Sara J. (kefuwa)’s Reviews > The Shipping News > Status Update

If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in an ordinary glaze. Here it was as though he had found a polarizing lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it. Thought of his stupid self in Mockinburg taking whatever came at him. No wonder love had shot him through the heart & lungs, caused internal bleeding.

It dulls it, the pain, I mean. It dulls it because you see your condition is not unique, that other people suffer. There must be some kind of truth in the old saying, misery loves company, That's it's easier to die if others around you are dying.

"Of course you can do the job. We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you can say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things."

Why do we weep in grief, the aunt wondered. Dogs, deer, birds suffered with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique.

Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing.