It hasn’t been a very good week. It’s actually hard for me to say that. So many well-meaning people have asked some variation of “How’s it going?” throughout the week, and while I normally don’t stop to think much on how little that phrase really truly means, when it’s not going well that question can be so loaded. How do you know which people actually want to know, and which ones are just asking because that’s the polite way in which we interact with our acquaintances?
Every time someone asks me that right now I imagine the looks on their faces if I gave them the real answer. “Not very well actually. I got my period last week – and every month for the three years before that despite my best efforts to get pregnant. And some months that’s fine, and I’m ok and I move on… and some months it is bitter, and angry and tear soaked. This month is was not fine. And just as I was starting to feel a little less heartbroken about that, I woke up last Saturday to find out that a friend from high school was shot and killed by an angry kid who brought a gun to the school where he was teaching. And everything feels sad and tear soaked again.” While I know that some people would be horrified, frozen on the spot, totally uncomfortable if I dumped all that on them, others would probably genuinely want to know that all of that is going on. I know that there are those of you out there who would lend me your ears and your shoulders… but the thing is that I just don’t really want to be comforted, and I really don’t want to talk about it. So I’ve held all that in, pretty much all week now. It’s amazing how good I am at faking a smile and responding with “I’m good. You?” We’re probably all a little too good at faking being ok when we’re not really ok.
The truth, or at least part of the truth, is that I really don’t want anyone to tell me that they are sorry for my loss. Because I didn’t really lose anything – I lost a guy who I ate lunch with at the same table every day for roughly two and half years, who was at probably almost every social gathering I went to in the years I lived in Uxbridge – almost 20 years ago. I lost a guy I interacted with every once in a while on Facebook. But I do know what the world lost when Adam died – they lost a guy, despite those nearly 20 years since the last time I saw him, whose smile I can still remember, because he was nearly always smiling. Who was always making people laugh… I don’t remember any particular stories about him, but when I think of him the first thing that comes to mind is laughter.
The years I lived in Uxbridge were some of the happiest of my life – not because I look back on high school as some romantic period I am forever wishing to go back to. They were just really lovely days filled with friends, silliness, and innocence. I helped friends make movies, and was the stage manager for some local theatre, I went to church for about the only time in my whole life. Where I’d been just barely scraping by at school in Winnipeg, I was a straight A student, who made the honour role in Ontario. Maybe I’m looking back on it through rose coloured glasses (I probably am, but so what?) – it was all pretty happy and drama free, and when I think of those days I feel safe, happy and cared for.
Adam is the second friend from those days that someone chose to take from the world far too soon. It breaks my heart to know that they aren’t out there living their big, beautiful lives – because I could be ok with the fact that time and distance had separated me from most of my friends from back then, knowing that they were out there. The world feels a little greyer as they go from it…
To those of you who keenly feel the emptiness where their presence used to be, I am so truly sorry for your loss.
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