Things I've lost:
A copy of The Prince of Tides to a friend who never read it anyways, two weeks after her plane crashed and she, bones fractured and shoulder scarred, survived. A measurable doss of self-respect when I realized consensual sex doesn't equate to happily ever after. The belief that my father would always be too distant: three years ago, he whispered "I love you" after telling me that they chose to leave my only brother in the jail cell. The ability to drink three dirty maritinis in a row without feeling like I needed to be zipped up in a body bag the next day: sometime in the last eight months. A taste for multi-colored sprinkles: inexplicably, sometimes in the past two years, leading up to a desert at dinner last night.
A good friend told me today, after a brief sesson of self-pity, that "it's all just splendor in the grass." Some things you think are a great loss, are actually unknown blessings.
I think time speaks to us through our losses, only days or months or years later. Time shows its power over us sometimes delicately, peeling back its layers slowly, showing us how lucky we are to have experienced loss.
Splendor in the Grass
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
~William Wordsworth
