The Darkest Hour

Los Angeles, California

When something bad occurs in your life, say, the loss of a close friend or parent, or the unraveling of a relationship, or (though inexplicably unfair) all of the above, it is inevitable that you end up in uncharted waters. And uncharted waters is an accurate term. I am reminded of a line from the film Out of Africa, when a character quotes an antiquated map warning: This way there be dragons...

When my friend, Don, had a severe stroke back about fifteen years ago, passing away five years later, his wife, Joan, found the experience educational when it came to their family and friends. Some of the people you expect to be there for you disappear, she confided, but continued by saying that people whom you don't expect can come through in extraordinary ways.

After reading Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking, I went back to the archives of Charlie Rose to watch an interview with her. I had seen it before reading the book, and found her to be a deadly dull interview subject, just one step above Henry Kissinger when it came to sleep by television. But a piece of her story came together in that interview. In the book, she wrote about a friend who brought her congee from Chinatown every day, in the months after her husband had suddenly died. In the interview, Charlie Rose tipped her hand by asking about Calvin Trillin bringing her soup each day. Anyone who is up on their Trillin knows that he lost his wife while they were waiting for a heart transplant on 9/11. Yes, that 9/11. No matter what you are going through, you are always mindful that someone else has had it harder. Often spectacularly harder.

Lydia went through a bitter divorce, and the subsequent loss of both her parents. She was a good daughter, and is a good mother and wife. And she has been a rock for me. Thankfully, because she is more or less all I've got. I stepped back from almost all of my friends to grieve for my losses privately and to give them some space to adjust to the news of my new life. Maybe this was a mistake. Now, I am beginning to tentatively reach out. Some of my friends are alarmed by my 2:00 am emails. A bit like webcards from the edge, I guess. I am more alarmed by what they tell me they are hearing about me, most of which is untrue, unfair, and enough to keep me awake at 2:00 am and beyond.

Though, through most of my life, sleep has come hard to me, when, in college, I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's account of his chronic insomnia in The Crack Up, I was horrified. How does someone get to that place? I thought. Now I know. You get there by being alone and feeling as if there is nothing left in your life that will buoy you up and help you find meaning again. I don't have children. I won't have grandchildren. I have lost all my family. In years past, I have frequently commented that my friends are my family. And I trusted they would sustain me, no matter what else happened in my life.

I was in a marriage that died a long time ago when my husband acted out in a way that would be a dealbreaker to most couples. At least that is what I now hear. I respond by saying what I learned back then: that you never know what you will do in a situation until you land there. I thought I could provide resuscitation--not just for him, but for the marriage. I thought I knew what to ask for so that the relationship could heal, could go on and could even be better. I thought I was strong enough and enough of an adult to facilitate this. But it didn't work. It only prolonged the loss and emptiness.

So, I danced. And, yes, I still dance. But my life is not salsa party 24/7. I have no friends in the salsa community, though I have many acquaintances and I enjoy the respite of being in their company when I do go out to dance. Salsa provides me with a space in time when I forget about all of the loss in my life. I have lost my friend, Sandra. I have lost my mother. I have lost my last surviving family member. And I have lost my marriage. And all in a small space of time. You expect friends to get that. And maybe some of them do. Anyway, anyone who, like a character from Isherwood's Berlin days, can live like life is a cabaret, old chum, at a time like that in their lives, is someone I would run away from, fast and far. 

Last week I had a long conversation with a few friends.  We went to places that I would never have gone to with anyone but Lydia and my therapist. But go, we did. I don't know how I feel about all of this. What I know is that I would never have disclosed anything about my private life to any of these friends. And I am not someone who can set out on a sales campaign of selling my desperation while wining and dining everyone in reach. I have spent months sorting through every detail of what got me to this place. I have ruminated. I have analyzed. And I have mourned alone. With the few friends with whom I tried to talk, I ended up in damage control mode, trying to clarify the distorted story they had heard or to tell my side, which felt a lot like presenting a case. I never wanted to do that, and it felt monumentally wrong. So now I talk when I need to talk to someone. And only about what I feel needs to be said. What I don't tell them is that I am in a great deal of pain. And, as F. Scott Fitzgerald conveyed in the aforementioned book, pain can keep you up until 2:00 am or later. So that is when I send out the edgy webcards. The darkest hour is said to be just before the dawn, and I see that hour at times. But, the truth is, that when you feel so alone with it all, it can sometimes stay dark all the way through the day.