Only a couple of days ago I mentioned to someone that, culturally, we try to never let anyone know what we are thinking. Which, when you think about it, may seem in direct conflict with our other cultural tendency to be effusive and typically gregarious and outgoing. The thing is, it's very easy to to live an open lie and never have anyone catch on. You just have to believe it yourself.
***
I don't do grief visibly. I know this is partly a defense mechanism, honed by years of knowing that there was no point in grieving someone I hadn't seen in a long time--not because I didn't want to, but because I no longer knew who I was really grieving for, and it felt somewhat of an insult to their memory to afford myself this luxury of emotional downpour, which in reality was more mourning my loss of connection to back home, than the loss of the person in question.
Partly, it has to do with my parents typical practice, during the many years when we all lived in different countries for the majority of the year, of not letting my sister and I know about someone passing away until the next time we all got together under one roof. I used to get upset at this delay in relaying the news, thinking it wrong of them to let us think that people were well and flourishing when they weren't. In my self-righteousness, especially, I would tell my parents that they should allow us to share in the burden of the grief, that that is what good daughters do for their parents, and why would they deprive us of that?
My biggest--and as it turned out, last--reaction to finding out about the death of someone I loved was when my mom finally told me that my uncle--my father's second to youngest brother, whom I both adored and was in awe of--had died, 18 months after the fact. I can still remember the shock washing over me, the shaking that seemed to be rocking every single nerve, and yelling--yelling so loud I lost my voice for an afternoon--,for the first and last time at my mom, for not telling me. Then I saw my dad and he had the saddest look on his face and he just looked at me and said, "Now he's really dead."
That was the last time I ever cried about someone dying in front of anyone else.
***
I have an exceptionally good memory. I can retain amazing amounts of information about ,well, just about anything, especially if I put my mind to it. But what I remember most, best, and quite effortlessly is people. Anything about them. Everything about them. I could become the personal historian of the people I'm close to and quite a number of those that I'm not.
So it happens that when it comes to remembering, I'm the one to do it. I can tell the anecdotes, recall the little quirks and oddities, bring up stories long forgotten. I can recall the small and trivial details that is mostly reserved in the minds of the mother, the father, the children, the sister, the brother. I can do it and I can do it without breaking down. I help people remember what they thought for sure they'd lost.
There's no room for public grief when you're the hostess with the mostest.
***
No one know why manic depressives are the way they are. No one really know what chemical imbalance triggers the peaks and valleys of their emotions so strongly. But no one would argue that in terms of sustaining their sanity, it's the opposing, warring moods that is the bane of their existence that also keeps them level, even if it's for a fleeting moment.
When I grieve I get aggressively upbeat. My ability to set off waves of merriment becomes an astonishing force, fueled by suppressed anger and sadness and hopelessness all mixed up in one heck of a fireball.
***
I could let you think I wrote this because of M.
And that would be somewhat true.
But not entirely.
***
A party, even a pity one, still needs some music:
The Great Pretender - The Platters
The Great Pretender (cover) - Freddie Mercury
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