The Grieving Room - Paso Doble

This is the second installment of The Grieving Room series, graciously started by Dem in the heart of Texas last Monday evening.

The grieved are many, I am told;    The reason deeper lies,—   Death is but one and comes but once,    And only nails the eyes. Emily Dickinson

I’ll lazily quote from Dem’s first diary in the series as I, too, invite you to share tonight:

This diary is for me and for the dozens of others here who have suffered the loss of a loved one, and need a place to vent or commiserate about it, with those who share their values and are in a similar spot.  
A few of us mourners have been in contact, and we think it would be of great help to have a weekly support diary, just for us.   If this applies to you, come on over the fold and join in.

You know those shows, those celebrity ballroom dancing shows, or the competition ballroom dancing shows they broadcast on late night television. I admit to a paralyzed fascination with them. My attention is always captured, not by the dancing or the personalities or the fashions, but by the strict focus the dancers place on perfecting a routine from start to finish.

Their choreography is detailed to the last twirl, the interlocking fingers or the hands, masculine and feminine, carefully matched together, holding each other, guiding each other, supporting each other. Their steps are plotted to the size of the floor, their movements are made with an attempt to carefully control energy and athleticism and confine it to the style of dance and the expectations of the judges. When I watch, I think I long for a mistake or a flash of unrestrained creativity or a burst of brilliance in technique that defies and moves beyond the regulated steps of the dancer’s program. As if exerting control might be revealed as pointless over an action that should seem more natural.

What is natural anyway? If I imagine myself as one of the dancers of a pair on a ballroom floor, I cannot conceive that it would be natural for me to wear a daring sequined outfit, slit the fabric up to here, place an intricate tortoise-shell mantilla in my hair for a fiery Paso Doble exhibition. Somehow, as the television audience armchair critic that I am, I have the temerity to yearn to see dancers move beyond a previously-learned flashy routine.

I’ve diaried previously on my sister’s latest journey, here and here, and a little of her life with her Down Syndrome adult son here. I spoke months ago of the Reconciliation she had with my oldest sister. Little was I aware that I was compiling the elements of the obituary I’ve now been asked to write.

This time she’s on a trip, perhaps a strange dance, to the end of cancer. She has had a sudden illness and an even more sudden decline. There’s not much more I speak to directly tonight but that I estimate she has only a few more days.  

Death is such a personal, peculiar thing, isn’t it? With all our science and skills, this passing small moment is pushed from behind by the last fleeting draws of breath. The future after one’s death is compressed only by our lack of imagination in comprehending what lies beyond.

Moving beyond a previously-learned routine is what grief is all about. And there is really very little to compare between experiencing grief and dancing a mechanized Paso Doble. But I was caught the other night as I watched my niece prepare to turn down the hall towards her mother’s (my sister) bedroom and help my sister out of bed for a brief jaunt to the kitchen. She arranged her features to portray composure, smoothed the worry lines from her brow with the tips of her fingers, and consciously turned the corners of her mouth upwards. I don’t think she noticed that I was paying attention. I realize that this routine is a pattern she has adopted over the last couple of weeks as she starts the emotional preparation of dealing with her rapidly dying parent. It is the makeup applied before the performance, the joining of the hands to keep the performance nerves at bay. The armor thrown on before a battle. The only defense you can draw around you after hope exits the room. This is a behavior, a previously learned behavior of grief.

It’s said that grief is natural. That there are healing elements to grief that a human needs to experience to move beyond to the next step after loss – loss of anything, whether it’s death of a loved one, loss of employment and comfortable lifestyle, loss of a familiar environment, end of a relationship. There is nothing that feels natural in the interior hollowness of grief, those echoes from a heart too numb for despair. There is nothing natural in seeing another person’s death of dreams unfulfilled. When you grieve, you pull that shroud to yourself. Perhaps that is what is natural, the weight of that transposition of what could have been onto what can still be.

Thanks for reading – this diary after all, is truly not about me, but my invitation to you to share the emotions, the thoughts, the politics, the situational awareness we all have of grief – whether it’s grief of loved ones, grief of loss, or grief of what has been laid waste in our country these past few years. Grief is a political beast, after all, because politics is first about people, the polity.

Tonight I’ll fasten a rose in my hair and imagine some wildly musical moments where I blossom with the talent to dance creatively out of my previously transcribed two-steps. I invite you to try the same.

The dusk drew earlier in,   The morning foreign shone,— A courteous, yet harrowing grace,   As guest who would be gone. Emily Dickinson