The Saddest Thing We Ever Saw

Lily and I ate dinner tonight over Facetime. Turkey burger for me, chicken and waffles bought with the IHOP gift card the cat sent for her. She’s wrapping up her freshman year of college. I miss her.

We talked about the saddest things we ever saw.

All the promises we made, from the cradle to the grave.

The separation of an orca mommy and her baby. The day we went to the zoo and saw the utter devastation of a once jubilant monkey couple, then found out later their baby had drowned six months before. The monkeys acted like no time had passed at all since that day.

Lily read me a poem about a two-headed calf. Twice as many stars.

We weren’t sad to begin with. Weren’t seeking to be sad. More discussing the concept of being bone-breaking sad. The capacity for sadness, which requires self-awareness, I think.

I think.

Today my husband sent Lily and me a link to a list of things verified to give you the chills.

Last night I dreamed a high school friend asked me if I was aware of how much weight I have gained.

So you become a monster, so the monster will not break you.

I’m sitting now in my library, listening to Songs of Surrender , staring at my books, my marbles, Lily’s paintings and baby shoes. Pictures of me and my girls from college. A photo of my cousins and me taken the weekend of my grandfather’s funeral in front of a tree in the yard that is now my sister’s.

Every once in a while, I sit with the future sadness that I know will come as my people are growing older, and I try to feel a little bit of it now, as if doing that will siphon off some of the orca sadness that I know is coming my way in the future. I push on it to see if I can handle it. If I will make that sound no human has ever heard before.

Lily leaving for college introduced me to a side of me I haven’t seen since my grandparents died. An unbelievable capacity for pain. I had no idea I had this talent until I tapped a vein of emotion I’m pretty sure most people avoid like cancer.

You got stuck in a moment, and you can’t get out of it.

You float through your days, you know? You drive to work, you listen to some asshole bitch about some stupid thing, and you get upset about it, but it’s nothing. Somewhere out there an orca is making noises no human has ever heard before. We worry about parking spots because deep down we don’t want to admit we are all terminal, and every single one of us will lose someone we love. We will lose them, and we will survive it, and if love wins, we’re more compassionate for it. And some of us will actually feel that pain, will let ourselves touch the stars and be humbled by what sentient beings are able to feel, what all those folds in our enormous brains bring us, both a blessing and a curse.

If I could, you know I would. If I could, I would let it go. Surrender. This is a song of surrender.