I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately. Thinking about the loss of friends, the loss of youth, and the loss of faith among other things. It’s beginning to become clearer to me that life seems to be all about loss.
Does this sound too depressing?
I started out so wide-eyed and optimistic. I’m still optimistic, but it’s tempered with the knowledge that everything comes to an end. And endings, in my experience aren’t very happy things.
My son just graduated from high school. He’s off into the world. No more snuggles, or hugs and kisses – the sweetest kind. Loss. My friend just died, no more fun talks with Dorothy. Loss. My nephew died, my father died, my mother is in a nursing home. As the years have gone so have most of my friends. Lost to one thing or another -- death, marriage, jobs, or insanity. Pets. Gone.
How does one keep up a life where loss doesn’t catch up to you? How fast do you have to keep running? How does one cope with such massive loss – feeling gratitude that you aren’t one of the lost?
Does this sound too depressing?
I mean, I think, for the most part, I’m still an optimist. I just can’t toss myself whole-heartedly into something anymore. I don’t have the energy because the reservations about the eventual loss drain any potential enthusiasm.
I just watched Fahrenheit 911 the other night. The show opened with scenes from the inaugural parade in 2001 for President George W. Bush.
It reminded me not of a celebratory event, but of the classic funeral scene from a Hollywood movie. The black limousines, the black trench coats, the black umbrellas, the rain, the gray skies. It was all so depressing. It culminates with the hearse pulling straight up to the White House. After the events that transpired over the past five years, I saw something of a funeral for our democracy in those minutes. I saw the death of my foundation for believing this country I live in was something special. More loss.
As I climb up in my years here on earth, I’m going through physical loss too --loss of my eyesight, loss of my voice, loss of strength, and loss of self-awareness. Like the fact that I don’t look anything like I think I look anymore. What a shock to see myself in photos. I have to look twice and then I'm aghast when I realize that impish crone is actually me!
So why do we perpetuate this myth -- this happy family idea? From where does it come? Aren’t families just rife with loss? Is there something about loss that we enjoy? Is it because the feeling of togetherness for the brief time it lasts is better than the pain of the loss altogether?
I had this tune running through my head the other day. The name of it is: The best is yet to come. I don’t know who wrote it, but it has been performed by all the greats; Sinatra, Bennett, Peggy Lee… I looked it up on “Youtube” in an effort to indulge the tune floating around inside my head.
I found a version by Peggy Lee. It was great. Then I went and found one by Tony Bennett that was recorded on the Don Imus show on MSNBC. It was great too. But I noticed a ticker tape of copy running across the bottom of the screen throughout the performance. That copy reported about how the Korean government had just tested a nuclear device and it went on an on about the caliber of that device compared to the one dropped on Japan in WWII.
It was so ironic to juxtapose that news with the lyrics of the song Tony Bennett was singing. It illustrated to me the nature of our general mentality in America these days. We’re all just singing along to a happy tune on the radio, while we clean up the corpses of yet another war. The innocent hearts concealed in the flesh and blood littering the globe. (literally fiddling while Rome burns!)
Is the best really yet to come?How could it get any worse?
(please don't answer that!)
(Tony Bennett on youtube singing: The best is yet to comehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeeX_HX0hwI
--copy and paste)
It's a grey and gloomy day. Halloween is nigh. My mood is cloudy too. 
