We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

Everywhere, behind closed doors, people are dying, and people are grieving them. It’s the most basic fact about human life—tied with birth, I guess—but it’s so startling too. Everyone dies, and yet it’s unendurable. There is so much love inside of us. How do we become worthy of it? And, then, where does it go? A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine.

Every year, ever since the girls were born, I have blown out the candles on my birthday cake and wished for just this. Everything I have already. No loss. I can’t spare anybody is what I always think. But, then, people must be spared. That is the whole premise of this life, of this time we have with each other.

Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.

“She’s going to miss everything now,” I sob. “And you’re going to miss her,” my mother says. “Such lucky girls, both of you.” This is true and not at all true. Plus, I’m so, so tired. But also? Maybe I’m waking up.

My jacket pockets are full of shopping lists. I can feel them with my fingertips. They’re documents of Edi’s discomfort and pleasure: watermelon, Italian ice, good chocolate with sea salt, lip balm, maxi pads, champagne, egg salad. Evidence of her desires, her existence. I can’t bring myself to recycle them, but can’t think where to put them. So for now they’re just here, in my pockets. Maybe I’ll put this jacket back on in the fall, and they’ll still be there. That’s okay, though, right?