attempting to fit it back in place even as it stubbornly popped back out of position. Her fingers pausing along the edges of the lid,
leaving little dust trails as she moved them along.
“Doesn’t
it… hurt?” I asked desperately trying to put words to what I had felt from the box.
“Oh…
Yes” she said softly. “It does hurt.”
“Then
why?” I demanded again.
“Because
it is too beautiful to let go.”
“This
isn’t beauty!” I could feel my temper rising.
I could feel anger that caught even me off guard. My own response was confusing me, but I was
so focused on what I had felt, that I did not consider pausing to reflect what
it was doing to me. “This” I said
looking around at the room she’d built, gesturing with my hands “is beauty.”
I
pointed to the pink and red peonies in a vase in the window. The white linen curtains blowing in the spring
breeze. The pictures of songbirds on the walls, the coffee table she had
painstakingly sanded and refinished and painted sage- her favorite color. I knew her and everything about her was beautiful,
but not this box. Of everything in the room
that she claimed was beautiful- I rejected the thought it might be that worn
out shoe box in her arms.
“You
misunderstand.” she replied gently. “Everything
in this room is more beautiful BECAUSE of this box.” She looked back down at it
again with tenderness in her eyes.
She
clutched it close to her one more time like an old friend, then softly turned and
reaching up to the top of that old oak bookcase, slid the box back up on top
pushing it out of sight. But I knew it
was there now and now that I knew, I could not forget.
She
turned towards me with a renewed endurance I had never been able to identify
before and said-
"A long time ago, I knew somebody like no one I’d never known, and I loved like I’d
never loved. He showed me a way to see I
had never understood, because our connection together was so different. I believed at the time we could overcome anything,
and I was willing to go as far as I needed to prove that. But there are some things you cannot
overcome. No matter how desperately you
wish to. It changes you. It changed me. But it forced me also to overcome the unbearable. This loss was different. It was final.
It was forever. I could not fix
it. I could not make it better. And there was nothing to prepare me to deal
with a loss that took part of myself with it.
I lived with a void. I was too
wounded and broken to see for a long time though, that it’s not until you have
experienced greater pain, greater sorrow, greater grief, that you can also
experience greater beauty, greater love, greater peace if you allow it. I have seen the deep pits of despair. I sat alone in them in the dark for a long
time, but I also see the sunrises in the mountains and the sea shells on the
beach, I hear the laughter of a child in a way most will not because I know
darkness and beauty must shine brighter to overcome the darkness. I accept what happened and what I had to go through. I do not have to like it, but I do have to
accept it. Despite the grief, I still
choose to love knowing that one day that same obstacle will still be impossible
to overcome and I will still be left alone again. So, I try to take these little moments that
may have been unremarkable and see them differently, but I know now that all
those unremarkable moments then are what I cling to the most today. I put them away neatly in that box, because they
are precious to me though they still cause me pain even now.”
Suddenly,
I could see and put a name to the sad glimmer in her eyes that I had always
attributed to just her physical characteristics. Today, it was all she carried
with her. Everything else was packed
away neatly in that box waiting for the next time she picked it up. No one else saw her for what her eyes truly
told. I suppose, like myself, we focused on the smile, the bright colors, the laughter,
the need to create beauty everywhere she went, but we didn’t understand. Not really.
“Can I take it from you?” I shocked myself even as I said it because did I really want such a horrendous thing for myself? I had not even considered the full implications of what I suggested even as the words spilled from my mouth. It was impulsive. It was foolish.
She reached towards me and laid her hand on my shoulder, then looked me in the eyes. “Only I can keep this box. If it leaves me and it will die and I will lose all its contents forever. I gladly keep it even knowing what will happen every time I pick it back up for this reason.”
Feeling utterly helpless, I just stammered “It does not seem fair.”
She
smiled again brushing the loose hair away from her face. “You are right. It’s not fair, but it was never meant to be,
and I have accepted that. As should you.”
“I
don’t know if I can.” Could I accept it that the price of beauty and peace was
grief and suffering? The cost of living was dying? How contrary it seemed. How absurd!
No, I could not…
“You
must” she said slowly, watching me intently even as I looked at her defiantly. She knew my thoughts, that much was
clear.
“I
have been where you are now, and it was the unwillingness to accept this truth
that kept me in the darkness. I don’t
know if you will ever have to go through something like I went through.”
She paused and ran her hand through her hair again. “But then again, maybe you only need to figure it out once it has already happened.” She was speaking absentmindedly as if I was losing her to her own thoughts.
She looked down, suddenly uncertain. I wasn’t sure where she was going, but there was a longing in her eyes and she appeared somewhere else. “You try to rise above what you’ve been through.” She spoke in a whisper. “But ultimately you can’t. It becomes who you are. The ache… it never goes away.”
Then she was gone. Her eyes were looking back through time, revisiting all the old emotions she’d felt over the years as if she were standing amongst her own memories. Her eyes fell closed as she took a deep breath. Then just as quickly as I saw her leave, she returned, and her shoulders straightened as she regained her composure.
How often had she been forced to do
that? Forced to smile, forced to go
on. She paused as I wondered and
questioned how many times had I seen her put others before her own pain without
knowing everything that had taken place in those moments like just now she had
to decide to remain here where she was or stay gone in her memories? How many times had I seen the smile not
knowing what it concealed or what it had cost?
But I had not known! I reminded myself
and here I am still sitting here and even with knowing I still did not know what
to do or say. What a fool I had been congratulating
myself on my successful friendship and not even seeing her for who she really
was all along.
I
was quite suddenly uncomfortable with her emotions and experiences, and I felt
the need to fix them for her. If nothing
else, I could offer her some useful advice.
“What
if you just…” my voice trailed off as I watched her for her reaction, because in
those few moments, her face fell and her body tensed as if she was preparing to
take a blow. Her eyes full of emotion
before- compassion, empathy, patience- were now staring at me blankly.
“Um…”
I stuttered. My discomfort was replaced
with embarrassment.
I
saw her right eye twitch, or had I been imagining that?
I
felt foolish again and hated myself.
What did I possibly have to offer her?
Nothing, you fool- I told myself. Maybe now, I thought, would be a good
time to stop. I had no good advice, no
experiences to glean from, no real understanding of the burdens she
carried. What could I do? Nothing. This situation was beyond me.
“What
can I do for you?” I asked resigning
myself humbly.
She
gave me a small, cautious smile, letting herself be vulnerable again. “You
are doing it now.” I loved her smile and was comforted to see it again.
“But
I haven’t done anything?” I was so confused.
"You
are here, and you listened. You allowed
me to show you a large part of me that no one else sees, sometimes only because
they do not want to or do not care to, because if they did see that would force
them to see me differently or make them feel like they’d need to reach out when
they didn’t want to or know how to. So,
this was a great comfort to me. No one
want to be invisible. No one wants to
carry their burdens unseen. But sometimes we do, because it is easier than
realizing people know and choose to ignore it about us.”
I
smiled, relieved. This did not have to
change our friendship for the worse, even though it naturally would change as a
consequence of creating a deeper bond with her.
“One
question though. How did you pull yourself back up in the end?”
“Hmmm…”
she paused leaning back. “I didn’t. I am still there. That’s a place that you don’t really ever
leave after you’ve been there. It’s always there around you. Just waiting.
The grief, pain, sorrow- it is never really gone.”
“Then
how?”
“One day, the beauty reached down and surrounded me where I was. I wasn’t alone anymore, and I have not been alone since. A hand came down into my darkness, I took hold, and instead of pulling me out, the hand helped Himself in. He has been here ever since. Somedays I have trouble seeing that. I have trouble seeing that I am not alone, because somedays all I want to do is reach up there and hold onto that box and lose myself in its contents, because I miss so greatly what it keeps for me so much. Somedays I would be okay with losing myself. But because I can now see that I am not alone, and that, in fact, there are other people just like me that have a box just like mine, with each of ours still being distinctly different, I know that for now I need to be able to separate myself from what that box holds. Each day is different. Somedays are easier to bear, but the hard days are never gone.”
Now I understood my role. It was simple- she wasn’t asking for much of anything- but I could see it was easier for her to bear the trials she’d been given and never asked for through the small ways I could support her. I was here now and knowing that she needed me- even though she had not asked- I could be here for her. I could not take anything away, but I could be there on the days she had trouble seeing past the memories she had stored away. When she could not see the beauty, I would see it for her. That was my role I realized- and I also accepted it.
Rest in Peace
Alex Vaughn
Ar Ramadi, Iraq
June 21, 2005
