THE ATMOSPHERE OF BEING

September 29 2013Does time fly in every language? It seems impossible that this is the penultimate day of September. And where does time fly to? One thing is for sure; it doesn’t have a return ticket. Maybe this is what has us feeling a little sad these last few days; and there is something inherently sad in the season; it’s in the land, in the air, even though, until today, the weather has been balmy, we can no longer eat dinner outside and even breakfast if taken under the pergola must be accompanied by a sweater and shawl. And mixed in with the seasonal wistfulness is the sadness of the little family leaving, even more so because Joel and I came down with a virus and were unable to accompany them, as planned, to the seaside for the last 2 days of their holiday; a less than grand finale.Talking of grand finales, I realized this week that there is no such thing. What took me so long? Yes, I’m talking about death again which, like sadness and grief, seem to be topics that none of us really wish would arise. I’ve just finished reading Julian Barnes' latest book, the third and final part of which he devotes – and I use that word with respect – to the grief he experiences over the death of his wife. Why do I read such things you might ask? Well, I try to read everything my favorite authors write and the writers who are my favorites are so because they dare to write about the ‘unspeakables’, and they do so in a way which enlightens me and, let’s be specific here, enlightenment isn’t about feeling groovy. It doesn’t mean to be made lighter. It means to be informed or instructed. You can chant Om, all you want but it won’t excuse you from the grand finale.In Barnes’ book, he talks about how nobody really wants to know about grief…certainly not yours. You’re allowed a couple of weeks of public misery and then either get over it, get a puppy, or keep it to yourself. In fact, we don’t know how to talk about grief. Even when we experience it, is so unique it is impossible to communicate, and in some western cultures, where death is viewed as a disease and grief as something contagious it is even more difficult. Let me be blunt; and I am of course speaking in the manner of a sweeping generalization, but I was rather relived to see Barnes pen the following: “In America emotional optimism is a constitutional duty.” Look, I’m all for the silver lining theory and am actually quite adept at finding it, but only after I have lived through the cloud that obliterates it from view. While I greatly admire the positive aspect of optimism, I as much dislike the insistent belief that it can be had on the cheap.It seems to me that sadness, like grief, is a no-no because of the nature of its loneliness. Surely sadness and grief are the loneliest of emotions. They cannot be shared like joy or happiness, or acted upon like anger. Which is perhaps why most of us don’t mention our sadness to others…it’s such a burden. It’s one of those inconvenient feelings a couple of steps down from grief; an atmospheric emotion that for many is experienced as depression.I experienced depression many times over several decades of my life partly because I didn’t understand that sadness is an ineffable part of being. Sadness always seemed a bit lame. What was one supposed to do with it? You certainly couldn’t talk about it…the burden thing…whereas depression at least became somewhat acceptable once it could be clinically proven. But who wants a medical condition as opposed to a human condition? Evidently, many of us.Now, all these decades later, I can allow sadness in, not to dwell in it, but to let its vapors waft through me and in the feeling of it know that there is much to be sad about but no good reason to stay there. To me, sadness is now to depression what solitude is to loneliness; a state of human experience that one can choose to be with. It is not, like the way depression and loneliness feel, something to die from. But grief…? It seems entirely possible that one could die from the death of a loved one, even choose it, as Barnes has contemplated since the death of his wife.Why am I harping on this subject again? Well, apart from the end of summer, and the end of a love-fest with the little family, not to mention the end of our Tuscan stay nearing, I thought, a few nights ago, that it was the end of Joel. He had, unbeknownst to me, taken an over the counter sleep aid as neither of us had been sleeping well due to being sick. We were reading in bed and the next thing I knew, he was slumped over his kindle. This, in and of itself, is no new thing. We have reached the age when it is no longer possible to read whole chapters in bed with our eyes open. Normally I do what I did this time, give him a gentle tap and say “time to sleep, darling,” to which he immediately responds as though he were never asleep in the first place. Then it’s lights out and the delicious spooning of two old bedbugs drifting into slumber.But on this night there was no response. I thought he was joking around, although ‘playing dead’ is not something one indulges in at our ages. I gave him a shake; nothing. I mean nothing. I raised one of his eyelids, half in jest, nothing. That’s when I though he was dead. You don’t mess around with this man’s eyes without getting an instant response. I started shaking him. Nothing. So I felt his wrist for a pulse. It was barely there, but it was there. Thoughts were racing through my mind; stroke, heart attack. Now I was really shaking him, convinced I would have to call Gianni and get medical help. But enough with the drama. I did eventually rouse him enough to find out he’d taken something, but still, I had to undress him and yank him by the ankles into the prone position. And it was a good half hour of continually checking his pulse and watching for the faint rise and fall of his chest before I could allow myself to fall asleep.Of course, it’s going to happen one day. Although neither of us is afraid of dying, we both admit that the not knowing how or when is what rattles us.  And then there is this: we came away to come together. We flew the coop to find out if we still had the chops to take on the unfamiliar and we found the unfamiliar in ourselves and in each other and once found it became another layer of connection. And as much as we have been challenged to maintain our independence, and has much as we have succeeded to a greater degree than ever, there is no denying that this adventure has woven gold threads into the tapestry of our love. Who doesn’t want that? Most of us, actually; because we all know the deeper the love the greater the loss.So, loss is in the air today; the loss of summer, the loss of the little family whose visit made us realize the loss of family and friends, in terms of easy access. It has been raining since dawn, great sheet of Tuscan rain flooding gullies and fields, bowing the petunias, knocking the petals off the roses. We play a dismal game of Scrabble and start searching iTunes for a halfway decent movie. Then, as always seems to be the case, just when we are feeling our sad solitude, Gianni and Luan arrive and whisk us off to a neighboring Etruscan village for pizza with another Tuscan couple.The pizza is so-so. A hatch of mosquitoes and wasps fill the room. An old man from Boston sings Fly Me To The Moon and for an encore we get O Solo Mio. But we are not alone. We are no longer sad. We are communicating, in what is now our second language - albeit grammatically dreadful Italian - everything we wish to say. And we are all laughing, the greatest language of all.When we leave the little café, we amble through the deserted streets of the tiny village and through the swirling fog the ghost and spirits of thousands of years come floating to us. If you listen, really listen, you can hear their stories. They echo ours.