The Lament

I still believe my feelings were valid. I also wonder whether my thoughts ever were.

If anyone had asked me in those early years, I would have said yes, I liked her. I wasn’t aware of any particular admiration; it’s just what I intrinsically offer the people I meet.

At least until they give me a reason not to.

I only met her once, in person—I believed 300 miles kept us from becoming close—but we built what seemed like a friendship of sorts through thoughtful text messages. For years, I played into that presumed affinity, sending off carefully chosen gifts for birthdays and holidays, having paid attention to interests expressed or indicated through those texts. This was never reciprocated, but gifts lose their value when they become attached to obligation. Don’t they.

Eight years into what I considered our relationship, I overheard a conversation not meant for me, via speakerphone, in which she revealed that she absolutely hated me. Not because of anything I’d done but just the concept of me.

I took it personally. I stopped the text messages, stopped the gift-giving. Maybe even stopped holding her in my heart. I never wished her harm—never would. I also never found a way to buffer the wound, carrying it around in my chest like a piece of broken glass.

Passing years softened the sharp edges but left a scab.

And then she died. A sudden diagnosis followed by an agonizingly slow decline, robbing her husband and their young-adult children of the heart of their home.

I attended her service out of a deep empathy for her family, taking my seat in the Catholic church among 200 others, who’d brought tissues. Her husband and children processed to the front pew, their expressions somber, their eyes tormented by a tangible grief that surely stabbed at every heart in the room. Including mine.

The singer’s voice was a balm to the soul as he sang traditional hymns, ending with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which is capable of creating grief where there might have been none. On this occasion, it both intensified and, somehow soothed the sorrow in the room.

I studied her heroic portrait propped against the altar, observing a subtle smile and wondering if she questioned my presence, while realizing her eyes were not meeting mine.

All who spoke during the service and, afterwards, at the reception, referred to her love for her family, her devotion to friends, and her infinite capacity for getting along with everyone. “She was fun,” they said, “the life of the party. A giver, with a generous, forgiving heart.”

My eyes welled, as I wondered why I had missed out on the experience of a woman so beloved by family and friends. I commanded myself to focus my emotions on those who were grieving the loss of someone they treasured. Yet I also understood I was lamenting something I once would have thought I, too, had loved and lost. While knowing I never actually had.