Some Things Can't Be Fixed

A piece of junk mail, with Newton, Massachusetts as the return address, came a couple of days ago. We used to live there. Before I lived there, I believed, as almost everyone does, that the city called Boston was the large one on maps marked with that name. In reality, Boston is one part of a conglomerate of small cities. For instance Harvard and M.I.T. are really in Cambridge. One city blends seamlessly into the next. It is hard to know where the "big" Boston ends. Newton is on the western edge of the larger metropolitan space, and is itself divided into sections. If you live in Newton Lower Falls, that is different from Newton Center, or Waban, etc.. Lower Falls borders Wellesley and we lived about a block from where they meet.

From our kitchen window, we could see the Boston Marathon runners on Washington street, though it was more fun to walk down the hill and sit on the sidewalk. The highlight of the day, which always brought me to tears, was to see the Hoyts. Dick Hoyt, runs all of the marathons pushing his handicapped son Rick in a racing wheelchair. The feeling of their love was nothing short of stunning.

Near that corner is an old graveyard. I was fascinated by the old headstones and the inscriptions that left so many questions unanswered. The one that interested me the most was the stone for the Moulton family. Our street was named after them. The stone was very tall and listed the births and deaths of many children. All of them but one, died as infants or as very young children. Some died within days of each other. I tried to imagine how this couple could survive the loss of so many babies. I still wonder why they all died. I know that back in their time, many families lost young children to what we now consider simple or avoidable illnesses. I can not imagine how difficult it must be to experience that kind of tragedy over and over again. How did they do it?

It is probably because of the unexpected things that have happened to my family members, that the recurring theme of my thoughts today is of parents, children, loss, and love. When the loss is associated with one or more of your children, the result can be crushing pain. Most of the time you may seem to be handling it well, and it becomes easier to appear occupied with the mundane tasks which make up much of life, that you have moved on in a healthy way. No one wants to hear, more than once, if at all, that you are forever broken inside. It is a topic that should be kept to oneself. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and soldier on. Do you think you are the first person who has had it rough? Other people have had it much worse than you and they bore it with grace. I already know all those sayings, and they tell me that I can't even do this right, this suffering.

I cannot write or create art when I am in the depths of grief. If you think Van Gogh did, you are wrong. It was in between, when he was feeling better that his art was made. His suffering was part of what he had to survive in life, but his work stopped when he was in the depths of his psychosis and mental anguish. The pain had to recede at least somewhat to let the art out. I watch Savant lose and regain his abilities in much the same way.

I wrote "In The Rain" because I wanted to see if I could capture in words, at least one day when I was so consumed with sadness that my body felt numb except for the knots in my chest and stomach and the cry in my throat. I wish I had never felt that way more than once, but the truth is that I have felt this way, at times, throughout my life.

The rainy day was months after Savant's disease turned on, and my devistation was so overwhelming, that every time I came out of the numbness that followed the anguish, I would know, as if knowing it for the first time, that he was gone forever, and Love and Time and God could not change the finality of that fact; and the pain would hit with me with full force again. My husband found me and carried me into the house, got me out of my dress and into a warm bath and then into bed.