A few weeks ago, one of the people I love most lost one of the people she loves most. It all happened so quickly, so brutally. One day Marsha was shopping in Minneapolis with her sister (in-law) Erika, hanging out at the family home afterwards with her nephew and niece, enjoying all the domestic family rituals. Erika had her thick dark hair pulled back in a loose bun, as always, and made herself a chamomile tea before bed, as always. A few days later Marsha was back in Rome, where she lives, and Erika was fighting for her life in a coma. A few days later they turned off Erika’s life support, and she was gone.
I felt it all reverberate across the Atlantic, all the way into my home and into my head. I kept waking up in the night and having a moment of calm before a horrible jolt of realisation — No, it can’t be true. I couldn’t stop thinking about Marsha’s brother crying Wake up babe, wake up! by a hospital bed, or about the incomprehension then the dawning realisation of Marsha’s nephew and niece, old enough and young enough to be thoroughly aware and thoroughly devastated. At times an excess of empathy feels more curse than blessing, and pretty pointless too. My tears did nothing to help Marsha or her family, after all (although in one moment, melodramatic even by my standards, I wondered if perhaps we can, by feeling, take away some of the burden).
But it’s not just about empathy. Ultimately our feelings tell us more about ourselves than about the other person, always. The reason I felt it so strongly wasn’t just because I care so much about Marsha, it was because the very thing happened that I’ve always feared the most. It goes straight to the heart of the human condition. We spend our lives trying to get some solid ground under our feet; This is mine, I created this, these are my people. This is who I am. But there are no guarantees. You can lose it all from one day to the next, for no reason other than bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in Erika’s case, a misdiagnosis, a lack of attention, a simple human error. Oggi ci sei, domani forse (today you’re here, tomorrow — maybe), as my Italian friend Mirko so crudely (but accurately) puts it.
I’ve always known this, on some level, but like most people (except the very enlightened), I resist it. The fact that the person we love most can drop out of our lives from one moment to the next, and never come back. It’s obvious, I know it is — but just because it’s obvious, doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. I suppose this is the price we pay for being lucky enough to love deeply, lucky enough to have our lives changed by another person. The flip side of the coin; heads you win, tails you lose.
Ever since I met Ollie my joy at finding him has a dark, terrifying edge, like a bright cloud with a sort of inverse silver lining — gunmetal, perhaps. If ever he’s not home when he says he will be, not answering his phone (so unlike him!) my mind immediately pictures him lying in a ditch somewhere. It’s not even a bit realistic; we live in the wide, brightly lit avenues of Hove, for goodness sake, not down some country lane in deepest darkest Sussex. It’s as though if I worry enough it won’t ever happen. Everyone says these things happen when you least expect them, so if I expect them always, perhaps I can trick the gods of fate and even the grim reaper himself.
The other thing about what happened to Marsha’s sister, apart from the terrifying prospect of someone you love leaving you forever I mean, is how utterly futile it can make everything else seem. Who the hell cares what colour you paint the living room, whether you get promoted, which pizza topping you choose, if you can lose a loved one as easily as misplacing your keys, if your whole world can crumble overnight? All this accumulating and progressing, all these little steps forward and big steps back, all of these bloody decisions (never my favourite) about what to do next. What is it all for?
I look to my grieving friend for the answers. Grief is insane, Hannah, Marsha tells me. One moment everything’s OK, just about, and then she’ll hear Erika’s favourite song and have to hide out in the bathroom at work until the tears subside. She’ll come back from a day at the beach, grab a glass of wine and get out her phone to call her sister, momentarily forgetful — another evening lost. But as she puts it, with characteristic frankness, You cry and cry and then you stop crying and make dinner. She is grieving but she is still Marsha, still funny and compassionate and curious and still, to my great relief, very much alive. No doubt Marsha feels the full force of that painfully poignant line from The Parting Glass — ‘it fell to my lot that I should rise and you should not’ — but as this is her lot, she is certainly not going to waste it.
So this is it, what I’m learning from Erika and Marsha. All of those little moments decorating the living room, eating pizza, drinking chamomile tea, being close to our friends and family, they are the very meat of life (or the meat-free alternative, for my friends here in Brighton and Hove). We keep accumulating and progressing, or losing stuff and regressing as it often seems, keep making plans, keep spending time with our people, not despite the fact that one of these people could leave us, that everything could change overnight, but precisely because of it.
