Wordless Connection

Another gray day among many this winter, but at least we are getting some snow out of it today: sequin flakes are parachuting out of a windless sky. I'm clinging to the fact that each day brings a minute's more sun.

Considering the Seattle-like gloom though, I'm feeling pretty steady, if scattered. I haven't had any emotional crashes since the holidays, but even if I did, they are part of going along with what life brings.

One thing I did that brought some catharsis was to send out an announcement to academic friends and teachers about resigning my job. I heard from people I hadn't been in touch with for a while, and people I was sure had heard about Elise's death but hadn't contacted me. I'm trying not to dwell on those I thought I would get a response from but haven't, because people drift in and out of my life and bring me experiences and memories I can still savor, even if we never meet again.

I haven't written in here in a long time. Writing is not part of my days lately, I think because things feel so transitional, it seems I just have to hold on and go along even though the road is so twisty, there's no point in trying to see around any of the corners. I can't stop to process, but somehow this doesn't seem wrong or disturbing. I write in my journal, but that's about it. Otherwise, I talk with Dan, with some friends, read and watch movies. And of course, talking with Felix is always a treat, with those big brown eyes gazing earnestly into mine.

Speaking of wordlessness, a friend last night was saying how much she loved After Life: she said she especially loved the scene where one of the characters, an 18-year-old girl who is a trainee at the way station for the dead, stomps around on a rooftop angrily kicking and throwing snow after she realizes the young coworker she's infatuated with is leaving the way station. She expresses powerful emotion unusual for her in that scene, and with no words. Most of the memories the dead choose to take with them to the afterlife have no words either.

The most comforting part of the film for me in my relationship with Elise is the experience of a teenage girl who thinks at first she wants to choose a memory from a trip to Disneyland. When her advisor at the way station sits her down to point out that dozens of people have thought they wanted to choose a memory from Disneyland, the teenager goes back to the drawing board. Towards the end of the film, she runs excitedly to tell her advisor she's chosen a memory from her childhood: one where she is lying with her head in her mother's lap while her mother strokes her hair, and the little girl lingers in the comfort of her mother's scent and the sound of her heartbeat. Elise felt the warmth of my body, the whoosh of my heartbeat and the sounds of my voice, her papa's, her brother's. We were important to her, as she was and always will be to us.