One of the things I try to help students with is letting go of being perfect, not being paralyzed by imperfect choices in an uncertain world. Maybe it is disappointing compared to our elaborate imagination, but so much of the important progress of life is about showing up, about trying hard, about reaching out, about letting people help you. In the role of career advisor I feel warm and helpful and wise. I get the chance to practice being the kind of person I aspire to be, and all this practice is tricking me into thinking I'm getting somewhere.
And then my grandmother died.
And there are lots of things that come up with this. Sadness is the least of it -- not the least because it's lightest, but the blessing of sadness is that it is straightforward and expected and uncomplicated. It's no fun to be sad, sure, but it is what I'm supposed to feel. I also feel relieved, and that feeling comes loaded down with lots of self-loathing and shame. I am guilty. I have not been generous with my time or my attention. I am cold and aloof. I do not remember birthdays or bring casseroles or take care of cats, or do much of the kind of tending and practical caretaking that families do for one another. Worse -- I don't *want* to do that, even knowing how much it matters, how indistinguishable from love it is. I am afraid of what will happen to my extended family, that we will drift into separate orbits, and that it is a failing of mine that I am unwilling or unable to do the work that would keep us together. I am full of wistfulness and tortured self-examination at all of these failings, my inability to love the right people in the right way, or to express it right, at the right time. I am full of regret at all the ways I could have been a better granddaughter. I hated to see my grandmother's deterioration, so I avoided visiting her. I am mad at myself for being self-absorbed enough to make my grandmother's death, even, all about me me me and what kind of person I am, so I am tormented by all of these feelings and then when I start thinking about them I get angry and disgusted and it starts anew.
The good news, I think, is that the experience of a memorial service offers some kind of respite, and some kind of healing. I am tending to the tedious and mundane errands of arranging for food. The family is coordinating chores and readings via email, and mixed in with the administrivia we are sharing some other thoughts, too. We're all tender in the same way -- I know that without any one saying it outright. We remember the same things, and that is such a comfort and such a tie. We're connected even without casseroles and cat-sitting. We will stand up and sit down in a familiar church together, take turns walking up to the lectern and reading words out loud, and after that we will eat and tell stories and laugh and drink vodka and cry and gossip with neighbors and acquaintances and old friends. Doing that will help, I think. Just showing up. It's not complicated, but it's not simple, either.