This Is My Sadness

For three Christmases now I've been trying to write something up to let my family know how proud I am of them for soldiering onward with unparalleled dignity, bravery and love in the wake of the tragic loss of our mother more than 2 years ago. Still, I haven't found that I have been preternaturally imbued with the type of vigor for the season that my siblings have, nor do I have the ability to look sadness in the face and back it down with the sheer force of will that my Father has so heroically displayed these past few years. It's been otherworldly difficult for all of us, I imagine, and yet as the youngest member of the clan I still selfishly cling to the naive ideology of my youth and hope and pray every single day that I will wake up and the past pain and suffering will all have been part of a nightmare or, rather, a life lesson loaded dream that God himself would not allow me to wake from for fear that some of the imperatives he's tried to impart upon me would be lost. Every morning I wake up and realize the harsh truth that, no matter how hard I hope and pray for it all to have been something other than what it was, I am still planted firmly in the reality of this life, and I miss my Mom more and more each day, and as her favorite holiday approaches, sometimes the sadness can be unbearable.

Well, there you have it. That's the reason I am unable to write something uplifting to send along to my family, because deep down in the recesses of my soul I know that I am, in no way, over the loss of my mother. I've put on the happy face and smiled and laughed with the rest of the world, but its largely been insincere and forced. Nobody likes a "sad-sap" after all, so why play the part of the "depressed son" when I can appear to be something else entirely? That's the way people have survived through their trials and tribulations for thousands of years, and I, if I may be so bold, am just a regular guy trying to make it through my day to day life just like the rest of humanity. I deserve no special treatment and I would never deign to ask for it, but part of me is always crying on the inside.

I cry for my Mother's ear in times of sadness and pain when I need her comforting words.
I cry for my Mother's tomato sauce and pasta when I am hungry.
I cry for the lost afternoons of Murder She Wrote and Matlock reruns.
I cry for the oddest things.
I cry, I cry and I cry and in the end I realize it serves no purpose other than to highlight my own selfishness and ego that is screaming to be noticed, placated and appealed to.

If I've learned anything over the past two plus years it's been that I am about as meaningful as a gnat on an elephants earlobe. I may be noticed, but I am ultimately insignificant and nothing more than an itch that needs to be scratched. It's not much, but it's a life, and I digress. Sometimes, it's important to be the invisible element that rattles the window panes during a thunderstorm, because that's what wakes you up and reminds you to batten down the hatches and prepare for what's to come, but people don't see sadness that way. They see sadness, depression and melancholy as emotions that are to be ignored and only dealt with in private. Why, after all, are funerals, memorials and wakes the only appropriate time to "let it all out" and wail in pain? Because it's a shared sadness, one that everyone in the room is experiencing and it's the only venue where tears are expected and encouraged, and then, almost in a collective and cosmic effort to say "f_ck you" to grief, we drink and eat and tell stories about the recently and dearly departed that are so embellished as to be bordering on fairy tales.

I remember, hazily, that during the reception following my Mother's funeral, a number of her friends came up to me to congratulate me on my eulogy and the way I was able to "keep it together" during what "must have been the most difficult thing I've ever done." Well, to those people I would like to say that you've never tried to hit a flop shot out of thick, green side rough to a short-sided pin tucked into the back left corner of the second hole of Oak Hill's West Course, because that was the most difficult thing I've ever done. Not be crass or void of emotion, but delivering my Mother's eulogy was so incredibly easy to do, and such a brilliant honor bestowed upon me by my immediate family, that I never thought twice about it, and only in the aftermath, when every one reminded me it was supposed to be difficult, did I feel any kind of pressure, but it passed quickly and was replaced by the pride of doing a good job. I buried my parting words with my Mother's body and never thought twice about it. I deleted the file from my computer. I wasn't prepared for people to ask me for copies, and I was not about to give them to anyone, let alone some ladies I'd only known in passing despite their long relationships with my Mother. That was my goodbye and what I chose to do with it was nobodies business...

... still, I put on the happy face and smiled and laughed, because that's what a good son does as his Mother's funeral when people ask for things like a copy of the eulogy. I was gracious in my explanations and sincere in my apologies, because that's what a good son does at his mother's funeral. I drank to excess. I smoked more cigarettes than I would for weeks to come and I was so hopped up on Xanax by the time the day was over that pain, both physical and emotional, was but a distant memory and something to be disregarded and dealt with later on when the time was right and there weren't so many people around. This is what people do, this is what I did, and this is the result of those actions.

Two plus years, and three Christmases later I am but a husk of the man I wanted to become. I go through my routines with zombie like efficiency and emotion. The only respite from the sorrow that fills my daily life is the comfort and love I feel when I am with the love of my life, or when I'm walking my dog, or when I am faced with a problem that needs solving at work; in other words, when I am distracted or just downright overwhelmed by the good things in my life am I able to cope. I find it increasingly difficult to talk to my father on the phone, because I can hear his voice break and crack under the immense strain he must be feeling when the holiday season rolls around. I find it hard to be there for my sisters when they need me, because looking at them is like looking at a Monet of my Mother's face, and to see them interact with their children in the same way my Mother did with us is often too much for me to take, but I choke it down and put on the happy face and laugh, because that's what you do. You suck it up. You move forward. Life won't let you take a break to lament the loss of your loved ones.

Am I really as sad as I'm making myself out to be? No, I suppose I'm not, but the thoughts and practices I've described above are as real and honest as I'm willing to be. I write and crack jokes and make comments I shouldn't make as a way to get through the day and mask my pain. So, it's difficult for me to admit this to anyone let alone the anonymous users of the internet who will most likely declare me to be something other than what I am for briefly touching upon something as ignoble as my own, honest to god feelings about something so personal to me. I should be writing a "best of" list of some kind, or a joke post about Santa's sleigh or why Rudolph had a red-nose for a much different reason than we are told, but I can't bring myself to feel that way. Not now. Not four days away from the saddest hours of my year.

This is my sadness, and I chew it back and hold it in and try as hard as I can to forget about it and leave it for another day, another time when I can really open up and let out an anguished howl, but that day never seems to come. I try to put my feelings into words and express myself as best I can when I'm with my girlfriend -who knows all there is to know about me- but it comes off as complaining and nobody likes a "sad sap" this time of the year, so I put on a happy face and I laugh, because that's what you're supposed to do.

I think, now that my melancholy has been laid out on the table, I can get around to writing that cheery, uplifting prose piece I've been trying to put together for the past few years; if only to let my family know everything is fine, that we're doing great and Mom would be proud of us. I'll mean every word of it, too.