Ten below zero this morning, and my friends' dying little girl has taken a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, the animals in the barn look cheery enough, despite their unheated night. Chickadees mob the feeder. My ninth-grade goofball chortles songs from Rent while brushing his teeth. Year after year, we living creatures manage to overflow with joy, with despair, with joy again. The pleasure of a hot drink on a cold morning. The pleasure of a healthy silly child. And all the while I think of two parents beside a hospital bed, watching their daughter struggle to stay alive.
On the page my words look sentimental, obvious, stale; as art, they perpetuate a tedious aesthetic.
But in the metaphors of real life, hearts do swell, and they do break.
2 comments:
Good to remember that words can only partially explain real life.
Prayers to the family, and to all who will grieve with them. I am recalling Meditation 17 now. We are all the less with every human loss.
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