Swings & Roundabouts: The Beginning

What is the longest period of time you just sat in the rain?  When was the last time you just sat in the rain, not moving or caring?  For me, it was two days ago.  Vehicles dreamed past me in colorful splotches, sometimes with pale wisps in the midst of the dark brushstroke of a window.  Rain dances were performed with a spectacular variety in their choreography and props, but all with the same aim: remain as dry as possible.  If some of the dancers shot me odd looks as I sat unmoving on the uncovered bench, I didn’t notice them.  I noticed how droplets tracked their way down my body; how long it took and how it felt for my clothes to reach full saturation; the weight of my shoes; the dry spot under my nose (“how long could it stay dry?”).  I noticed how quiet the world was; how subdued, and how it continued going, even in the quiet moments.

I had never really noticed before just how much life can happen in those quiet moments.  It’s easy to spot life happening in the big and even the small moments, but it is much harder to recognize life happening in the quiet moments.

But even quiet moments come to an end and even the rain stops falling.

It’s the quiet moments that do us in, that become our undoing; missing all the life that happens in those quiet moments unravels everything, at least that’s how it was for me.  I missed the operas performed just for me in the silences in between all the routine stuff of life.  I missed the massive tomes of life painstakingly written out and published, just for me.  If I had been more observant, if I hadn’t been so blinded by the mundanity of our lives, maybe I could have saved her, maybe I could have been the difference maker she needed me to be.  But instead, I missed it; all the signs, all the warnings, and as a reward for my oversight, she made sure I couldn’t miss this drama, this final act, this curtain call.  She was my very best friend.  We’d been through everything together.  It was difficult to remember a time when we weren’t sharing those big, loud moments together.  Now, it seemed, she was going to go on another journey, a different one, without me, and she left me here to go through the rest of this one without her.

Opal had gone through a nasty divorce with neither party really coming out looking like the “better” person; just two broken people mad at each other for having seemingly done the breaking, when the breaks came from both inside and outside of themselves, equally.  She lost the house and was sort of in-between.  Naturally, she came to stay with me.  That was over a year ago, but I didn’t mind. Opal was finding her feet, or so I thought, had finally gotten a job, was nearly finished grieving the loss of her marriage - you know, just getting on with things.  I was happy for her with how things were going, but apparently I misunderstood everything.

I came home one night to find Opal fully clothed, “asleep” in our tub.  She had lined it with towels and made a sort of comfortable bed for herself, wrote me the most beautiful letter I had ever read, downed a bottle of pills and exited this world “on my own terms, knowing that I had the very best friend in the world.”  She repeatedly stated in her letter that none of this was my fault, but surely that was wrong.  I didn’t read the letter straight away. I didn’t even notice it was there in my rush to try to aid her, to reverse what she had done, to bring her back to life.  But I was too late.  I called for an ambulance who came, along with everyone else, much too late.  When they got there, the world spun.  I walked out of the door, into the evening rain, to the bench at the end of our lane, and sat.  I stayed there until one of the many uniformed people tramping through our house, my house now… again, I guess… came to lead me back inside, where there was a very big, very loud moment happening and I couldn’t force myself to be present.  Surely someone was speaking to me, but everything melded together, blended into this cacophonic symphony, “The After”.  No one wants to ever have a front row seat for a performance of The After, and yet, there are so many of us who know its tune.

Opal’s letter to me was sitting there with my name on it in an evidence bag.  Suddenly, The After, came into focus - a recognizable melody, which I joined and halted, “Give that to me. It’s addressed to me.”  Some nonsense about evidence and violent protests from me, the likes of which I didn’t realize I was capable, and finally I was permitted to read it.

Opal is the reason I’m here today, writing this for you.  “Don’t hide yourself away anymore, darling,” she wrote.  “All those beautiful musings you shared with me over the years, all that advice, send it out into the world, my darling friend, and make the world better for so many others like you did for me.”