1 in 7.53 billion
What is one person’s life? How amazing the human condition is when 31,000 people live in Lexington, almost 7 million live in Massachusetts, 328 million live in the United States, 7.53 billion in the world. And not one of them is my B. Although it seems grim, I think about this sometimes when I am in large crowds, and not even from a grief-stricken lens, but with the wonder of it.
For me, B is the first young(ish) person close to my daily living whose life was truncated midstream. The grief over this loss is a new companion, but a partner that is expected. Sometimes this grief is comforting and familiar, and other times intrusive and unwelcome, but either way, it is no surprise.
The part I didn’t expect to come was the reflection on what it means to be human. I hadn’t really thought much before about how dimensioned, complex, and deep each single life is. Despite 7.53 billion other current models, the chasm in our family’s life is for a single shape of human. Knowing that B is gone in my head is so very far from deeply understanding that he no longer is at all in this world. The sorrow of missing is easy to understand, but the intellectual understanding of a person ceasing altogether is hard to get my mind around.
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We had a lovely long weekend. After a chilled and rainy spring, this weekend’s weather was superb - the kind of special that makes you never want to leave New England. The pool opened, and we spent an afternoon lounging and diving. We hosted in our backyard and got the kids new iPhones. Yesterday we were some of the lucky thousands to see the Red Sox literally knock it out of the field with B’s amazing friends John and Brian, brothers from B’s grad school days who were in Boston for the weekend.
By the shear will of time itself, we are moving forward again. Living with impending death in your home is difficult, and the ability to be free in the moment again is great for all of us, especially the kids. And yet, how can the world be so special, our lives be so blessed, without B still in it? I find myself trying to work out how we can bring B along with us. He’s gone but he’s still with us. And that’s one of those cliche things that I had always heard but hadn’t understood until I lived it. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around.
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What is one person’s life? Is it their physical being, or the memories you share with them? The future you had anticipated? The ways that they have changed who you are and how you see the world? Is it their laugh or the reverberations of their last breath? Is it who that person became, in their final months, weeks, and days, defying all definitions of courage and love, redefining grit through suffering, and yet living with levity and peace? Or is it their wallet on the counter and their t-shirt that showed up in your drawer?
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The kids’ old phones had pretty much stopped working altogether. As a newly single parent, I need to be able to be in touch with them as we coordinate through our various schedules and their growing freedom. Deciding which models, how and where to buy them, what rules to put in place and how to set them up was a new task for me to take on, and yet it all happened. Delighted and relieved, afterwards we were all cracking up in the car, having Siri tell us jokes again and again. These are happy times.
We are both heavy and light.