(Written in November 2008)
\nWoke up with my heart hurting.\u00a0 At first I made it be that I was bad and selfish and stingy that my heart was so cramped.\u00a0 Then I thought perhaps my heart hurt so much because of unhealed wounds from childhood.\u00a0 Then I thought \u2014 but I do love, I do care, I care about many things and they are all in trouble, no wonder my heart hurts.\u00a0 Then I got up, made tea, lit a candle.\u00a0 Bella snuggled up next to me.\u00a0 Then I thought about softening around the pain in my heart and that eased something.\u00a0 Then I felt a gush of compassion for my heart, my loving baffled wounded heart.\u00a0 I think of Little Jenny, trying to love a mother who could not receive her love.\u00a0 My heart feels soft and vulnerable, and sore, raw, exposed to the rough edges of the world.\u00a0 I see Little Jenny, with that baffled & sad look on her face, trying to love a mother and grandmother who rebuffed her efforts, and at the same time demanded something from her that she did not know how to give.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t even know what it was, she just felt the pressure, and knew that what she could offer was inadequate.\u00a0 What they wanted was for her to make up to them for the sorrows of their lives, among them a husband gone to war, and a son and brother dead of leukemia.\u00a0 I think Uncle Jess died when I was two.\u00a0 That major event must have impacted me, and from what I know of Mom & Granny they wouldn\u2019t have been able to mourn.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t have known how, and there would have been plenty of societal pressure to keep up a brave front.\u00a0 There was a war on, other people were losing sons and brothers.\u00a0 I never thought about the impact of that death on my Grandfather Clark, but it must have been hard for him, his only son, his namesake, dead at 19.\u00a0 Lesser tells a story of a family who lost a son (one of twins) at 21, and how it tore them apart, how they had to do an enormous piece of work around it before they could come back to life.\u00a0 I think in that same time period there were other losses.\u00a0 Mother\u2019s Grandmother Davidson \u2014 I think she was the one Mother said she really loved \u2014 tho I\u2019m also not at all sure when she died, it might have been much earlier.\u00a0 But during the war years Dad\u2019s mother died, and also Aunt Carolyn\u2019s first husband (who I think died by suicide, but of course that wasn\u2019t talked about either.)<\/p>\n
I wish I had the gift for fiction, to write about that time, that family, all those losses.\u00a0 My heart feels totally vulnerable, raw, open to the cold winds of loss and change.\u00a0 I\u2019m feeling such compassion for Mom & Granny, and also for Baby Jenny.<\/p>\n
ElizabethLesser\u2019s book Broken Open<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Written in November 2008) Woke up with my heart hurting.\u00a0 At first I made it be that I was bad and selfish and stingy that my heart was so cramped.\u00a0 Then I thought perhaps my heart hurt so much because … Continue reading