Icarus Also Flew

The strangest thing happened Sunday. I was looking at my outlook calendar and realized that I’d blacked out this whole week and not scheduled any clients. I have appointments scheduled as far out as October 7th, but for some reason, I had not booked anything this week. And then I realized – this is the week. My body knew what my mind had not yet registered: that this is a week for rest, for remembering, and for tracing the sore places – seeing where they’ve healed and where they’ll most likely stay raw forever. Yes I laugh again, and indeed I do love again, but this year I have learned that joy and sorrow give each other meaning and that you can’t truly have one without the other.

The first night Marc saw me weep over Clint, he came to my house knowing it was a hard day. He came in and I was sitting on my bed knitting a scarf. He carried with him some pajama pants and a book.

“How much do you want to know?” I asked.

“As much as you want to tell me,” He replied.

And so I opened myself just a little, and the tears ran down my cheeks. When I was done, he said “I want to read you something”. This is what he read me:


A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

To the next chapter in the story, to joy and sorrow alike – and to the hope that I have the strength and the courage to always feel them both with equal measure.