the unimaginable

“It is a law that parents should not have to bury their children. And someone should enforce it.” – The Old Man

I watched that happen this week. I watched a girl who is learning to read learn to grieve. I watched one of the people I love the most have the worst day of their life. I tugged back-and-forth between the unimaginable, and the feeling. Because I can only feel what I feel, but I wanted to feel exactly what they felt along with them so at least maybe they felt less alone.

The unimaginable is simply unimaginable. And there’s nothing imagined about it for her. I cannot even begin to manufacture in words what she is feeling. Sometimes that feels like the one power I have. That I can put into words, for myself or others, what is otherwise a nightmare to put into words. But I can’t put her nightmare into words; I can only listen to hers. As she does the unimaginable.

Do you ever do that thing where you imagine the phone call? You imagine whose house you’ll run to. Whose arms you’ll cry in. Which movie will be playing over and over for the weeks following. How you’ll brave work or school or your art. How many hours will be spent in bed in your year of magical thinking. Do you ever imagine being pulled out of the office, or the classroom, or sleep? The horrendously random way in which it happened. How it is absolutely your fault but simply couldn’t be and so resolution becomes more impossible than is usual.

I think my catastrophising may change after this week.

Life continues.

Not for all of us.

         But life is continuing.

         I felt overwhelming admiration for so many people I watched line up for the buffet. So many smiles. So much laughter. So much Corona. So much mingling. So much walking around.

         ‘It ebbs and flows. Life moves and they move with it.’ My Mother tells me in so many words. ‘What else will they do?’

         I hope you’re moving with life okay. It’s easy for death to make us stand still. It is so very good at that. But this week, so many people around you have continued moving. Carried on going food shopping, going to school, brushing their teeth, smiling their smiles, crying their tears.

         It’s an awfully big thing to do.

         Seeing a loved one on their worst day is grim, horrendous, and it is one of the most unfathomable things to see them continue to live. Despite the worst, despite the worst, despite the worst. They walk out the door. They put the bins out. They put the kids to bed. They fall asleep. They feel sick.