ATTACKED

I was attacked in church today, right in the middle of the prayers for the people. The attacker was not a listener irritated by my singing, nor was it a fit of coughing. It was grief, pure and simple. It caught hold of me and shook me by the neck, the way a cat shakes a new-caught mouse, not necessarily intending to kill, but rather making a statement about the order of things.

Maybe it’s because my email contains an invitation to speak to parents who have lost a child, I thought, seeking to repatriate my equilibrium. And that may be part of it, but most likely I am suffering because the September long weekend is here.

When I was much younger I heard a story about parents who had annual car accidents because their grieving became so intense on the anniversary of their daughter’s death. Ridiculous, I thought at the time. They should just get over it, just move on. After twenty years have passed, propelling kids toys along the path of progress from hula-hoops to electronic games, how difficult can that be?

Now the innocence of my youth has come for a revisit. It’s not that I was unfeeling, I assure myself. It’s just that I was so unfamiliar with grief. In fact, I knew very little about it, having experienced it only as brief bouts of sadness and fond sentimentality. I never guessed how big grief is, how disinterested it is in your wish to move forward, how sneaky it is, how unswervingly committed it is to the faithful observance of anniversaries. I had no understanding then of the relationship between loss and the positioning of points on a life line. In my hour of unsympathy I was young, a person with a small past and a larger future. Losses, although painful, bore a huge potential to be recovered. People who died could not be replaced, but others could be counted upon to move into the spaces they had previously occupied. That is how I was thinking, back when I was thinking you could just get over it.

So busy was I anticipating the future that I hardly noticed the changing of seasons. To me they simply marched along, governing the breaks from, and returns to school. But today, I note, is the Sunday of the September long weekend. It is both a cool summer day, and a hot day for autumn. A harvest wind is raising the leaves that fell during Friday’s storm. The weather is similar to the day, two years ago now, when we drove out past the fields dotted with swathers and combines to see my parents, thinking we would celebrate Mother’s return home from the hospital. But there was no celebration. We found her seized by pain, unable to greet us. Instead of admiring her flowers, I sat on her bed, patiently waiting for her to see that we simply had to call an ambulance. It was early in a month marked by cold sunny mornings, mornings when I would wake—well, can you really wake if you haven’t been sleeping—in her hospital room and step out shivering on the patio to make calls on my cell phone. This warm/cool/sunny/windy September long weekend Sunday brings all of this back to me. As we gear up for a busy fall, the email alive with speaking requests,, I recall weeks of rescheduling and replanning, making commitments because September is the time for making commitments, and then arranging back-up coverage. I remember how September dragged on and flew by. I remember the confusion, how I wanted to be at the hospital whenever I was at home, and at home when I was at the hospital. I recall a desperately illogical moment when I realized I hadn’t eaten a fruit or vegetable in fifty-eight hours.

I do not dare to predict the future for me and the September long weekend. An anniversary like this one is more than just an anniversary. It is a point of vulnerability to attacks. It’s the activation of a complex journey of the senses that goes on and on. It begins at some moment of genuine surprise when you are paying attention to something, and are suddenly assailed by grief, unexpectedly shaking you by the neck. It’s the knowledge that your past is bigger than your future, and some things will never be replaced. It’s the time when you have no choice but to ask forgiveness from all the people you thought should just get over it.