Accepting Loss Forever

I watched a Marx Brothers movie this week—A Night in Casablanca—and though there were some moments, I was struck by how much their antics had lost their magic for me. I’ve seen enough of them so the elements that once made them such fresh entertainment have gone stale—the plots paint-by-number, the anarchy too silly to be liberating, and the Grouchoisms just groan worthy:

Straightman: Sir, this lady is my wife, you should be ashamed.
Groucho: If this lady is your wife, you should be ashamed.

As the final credits rolled, I thought to myself, “That will be the last Marx Brothers movie I ever watch in my life.” I guess at some point birthdays (like the one I just celebrated) reach critical mass and one starts reflecting on those things that once brought joy and no longer do…or the joy they bring is no longer within reach. This is a universal and inevitable fact of life, but how we treat this fact really has a profound impact on the quality of our individual lives.
Last year we took a family Mediterranean cruise to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday. This was her wish, and as a true Tiger Grandmother there was really no choice but to grant it. The cruise included stops at the Acropolis, the Vatican, and Pompeii. But after the first hot, crowded and somewhat grueling tour of the ancient ruins of Epheseus in Turkey, a group decision was made to alter Betty’s itinerary to a far more modest and manageable scope. The lone and very loud dissenting voice on the matter was Betty’s. 
I, practicing son-in-law survival skills honed over many years, abstained from the voting. And it pained me to do so because I couldn’t help thinking: What if at that stage of my life I had not yet achieved one of my life goals (bucket list, if you will) and visited Pompeii, and yet there it was just a bus ride away from the Port of Naples…as close as I would ever get to it? Ever!
It haunts me to this day obviously. But I’m rather glad I was a mere back-bencher when it came to the ultimate decision because if I had urged forging ahead with the original itinerary and it had ended badly, the haunting would no doubt be even greater.
 There’s a world of difference of course between my accepting the loss of joy from watching Marx Brothers films and Betty accepting the loss of joy from visiting Pompeii. My need for Marx Brothers, I can safely say, has been fully satiated, and even if it weren’t the decision is not irrevocable. Yet both losses speak directly to one of the most profound and challenging concepts in Norman O. Brown’s philosophy, referenced at this blog previously. As Nobby writes in Love’s Body:

Admit the void; accept loss forever…The world annihilated, the destruction of illusion. The world is the veil we spin to hide the void. The destruction of what never existed, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away…The absence; a withdrawal, leaving vacant space, or void, to avoid the plenum of omnipresence. The god who, mercifully, does not exist.

In Nobby’s formulation both Marx Brothers' movies and Pompeii’s ruins are merely part of that veil we spin to hide the void. But both, as it happens, work remarkably well as symbols for that illusory world. The Marx Brothers’s anarchy, silly as it now seems to me, still conveys the sense of a world as largely senseless:

Groucho as Kornblow: From now on the essence of this hotel will be speed. If a customer asks you for a three-minute egg, give it to him in two minutes. If he asks you for a two-minute egg, give it to him in one minute. If he asks you for a one-minute egg, give him the chicken and let him work it out for himself!

And Pompeii--the Beverly Hills of ancient Rome…seemingly rich and pampered beyond risk…annihilated in an afternoon of nature’s indifference. 
Lent is a good season to practice loss--even for non-Catholics. It’s what lies ahead for all of us, and there’s an art to it…an invaluable art, I maintain. Learning to accept loss, even momentarily, I believe, can help alleviate some of the sting and panic from the unavoidable losses to come. Temporarily giving up something for 40 days that’s a part of us—our chocolate or coffee--may not actually bring us closer to God, but giving up an illusion or two may make it easier to live with the god who doesn’t exist.