Dylan
Thomas was once quoted as saying, “There is no gaiety so gay as the gaiety of
grief.”
Somehow
I sort of know what that means, though I can’t explain it.
Yesterday
I was making gingerbread cookies with the grandkids (having had to throw out
the entire first attempt at dough, so stinking horrible from the molasses that
we ended up throwing it at the wall), and more or less feeling OK, but it was
an effort. I had to pull myself up for it. For the first few days after my
mother-in-law’s passing, I was laden with memories, great waves of memory
breaking on the sand, so deep that they went back to when I was a girl of
eighteen.
I
said to someone I am close to, I have no bad memories of her, and she said to
me, that’s because you didn’t see her that often. This is the way we “deal with”
grief now. A kind of slamming of the door. Put up or shut up, she was 96 and
had her life and a peaceful death, so just forget about it and get on with the
cookies.
It’s
hard.
Hard
this time of year, which is hard already, for reasons I can’t even begin to
probe. Of course the child in me loves
the sparkle and twinkling lights and angels and good food and having the family
around. But I don’t know of a family that is universally loveable.
A
family without tensions and trouble.
I
feel over-grandma’d these days. It’s not that I don’t love it. I feel stretched
thin sometimes, and I’m not even supposed to feel it, let alone acknowledge it.
Everything I do seems to disappear into a black hole, leaving no trace.
I
suppose my line of work is a factor. People don’t see me as “working”, in spite
of writing six novels, 350-some book reviews, thousands of newspaper columns,
dozens of published poems (and two anthologies), essays in text books, and
serving as a juror in several competitions. It all just kind of vaporizes as it
happens, and I know I am seen as “not working”.
In fact, people’s attitude probably mirrors that of a woman I knew
(hardly a friend) who said, once my kids were both in school, “Goodness,
Margaret, what on earth are you going to do with yourself all day?” (I was
writing a novel.)
On
the other hand, why should I expect them to understand? Margaret Atwood was
once famously quoted as saying, “I can’t be fired because I don’t have a job.”
I don’t either, though I have work. I even have paid work, the steady if
not too thick income from my beloved alma mater, the Edmonton Journal. I’ve been
reviewing more or less steadily since 1984, starting with the Journal and
continuing with at least a dozen other publications. Most of these gigs were
paid.
So
if you’re paid for it, even if only an honorarium (meaning, a chintzy cheque),
doesn’t that make you a professional?
YES.
But it’s so much more than that.
This
post was once another post, and I cut the second half because it was becoming
just too bleak. Having a death in the family right at Christmas is hard.
Already you’re assaulted by waves of memory that are beyond your control. But
these layers run very deep and no doubt stir up my complete estrangement from
my family of origin.
Okay,
the “Sisters” post was me. No one saw it anyway, or only a few. And as usual,
the person who needed to see it didn’t, or wouldn’t have cared even if she did.
So
I had a sort of adoptive family when I got married, but didn’t really realize
it for years and years. It grew slowly and without my awareness. Alliances have
surged and faded, beyond my power to choose. (Do we choose to love? “Gee, I
think I’ll love this person now. Stand back.”) There has been a sort of
evolution. Now the lynch-pin has been withdrawn by the natural course of
things. We will have to regroup. It remains to be seen who the new matriarch
will be.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
