Much like trains in India, grief is a circular, irrational process with no discernible rhythm or timetable. Here it comes, there it goes.
The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.
Marriage is a conspiracy from Tiffany, florists, the diamond industry, and Christian fundamentalists. The only thing good about it is the diamond ring, the wedding gifts, and the honeymoon.
This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference.
My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.
In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.
I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.
It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.
Wonderful; such an active word – – to be full of wonder.
For most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.
It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.
What I find about wedding plans is that everyone wants to talk about when I don’t. As soon as I do feel like talking about my wedding plans, their eyes glaze over and I can see them wishing they were dead.
It’s impressive how God attends to the details.
I notice that, as the wedding date approaches, some doors are opening and others are closing. I have no control.
What can you guarentee, O Nostradamus of Hayward?” I carp.
Someone who can make things happen must be alerted.
He went on to say that if the Wicked Queen were around today, the whole story might have been different, because she would have looked in her Magic Mirror and said, “If I got a little laser work around the jaw and eyelids, I might still be considered the Fairest in the Land.
Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.
I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it – I thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.
Reuben nails my fantasies everytime, with iron rods of reality. He asserts that I am going to die, but probably not for a while, and that maybe I should try getting married and having a life first. He is 70 and knows things, which is why I go to him. But it’s sad to leave my romantic illusions at the door of this passage. Although false and destructive and useless, they’ve been tremendous company.
What nobody tells you about getting engaged is he asks you and you’re delirious for about 2 days and then it tapers. He asks you and you’re running around telling grocery clerks and ordering subscriptions to bride magazines and discussing prong settings, and then after 2 days this ebullience passes. And instead of looking ahead you are suddenly struck by everything you are leaving behind.