O felix esse iterum
I wrote this post eight years ago. Since then, I have learned that when certain life-changing events happen to you, one does indeed “move on.” It’s what our genes, our biology— our sanity — require of us. But moving on does not mean that you leave those events behind. On the contrary, they travel with you. Silently, invisibly perhaps, but they ride that slow moving train in the seat beside you. Death, divorce, heartbreak, financial ruin, public humiliation . . . these things happen. All of them have happened to me. Maybe they’ve happened to you, too. But I have survived each in its turn, and you will, too.
It means, “Oh, to be happy again.”
Tonight I believe— I have hope —that the peace of the gods may be coming toward me from over the horizon. I believe I am about to be happy again. I’m scared, though, terrified I may be wrong; I worry that I am living inside my own head. But on the chance happiness is in fact on its way, I ask for the courage and the wisdom to accept it. I’m just not sure I’m ready.
2015:
Fortunately or unfortunately, I have been pulled from the morass of emotion by events and comments from readers, over which and over whom I have no control, that require me to respond. Something touched a nerve.
My youngest asked me tonight if I am happy. “Define happy,” I said.
Maybe we’re bound to live in obscurity, or maybe we live at a crossroads. Maybe there’s a place in the world for each of us, but like a jigsaw puzzle, we’re all simply out of position. Look too closely and you’ll miss the obvious.
I write this blog to air out my wandering mind. It is for this reason and no other- I’m well aware that people would rather read about sports or recipes or the wacky things their kids and pets do on the kitchen floor or on the trampoline in the backyard- that I'm bringing this slow train into the station one more time. And because my belief system requires me to deal with such challenges as the one I faced recently with wisdom and detachment. I did not do this.
So, touching a nerve far, far too personal to be revealed anywhere else, below is the last tune I poured from the cup ten days ago and then pulled fifteen minutes later just before shutting down this oasis of introspection. Whether I can continue depends upon my adherence to the tenets of my faith and the seriousness with which I seek my guru.
In the early pre-dawn hours of March 25th, 1986, a beautiful, beautiful girl died. That girl's name was Cassandra, and I loved her as I love my own children. My life since that morning- 29 years and 27 days ago -has been a forced smile.
Cassandra and I were very, very close. I would like to believe that she loved me as much as I loved her, but I know that that is not possible.
She died of lymphoblastic lymphoma, a day before she was to have received a bone marrow transplant that might have prolonged or even saved her life.
Cassandra was a gifted actress and I had promised her that I would try everything within my power to get her an acting job somewhere in the greater Houston area. I was a theater teacher, you see, and I had worked in theater professionally as a carpenter and lighting technician. I knew a few places and people to call. Unfortunately, there were very few openings for a young aspiring actress. One place I thought to call was Houston Grand Opera. Cassandra couldn't sing, but I thought it was worth a shot to see if I could help her catch on as an extra- a "supernumerary." As it turned out, they didn't need women, they needed men. Would I be interested? Thinking that by accepting a position for myself I might make new connections and thus be in a better place to help Cassandra land something later on in the season, I said sure, why not.
Six weeks later I drove home from my overnight shift as an EMS dispatcher and arrived at my apartment to see the little red light on my answering machine blinking. Probably mom, I thought, called sometime late last night. She did that a lot. Or maybe it was someone from the opera- we were set to open at Jones Hall that night: "Le Comte Ory" . . . Count Ory. My role was a tiny one. I along with four other actors, was to walk on triumphantly at the very end of the show, fully decked out as a knight in shining armor. How appropriate, I thought, that I should be a knight in shining armor in a part I took for Cassandra's sake . . . to be her knight in shining armor! Or it might have been my good friend Rick. He often called late at night to see if I wanted to go out to Denny's for a slice of pie.
But the recorded message was not my mother, nor was it the opera, nor was it Rick. It was Mary Lois Barden, Cassandra's grandmother, calling to leave me a very somber and straightforward message: that Cassandra had died at 2:25 that morning.
I don't remember much after that, except that my knees went weak and my heart went into arrhythmia for a moment. I think I called my mother next, more to hear myself say the words out loud and realize that I was not dreaming than to deliver the message to one who had little emotional investment in my love relationship with the girl she never had the opportunity to meet or know. I might have cried for a bit next- as I say, I can't really remember -and then I probably went to bed.
Typically after an all-night shift I would sleep from dawn until about two in the afternoon. I remember waking and wondering, again, if I had dreamt it all. I was numb, inside and out. Worse, I was supposed to drive twenty-something miles into downtown Houston to play a bit part in a show I knew nothing about and could not possibly have cared less about. All afternoon I struggled with the decision: do I go in, or do I stay home? How was I supposed to function on a night like this?
The answer I came to, eventually, was that I must perform- I had to perform -for Cassandra. As cliche as it sounded, I knew it was what she would have wanted me to do.
And so I did; I walked into my scene with four other knights, triumphant, to the fanfare of a full orchestra, shimmering, blinding stage lights, and the applause of a packed theater of opera patrons. How fitting that we were instructed to keep the visors of our helmets down. I would not have wanted anyone in the cast, the audience, or the world to have seen my face that night. Cassandra's death was my secret. Only she, her family, and I knew that her soul had taken flight and shattered my heart.
When I went home that night after the show, it was late, and somehow I wound up at my parents' house instead of my apartment. I remember sitting on the floor of the den talking with my dad- I'm not sure if I was telling him about the show or Cassandra or what -but all at once I collapsed into a fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably . . . the weakest man you ever saw.
That was 29 years, 27 days ago, and I realize tonight that I have been sad ever since. Oh, I've built a life post-Cassandra, and by most standards it's been a very good one. Filled with adventures and travel and writing and ups and downs and twenty-nine years of seasons and wishes denied and wishes come true, it has been a life packed with lessons and rushes- and family. A family that to this day I am astounded is mine and of whom, more often than I care to admit, I feel unworthy. But more than anything else, it has been filled with sadness. Someone even said to me not so long ago- it might even have been my wife, that I was the saddest person he/she had ever known. I was incredulous, adamant that such an observation was so off the mark as to not even be worthy of a response. What did I have to be sad about?
But every now and then- and this afternoon was one of those times -someone will say something, or something will happen, and it's a like a knife in my heart. I get that same awful sinking feeling, and I wonder, was I always invisible? Did I always have so little impact? Why do these people and these events make me feel so bad about myself? At home, at school . . . in the books I write: it's there everywhere. I cannot make a dent in my own estimation, let alone anyone else's.
Self-pity? Unwarranted melancholy? No, it really isn't. These subtle waves have been lapping on the shore for almost thirty years, maybe longer than that. Did Cassandra care about me even half as much as I cared about her? Not likely. Did she look up to me the way my own sons do? I’d like to think so.
