When we’re born we fall into life like into water Leaving the safety of the amniotic sac and landing in an ocean of air and experience. Some survive the launch, others don’t or struggle constantly against the current. In college or just after, I had a friend whose good friend was married to someone else at the time. She was blonde and beautiful, but troubled. When the two of them split up, She told my friend, by way of explanation, that we’re born, live and die alone, And that’s just the way it is. Later, after her divorce, she ended up in San Francisco — don’t we all? — and worked as a nurse, helping to salvage bodies and souls, including I hope her own. I don’t know if she is still alive, old, wrinkled and battered, But I’ve never forgotten her sad synopsis.
Yes, that IS one side of the human story: loss in breakups and death, back on your own identity and resources. If you live long enough, you lose every one before you lose yourself. On the other hand, what's sad is NOT feeling lots of layers of connection between our individual selves, lots of people and relationships and places. My joy is that I cannot help feeling a multitude of connections.
"Don't we all?" -- well I also STARTED in San Francisco (well, Mills Hospital in San Mateo). As I age and have trouble at times, my daughter is trying to get me to end up back in San Francisco for more help from relatives. Maybe SF does feel like a better place than Portland to BE alone after other connections are severed, but right now I can't bear to leave the connections that matter in Portland. THe joy after the pandemic to just get to BE together once in a while.
By myself AND connected.
--Jeanne
While the blonde may have been technically correct, she overlooked the most important part and that is, in the in-between we commune with others for cuddles and understanding, for comfort and courage, for loving whispers in the dark.