COPING

                                                                        

 Last night was the first snowfall of the season. This morning I gazed out over my backyard, from the comfort of my desk chair, to see a new world cloaked in a soft covering of dazzling white. Unblemished, as of yet, it seems to masquerade all of the imperfections that were there yesterday—as right on cue, and in the background, the radio softly plays the Irish Ballad “Danny Boy” throughout the room. Selected lines of the lyrics seem so relevant to me right now. “Summers gone and all the flowers dying. The valleys hushed and white with snow. “

It’s my first winter without her, and that is one thing that cannot be masqueraded by snow or anything else. My first time through the holidays, and already Christmas seems so different. So subdued, and inconsequential, and not the season it used to be. I went to the cemetery yesterday and knelt by her grave. The second verse of “Danny Boy” says so well what I felt she was telling me. “And I shall hear, tho soft you tread above me and all my dreams will warm and sweeter be. If you’ll not fail to tell me that you love me, I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.”

The human mind is such a complex depository for all of the feelings and memories we harbor. It’s not something that can be turned on and off, at will, and it seems to want to have all of its files full, and when something like this happens, we keep drifting back and opening them up. Although painful at times, we simply won’t and can’t let go because they are just that precious to us. But each sunrise brings a new dawning, and eventually we will add new files and try to fill them with more good things, in the hope that they, too, will become relevant and precious to us. We’re not trying to purge anything; we’re only trying to cope by making new memories because, beyond that, we simply don’t know what to do. Each day there are new packages to open. Ones that try to replace the memories we can’t, and won’t, throw out but we put them away in the attic instead.

I look around me at all of the lonely people in the world. There is no comfort in knowing you aren’t alone in this—only a greater realization of what life is all about, and an understanding of how fragile our lives really are. No, it’s not the same for everyone. It does seem like the greater the love you had, the greater the love you lost. But it is also the greater the lesson you learned, about how to love, and without her, that would have never happened.

“Danny Boy” is now over and the radio has gone on to a new song. I know the song can’t last forever and neither can any of us. I also know there are new songs to sing every day that we never knew existed.  It will take us some time to learn them but we have to try, because only in learning will we realize their true meaning and what they’re trying to tell us. “Danny Boy” won’t go away—it will always be there as long as you have a memory. And now “Tis you must go and I must bide.”