(Written in January 2008)
I am feeling so sad. I think it must be all the reminders of things I didn’t get, and didn’t get to do in this life, a consequence of reading “The Shell Seekers.” A loving relationship with one’s mother. Family feasts — or group, tribal feasts — of good food, good conversation, real caring. Actually I’ve had quite a lot of those with friends. Enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures is another loss. And there’s also sadness for the destruction of the earth, and all the people living in poverty and oppression.
I’m feeling really bleak. Part of it is yesterday’s sadness for the losses of my life, and the strangely negative quality of them: not having something — like a great love — and then losing it to death, but never having had it at all. Even to know the loss, there has to be some perception of what it is you’ve lost. I’ve been a long time coming to get some inkling of what it might have been like to have a loving parent, and one who gave gifts of character and wisdom, instead of one who destroyed and invalidated.