We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

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.

The back door opens, and a man and woman come out in overcoats. She bursts into tears, and he stops to turn and wrap her in his arms, but then sees us and apologizes. “Please,” I say. “We’re the same. This is what it’s like.” Every person is a person, I think redundantly, because my brain is on the fried setting. “Take care of yourselves!” we all say as they head for their car. “Good luck!” Oh my god. We’re like that stupid balloon.

It’s occurring to me only now that the dying and the loss are actually two different burdens, and each must be borne individually, one after the other.

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.

“Life is messy. I certainly don’t expect tidiness from yours or anybody else’s.”