Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

by Duchess Goldblatt

When the house burns down, so to speak, there’s no guarantee that anybody will stick around to help sweep up.

Men can be careless, not women. Women have to hold the world steady, or the whole operation will spin right off its axis.

If you find yourself feeling embittered, roll around in a barrel of kosher salt until crusted, and then set yourself in a colander to drain.

The only way to be reliably sure the hero gets the girl at the end of the story is to be both the hero and the girl yourself.

“The odds were pretty good,” she said. “Look at who you’re choosing. You went out of your way to find people who would treat you badly. People will always show you who they’re going to be. Look at your relationships over the past twenty years. There had to have been red flags that these people weren’t going to show up and support you. And yet you gave your life to them. You chose them. You have to ask yourself why.”

I’d seen him perform live before, many times; I knew every one of his songs, and I don’t know why, but that night when he was onstage outside and I heard his guitar hit the first notes of “If I Had a Boat,” I cried. I couldn’t say why at the time, other than that it seemed like a dear friend had stopped by for a visit.

The human mind is kind. It will create blank spaces for itself. I think of them as little airbags in my mind, cushioning the tender places where the blows and bruises are.

I thought you’d been very quiet lately, but then I realized I had turned my phone settings to the factory default: inevitability of loss.

Nobody’s ever read my aura, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably light gray and covered with lint.

“She was . . . an untouchable. Not from scorn or fear, but from the obscenity of the loss,” wrote Bill Clegg in his novel, Did You Ever Have a Family. That sentence shook me deep inside my bones. It burrowed its way in and laid eggs there. In my town, in my circle, in my own life, I had become untouchable. I printed that sentence out and put it on my refrigerator and patted it fondly, like a favorite auntie, whenever I happened to notice it there and reread it. For my visit to the Dorothy Parker Academy, I’m trying to choose one of the more joyful Christmas carols about the divorce discovery process.

Surely you can’t love everybody. Surely some people don’t deserve it. I used to ask my father about this all the time. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘deserve,’” he’d say. “You love people because they’re people, because they’re human beings. Not necessarily because you enjoy their company, which is one kind of love, but because you recognize they’re inherently worthy. Every person is inherently worthy. I’d argue it’s your obligation, regardless of whether you think it’s your job to decide if they’ve earned it.”

“You’ve hit on one of the greatest challenges we’ve been given, honey, and it’s a tough one,” he’d say. “We have to love other people regardless of their actions and without any hope of reward. Even our enemies deserve our grace.”

Writers can be a lot of fun at parties, but word to the wise: Keep an eye on your good memories. They’ll strip them down for parts.

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,” wrote the Roman playwright Terence, hundreds of years before the time of Christ. “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.”

Tonight in Crooked Path, we’ll all visit our dear ones’ graves and lay wreaths made of apostrophes: the symbol of something missing.

“Feeling better is a modern invention, and, frankly, I think overrated,” she said. “When people focus intently only on feeling better, they reach for distractions. Overeating, overmedicating, abusing alcohol and drugs, self-harm: all of these self-destructive behaviors are designed to distract. You’re not describing the path to enlightenment,” she said. “And long term, I don’t think it’s going to help you feel any better, either.” The trick is to be superhuman, but only when you have to. The rest of the time I recommend looking out the window. Maybe have a sandwich.

Not until people start seeing typos eating out of their garbage cans at night will they regret hunting proofreaders almost to extinction.

“When you have to say something, say something kind. Say something helpful. Dig deep.” I threw up my hands and almost snapped, Like what? But something in her eyes stopped me. She held my gaze. “You have to be superhuman now,” she said.

When someone you love dies, you lose them in pieces over time, but you also get them back in pieces: little fragments of memory come rushing back through what they cared about, what brought them joy. If you’re lucky, you get little pieces back for the rest of your life.

Don’t let anyone shame you for your love of an imaginary friend. Religions have been founded on less.

That’s all there is or ever can be. It’s a grab bag of love and friendship and hope, as much as you can carry away in 140 characters, and it’s there for everyone who wants it, but behind the curtain, I’m a regular person standing by myself, and I don’t have anything else to give.

I try to keep my abiding love for all humanity in one place, but somehow it always ends up in piles on the dining room table.

Duchess is such a unifying force of nature. That’s your book, as I’m sure you’ve already considered: how we can all be connected, how we all are connected by the most basic and most powerful of all, love, and the acceptance that comes with it.

Food trucks never caught on in Crooked Path. We have advice trucks. People like to run out at noon and grab five minutes with a Jungian.

“All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it.”

Save on entertaining expenses by keeping up with only one friend, ideally a fictional person who prefers not to leave the house.

If you have the education, wits, and leisure time to pursue your own interests, you have it better than 99% of the people who ever lived.

You are invisible glue made of good will.—Lyle

Duchess Goldblatt wasn’t the one who taught me that grief would expand the boundaries of my heart, but she was the one who showed me how to share it with other people.

Before I go, I’m going to tell you something about trust. It goes like this: It’s best if you decide to be true to the relationship rather than being true to the person. Because when the person lets you down (and he/she will!), you’ll say to yourself, “All bets are off!” And you’ll feel free to break a trust or breach privacy or be disloyal in big or small ways. It’s a justification. If you commit to the relationship, you’re being faithful to that. Same with friendship. That’s what I endeavor to do.—PJ

If you’ve ever wondered what the right thing is to say to someone who’s grieving a death, I think this is it: Tell me all about your dear one.

Close your eyes and visualize the best possible outcome. When it’s not looking, grasp it by the neck and fling it into reality.

I spilled a bag of ellipses all over the floor. Now I don’t know where anything begins or ends.