Monday, May 22, 2006

Grief is a funny thing. As I watch my students go through it, I find myself having a hard time taking some of them seriously. Perhaps it’s right of youth to grieve or to take on the attributes of grief openly, messily and without reserve but I resent it. Students that didn’t even know Emily are in tears and tears and tears today. I got told six minutes before class. When do I get to fall apart? Perhaps it’s the responsibility of age to be stoic. To hold a semblance of normalcy on such a hard day. Perhaps I’m irrational for being irritated that the mourning is so public and each student is putting out waves of emotion and forcing me to submerge my own because they each want to be the center.

So I keep teaching Raisin and wonder about the funeral.


In simple form, this was the weekend and the sequence:

Friday I left for Cincinnati and got down there at 9. We went to a fabulous restaurant called Slim’s that I’m completely unsure I’m cool enough to be in.

Saturday we cleaned house for a BBQ. It was quite and ordeal (but if we can make it through that….). Then we had the BBQ. It was cool to be doing it as “we”. Many of the guests just accepted me as lady of the house and wondered when I was moving down. Hmm. We wandered in the gloaming at the dog park and rented “Talk to Her” from an independent video store in the neighborhood that I think I will love. The movie was interesting—very strange premise but it managed to make a very creepy situation and very creepy guy both sympathetic and quietly humorous.

Sunday we did the Presbyterian thing with Aunt Kay and Uncle Ron. It was fun to see youth Sunday as Riverview doesn’t do one. Then back to the house for brunch & pictures. My hair is a shocking shade of orange at the moment. I think I need to adjust this. Then we did the dog park again and came home and napped. I love napping.

There was still some yard work to be done so we planted roses and talked to more neighbors, eventually getting a tour of the house and grounds of one of them who is nearly a movie character.

And I got home at one a.m. so I slept a little late and did not watch the news this morning while I snarfed down my eggs and did not know that Emily was reported injured and her sister reported dead by the media when it was really the reverse and had to find out about it just before class and I have to figure out and figure in the viewing and the funeral which really aren’t about me at all but my heart is so heavy anyway. There have been too many.

Too many.

1 Comments:

At 1:33 PM, Blogger Holly said...

Meg, I get what you are saying. This might be the first person a lot of people knew who died. I lost a friend when I was 12 and probably grieved beyond beyond normal. So, I get what you are saying. Hope you get your chance or can at least carry them through.

So...when are you moving in? :0)

 

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