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I’m a very sentimental person.
All manner of things both happy and profoundly sad can reduce me to tears at a moment’s notice from a song (“Over the Rainbow” should come with a warning, there I said it) to the open, earnest expression on a dog’s woolly face as he waits outside a café for his master. I can only do news in eyedropper amounts because how else can we tolerate another day trying to make sense of anything unless we are once again seduced by denial? (Thank you Ernest Becker). Sometimes life feels so overwhelming I feel the weight crushing my heart down as though someone has their boot upon it.
And I absolutely don’t consider this a need for help or a neurosis – it’s natural to feel this way when one really, truly sees the big picture and acknowledges the absolute anguish that is all around us.
When ‘Frasier’ was very young, we would often take long walks – specifically designed to tire him out if he only knew – and on one such occasion I happened to stoop and admire the pink granite in someone’s driveway, showing him how the veins of grey and silver sparkled as I turned the stone back and forth in my fingers. From that moment on, each and every time we went walking, Frasier made it his duty to seek out a nugget of pale, pink granite, charging back to present it to me with proud, excited eyes. (Which explains why, twenty four years later I still have a spaghetti jar filled to the top with thumb nail sized nuggets of pink granite.)
I know, I know.
But the other day when I was cleaning out a closet I came upon an old favourite coat of mine (a raggedy green coat that others might wear to feed the chickens in ) I noticed that the zipper’s teeth had broken beyond repair. As I folded the coat into a bag ready for the thrift shop, I checked all the pockets and discovered two sharp pink stones which tumbled to the floor. I stared at them, suddenly flattened with all the emotions that come with realizing that, not only is your son now 24 – but you are not.
If you’re still unmoved (speaking of stone) and wish to test your own sentimental gauge check out “The Falling Leaves” a brief but ancient film by Alice Guy Blaché in which a child overhears the doctor’s pronouncement that her consumptive sister will only last till the last leaves have fallen. The younger child is later depicted desperately tying all the leaves back onto the trees with string in an attempt to prevent her sister’s death . I know how schmaltzy this is sounding but honestly, it is super poignant. I couldn’t get over that scene for days …
As a fellow “easy crier”, and absorber of other people’s feelings, I have to say, that little scene will stay with me!
Again – we are the same person …