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The sun has been shining for four days straight, which is saying a lot for February in Cleveland.  During those four days so little has happened, and yet so much.  I feel a bit as though I’m stepping outside of myself in a third-person reverie.

Thursday I received some very demoralizing news about my work.  The person who delivered it (trying to be kind) said, “it is important not to let this be disheartening.”  At the time, fighting tears (I didn’t want him to see me cry) I wanted to lash out at him for making such a statement.  But it turns out it was wise, even if delivered in an unwise moment.

I spent Thursday night intermittingly railing and crying and generally wishing I could inherit a million dollars from some long-lost-never-met relative-that-I-would-not-mourn, quit my job and move to the mountains of New Mexico.  Friday morning I woke to another day of sunshine, and noticed that there was a breeze kicking up the trees and that the day felt like spring.  Having thoroughly shed my disappointment with my tears, I was now angry.  Angry with the people who contributed to my work situation, and angry with myself for anticipating that they would be supportive of me. 

But I made myself some pancakes spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg and got on with my day.  I had to drive several miles out of town through the hilly rural eastern suburbs.  The sun was bright; Science Friday on NPR made me smile (did you know the US Navy has trained a battalion of dolphins?) and my destination had put my mood in some perspective. I was on route to a funeral home for a viewing.

The father of one of my very, very dear friends, who has seen me through some difficult and desolate times, died suddenly last week.   My friend’s mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s only three years ago.  I walked through the door of the Victorian funeral home and the look of stricken grief on my friend’s face undid me.   We held one another and wept.  Later, as I stood by, my friend practiced the kind of politeness-auto pilot we have at such times,  greeting the visitors and introducing them to one another as if we were gathering for an altogether different occasion, as if her father was not lying in an open coffin in the alcove of the room next door.  She chatted and joked, and kept-it-together, all the while wearing the stony mask of grief.  Eventually I said my goodbyes, thinking of my own octogenarian father and what time we still have left to share.  Thinking of how I saw my friend’s father last Thanksgiving at her house, and how he left before dinner to go to someone else’s house, not knowing it would be his last Thanksgiving with his own family.  How my friend was actually relieved she didn’t have to joust with his difficult personality for the rest of the holiday.

The sky was still light at 6PM—another herald of springtime.  I stopped to pick up some groceries at Trader Joe’s and my nose picked up the scent of hamburgers grilling.  I usually don’t succumb to bad-for-you food, but the aroma was so inviting, and I felt like I deserved a little comfort food.  I entered the restaurant, having vaguely heard something about it, got a seat at the bar, and ordered a burger with blue cheese.  Then I realized that this was the Food Network’s Iron Chef Michael Symon’s new place.  For $15 I savored the most marvelous hamburger of my life, paired with rosemary-spiced french fries and a chocolate-banana-marshmallow milkshake.  Heaven on a plate.  It felt good to be alive.

Today I awakened to even more sunshine.  Bean soup on the stove, cats snoozing in the sun.  Where had all my anger, my tears of anguish gone?  Tonight I join two good friends to see the Broadway tour of In the Heights, in which we know a cast member.   

When I worked counseling people with sexual harassment complaints, I used to joke to my friends that “my life would be so much easier if people weren’t so damn human.”  But humanity is the point, isn’t it? In all its glory, all its horror, all the tears, and railing and wishing and belly laughing and giving in. 

It is a blessing that I had the grace of another sunny day in which to wake up and live again.

copyright 2010 voicegal