Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. Or otherwise; As the body sickens before the death of the man, so it must needs be that before the consummation of this world the earth should be shaken, as though it were palsied, with frequent earthquakes, the air should gather a deadly quality and become pestilential, and that the vital energy of the soil should fail, and its fruits wither. And by consequence of this scarcity, men are stirred up to robbery and war. But because war and strife arise sometimes from covctousness, and sometimes from desire of power and empty glory, of these which shall happen before the end of the world a yet deeper cause shall be assignable. For as Christ’s coming brought through His divine power peace to divers nations, so it shall be on the other hand, that when iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold, and God and His Christ shall desert them; wars shall be again when actions which beget wars are not hindered by holiness; and hostile powers when they are not restrained by the Saints and by Christ shall work unchecked in the hearts of men, stirring up nation against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. But if, as some will have it, famine and pestilence are from the Angels of Satan, these shall then gather might from opposite powers, when the salt of the earth, and the lights of the world, Christ’s disciples, shall be no longer, destroying those things which the malice of dæmons hatches. Ofttimes in Israel famines and pestilences were caused by sin, and removed by the prayers of the Saints. (1 Kings 17:1. Jer. 14. James 5:17, 18.) Well is that said, In divers places, for God will not destroy the whole race of men at once, but judging them in portions, He gives opportunity of repentance. But if some stop be not put to these evils in their commencement, they will progress to worse, as it follows, These all are the beginnings of sorrows, that is, sorrows common to the whole world, and those which are to come upon the wicked who shall be tormented in most sharp pains. JEROME. Figuratively; Kingdom rising against kingdom and pestilence of that discourse which spreadeth as a plague-spot, and hunger of hearing the word of God, and commotion throughout the earth, and separation from the true faith, my be rather understood of the heretics, who fighting among themselves give the victory to the Church. ORIGEN. This must come to pass before we can see the perfection of that wisdom which is in Christ; but not yet shall be that end which we seek, for a peaceful end is far from those men. JEROME. These all are the beginnings of sorrows, is better understood of pains of labour, as it were the conception of the coming of Antichrist, and not of the birth.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  After a pause, I ventured further. “Are you scared, Dad?” “Not really. I’m just sad to leave. I want to know how all your stories are going to unfold.” Who his brother’s grandkids would marry. Where Brian and I would move. What Mom would plant in the garden that spring. It’s easy to shut down conversations like this because we’re afraid to get them wrong or to be seen as a downer or negative. “Let’s talk about something nice. You’re going to be fine,” we say. But maybe they’ll never be fine again, and not talking about that possibility isn’t fine, either. Addressing the elephant in the room gave Dad palpable relief. Talking about what was on his mind allowed him to feel less alone. It cleared space for us to find joy in the simple everyday moments that remained. Knowing Dad felt less alone made me feel less alone, too, not to mention more present with him, which is what I’d wanted all along. And oh, the gin rummy we played. TAKING THEIR LEAD A few weeks after our talk, Dad began sleeping more. Detaching from his surroundings and relationships. “I can feel him withdrawing, fading away,” Mom painfully confessed. Like an animal who instinctually isolates when they’re vulnerable. But according to hospice, social withdrawal is another natural part of the dying process. It’s the person’s way of starting to let go of their physical life, and as hard as it is for those who remain, that physical life includes their loved ones. When this happens, family members can feel hurt or maybe worried that they’ve upset the person who is dying. Or they can take it personally, not understanding why their loved one is showing less interest in connection. In reality, this distance is very understandable. Dad often joked, “Dying takes a lot out of you.” From observing him, I second that. The body slowly breaks down. It can take 45 minutes to swallow a pill. Getting to and from the bathroom looks as tricky as walking a high wire. And don’t even get me started on bathing. Dying is fucking exhausting. Because extended family members and friends weren’t around day-to-day, they had a hard time grasping what little energy he had. I imagine that in their minds, Ken was still Ken. And though his spirit was as strong as ever, his body and presence weren’t. Sometimes they wanted him to do what they wanted to do or talk about what they wanted to talk about. If he wasn’t open to exploring certain topics (often because he didn’t have the energy or desire to do so), they might get offended, perhaps not realizing that they were centering their needs over his. Having unrealistic (or even any) expectations of the dying is a surefire way to drive a wedge between you, the person you’re losing, and everyone else. Expectations can also be a way to mask our torn-up feelings about the enormity of the loss we’re facing.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The St. Regis and the Regency in New York, and also the Chelsea. The Chelsea was for those trips to New York when we were not on expenses. At the Chelsea they would find her a crib downstairs and John would bring her breakfast from the White Tower across the street. The Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. The Kahala and the Royal Hawaiian in Honolulu. “Where did the morning went,” she would ask at the Royal Hawaiian when she woke, still on mainland time, and found the horizon dark. “Imagine a five-year-old walking to the reef,” she would say at the Royal Hawaiian, near a swoon, when we held her hands and swung her through the shallow sea. The Ambassador and the Drake in Chicago. It was at the Ambassador, in the Pump Room at midnight, that she ate caviar for the first time, a mixed success since she wanted it again at every meal thereafter and did not yet entirely understand the difference between “on expenses” and “not on expenses.” She had happened to be in the Pump Room at midnight because we had taken her that night to Chicago Stadium to see a band we were following, Chicago, research for A Star Is Born. She had sat through the concert onstage, on one of the amps. The band had played “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” and “25 or 6 to 4.” She had referred to the band as “the boys.” When we left Chicago Stadium with the boys that night the crowd had rocked the car, delighting her. She did not want to go to her grandmother’s in West Hartford the next day, she had advised me when we got back to the Ambassador, she wanted to go to Detroit with the boys. So much for keeping our “private” life separate from our “working” life. In fact she was inseparable from our working life. Our working life was the very reason she happened to be in these hotels. When she was five or six, for example, we took her with us to Tucson, where The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean was shooting. The Hilton Inn, where the production was based during its Tucson location, sent a babysitter to stay with her while we watched the dailies. The babysitter asked her to get Paul Newman’s autograph. A crippled son was mentioned. Quintana got the autograph, delivered it to the babysitter, then burst into tears. It was never clear to me whether she was crying about the crippled son or about feeling played by the babysitter. Dick Moore was the cinematographer on The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean but she seemed to make no connection between this Dick Moore she encountered at the Hilton Inn in Tucson and the Dick Moore she encountered on our beach.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  15. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. 16. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. 17. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? 18. And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? 19. And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: 20. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. 21. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. 22. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; 23. And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. 24. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. GLOSS. (non occ.) After the manifestation of Christ’s resurrection made by the Angels to the women, the same resurrection is further manifested by an appearance of Christ Himself to His disciples; as it is said, And behold two of them. THEOPHYLACT. Some say that Luke was one of these two, and for this reason concealed his name. AMBROSE. Or to two of the disciples by themselves our Lord shewed Himself in the evening, namely, Ammaon and Cleophas. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. lib. iii. c. 25.) The fortress mentioned here we may not unreasonably take to have been also called according to Mark, a village, He next describes the fortress, saying, which was from Jerusalem about the space of sixty stades, called Emmaus.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Now the colored pencils in action. The green one, by a mere whirl of the wrist, could be made to produce a ruffled tree, or the eddy left by a submerged crocodile. The blue one drew a simple line across the page—and the horizon of all seas was there. A nondescript blunt one kept getting into one’s way. The brown one was always broken, and so was the red, but sometimes, just after it had snapped, one could still make it serve by holding it so that the loose tip was propped, none too securely, by a jutting splinter. The little purple fellow, a special favorite of mine, had got worn down so short as to become scarcely manageable. The white one alone, that lanky albino among pencils, kept its original length, or at least did so until I discovered that, far from being a fraud leaving no mark on the page, it was the ideal implement since I could imagine whatever I wished while I scrawled. Alas, these pencils, too, have been distributed among the characters in my books to keep fictitious children busy; they are not quite my own now. Somewhere, in the apartment house of a chapter, in the hired room of a paragraph, I have also placed that tilted mirror, and the lamp, and the chandelier drops. Few things are left, many have been squandered. Have I given away Box I (son and husband of Loulou, the housekeeper’s pet), that old brown dachshund fast asleep on the sofa? No, I think he is still mine. His grizzled muzzle, with the wart at the puckered corner of the mouth, is tucked into the curve of his hock, and from time to time a deep sigh distends his ribs. He is so old and his sleep is so thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside. Then a pneumatic door heaves and clangs in the vestibule. She has come after all; I had so hoped she would not.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  II. On the second head it is to be noted, that the wise are sad for three reasons—(1) By sadness the evil of man is corrected: Eccles. 7:3, “By the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” (2) By momentary sadness man escapes eternal torment. S. Greg. Mag., “The Saints regard this present life as a gain, because by this they know that they will not escape eternal life;” Nahum 1:13, “I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more.” (3) By a mean measure of justice they acquire eternal joys: 2 Cor. 4:17, 18, “For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” III. On the third head it is to be noted, that the future joys of the saints are said to consist of three things—(1) In the consolation of the Divine Presence: “I will see you again.” S. Augustine, “Lastly, there will be God Himself, Who will be all in all, Who will be to us salvation, honour, and glory, and joy, and every good:” Gen. 15:1, “I am … thy exceeding great reward.” (2) In the highest exultation of heart, “Your heart shall rejoice:” Isa. 35:10, “They shall obtain joy and gladness.” (3) In the attaining of eternity: Isa. 35:10, “The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads;” to which joy, &c. HOMILY IX LITTLE SPEECH FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.—(FROM THE EPISTLE)“Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak.”—S. James 1:19. IN these words the Apostle S. James bids us be more slow in speaking than in hearing, and these considerations ought to move us to this—Firstly, the testimony of nature. Secondly, the harm of much speaking. Thirdly, the benefit of little speaking. I. On the first head it is to be noted, that nature teaches us in a threefold way that we should rather hear, than speak. (1) Nature gave to man a double instrument of hearing, and only a single instrument of speaking, and this in itself shows, that in a twofold degree man ought rather to hear than to speak. (2) Nature gave to very many animals the faculty of hearing, but not the faculty of speech save to the rational animal, man; so that speech ought to be rational: Coloss. 4:6, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt.” (3) Nature gave the instruments of hearing ever open, but the instruments of speech she closed by two barriers or protections: for man has his ears ever open, but his tongue closed in by his lips and teeth. The tongue is like an evil monarch, and therefore God enclosed it with many barriers: Mich. 7:5, “Keep the doors of thy mouth.”

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  From the silent, snow-blanketed platform of the little station of Siverski on the Warsaw line (it was the nearest to our country place), I was watching a distant silvery grove as it changed to lead under the evening sky and waiting for it to emit the dull-violet smoke of the train that would take me back to St. Petersburg after a day of skiing. The smoke duly appeared and at the same moment, she and another girl walked past me, heavily kerchiefed, in huge felt boots and horrible, shapeless, long quilted jackets, with the stuffing showing at the torn spots of the coarse black cloth, and as she passed, Polenka, a bruise under her eye and a puffed-up lip (did her husband beat her on Saturdays?) remarked in wistful and melodious tones to nobody in particular: "A barchuk-to menya ne priznal [Look, the young master does not know me]—" and that was the only time I ever heard her speak.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  She could plainly see what I’d been so desperate to hide: I was a full-blown mess. After the remains of my mascara finished streaming down my face, I felt a sense of relief similar to when medicine kicks in, giving you a break from a hallucinogenic fever. I’d somehow overlooked how cleansing it could be to let my feelings rip. After this happened a few more times (shout-out to Home Depot and their decision to pipe Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” through their stereo system), I’d started to realize that these breaks helped me survive. They made me realize that the only way through my sadness was to allow the waves of big feelings to move through my body—something I’d been hell-bent on avoiding, for fear I would drown. If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why had I been so determined to avoid them? And given how all- encompassing these hints of catharsis felt, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where else in my life have I been avoiding grief? Did that avoidance have anything to do with the strange existential angst that had been creeping up on me over the last few years, where I sensed that I was not, in fact, living as fully as I could be? The more I thought about it, the instinct to avoid grief made perfect sense to me. As well-meaning as my family friend’s advice was, Keep that mascara intact, honey was not going to help me heed my soul’s call to grow. For that, I would need to surrender to my grief and other big emotions. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FEEL While we may not want to even think about grief, loss, or unexpected (and unwanted) change, in order to feel less alone, less broken, less crazy (you’re not!), we need to talk about and tend to our most tender feelings. We also need to find the right kind of support for our emotions and ourselves in the process. Only then will we be able to pick up the pieces of our shattered hearts and lives and put ourselves back together. Only then can we heal. That is what this book is all about: learning how to be a Mourning Person when we’d rather stay under the covers and go back to sleep. That said, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: grief sucks—and it isn’t a solo flier. Grief rolls with an entourage of complicated friends, who all demand bottle service at the club—emotions like weariness, judgment, shame, jealousy, self-loathing, and all the other not-so-glamorous feelings we don’t want people to know we’re experiencing. This is to be expected, and so is the lengthy amount of time it takes to feel like a human being who wants to get out of pajamas as a complete wardrobe and wash her hair again. That’s because grief isn’t linear.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 2) Our Lord had stayed two days, and the messenger had come the day before; the very day on which Lazarus died. This brings us to the fourth day. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. xlix. 12) Of the four days many things may be said. They refer to one thing, but one thing viewed in different ways. There is one day of death which the law of our birth brings upon us. Men transgress the natural law, and this is another day of death. The written law is given to men by the hands of Moses, and that is despised—a third day of death. The Gospel comes, and men transgress it—a fourth day of death. But Christ doth not disdain to awaken even these. ALCUIN. The first sin was elation of heart, the second assent, the third act, the fourth habit. Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 2) Two miles. This is mentioned to account for so many coming from Jerusalem: And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother. But how could the Jews be consoling the beloved of Christ, when they had resolved that whoever confessed Christ should be put out of the synagogue? Perhaps the extreme affliction of the sisters excited their sympathy; or they wished to shew respect for their rank. Or perhaps they who came were of the better sort; as we find many of them believed. Their presence is mentioned to do away with all doubt of the real death of Lazarus. BEDE. Our Lord had not yet entered the town, when Martha met Him: Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 2.) Martha does not take her sister with her, because she wants to speak with Christ alone, and tell Him what has happened. When her hopes had been raised by Him, then she went her way, and called Mary. THEOPHYLACT. At first she does not tell her sister, for fear, if she came, the Jews present might accompany her. And she did not wish them to know of our Lord’s coming. Then saith Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 3) She believed in Christ, but she believed not as she ought. She did not speak as if He were God: If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. THEOPHYLACT. She did not know that He could have restored her brother as well absent as present. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 3) Nor did she know that He wrought His miracles by His own independent power: But I know that even now, whatsoever Thou will ask of God, God will give it Thee. She only thinks Him some very gifted man.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The “Craftsman” dinner knife on Aunt Kate’s table, the one I recognize in the photographs? Was it the same “Craftsman” dinner knife that dropped through the redwood slats of the deck into the iceplant on the slope? The same “Craftsman” dinner knife that stayed lost in the iceplant until the blade was pitted and the handle scratched? The knife we found only when we were correcting the drainage on the slope in order to pass the geological inspection required to sell the house and move to Brentwood Park? The knife I saved to pass on to her, a memento of the beach, of her grandmother, of her childhood? I still have the knife. Still pitted, still scratched . I also still have the baby tooth her cousin Tony pulled, saved in a satin-lined jeweler’s box, along with the baby teeth she herself eventually pulled and three loose pearls. The baby teeth were to have been hers as well. 7 I n fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their “things,” their totems. The detritus of this misplaced belief now fills the drawers and closets of my apartment in New York. There is no drawer I can open without seeing something I do not want, on reflection, to see. There is no closet I can open with room left for the clothes I might actually want to wear. In one closet that might otherwise be put to such use I see, instead, three old Burberry raincoats of John’s, a suede jacket given to Quintana by the mother of her first boyfriend, and an angora cape, long since moth-eaten, given to my mother by my father not long after World War Two. In another closet I find a chest of drawers and perilously stacked assortment of boxes. I open one of the boxes. I find photographs taken by my grandfather when he was a mining engineer in the Sierra Nevada in the early years of the twentieth century. In another of the boxes I find the scraps of lace and embroidery that my mother had salvaged from her own mother’s boxes of mementos. The jet beads. The ivory rosaries. The objects for which there is no satisfactory resolution.

• From Another Country (1962)

  She laughed, but there was something sad and lonely in the sound. There was something sad and lonely in her whole aspect, which obscurely troubled him. And he began to watch her closely, without quite knowing that he was doing so. She said, “Poor Vivaldo. I’ve given you a hard time, haven’t I, baby?” “I’m not complaining,” he said, carefully. “No,” she said, half to herself, running her fingers thoughtfully through a bowl of dry rice, “I’ll say that much for you. I dish it out, but you sure as hell can take it.” “You think maybe,” he said, “that I take too much?” She frowned. She dumped the rice into the boiling water. “Maybe. Hell, I don’t think women know what they want, not a damn one of them. Look at Cass—do you want a drink,” she asked, suddenly, “before dinner?” “Sure.” He took down the bottle and the glasses and took out the ice. “What do you mean—women don’t know what they want? Don’t you know what you want?” She had taken down the great salad bowl and was slicing tomatoes into it; it seemed that she did not dare be still. “Sure. I thought I did. I was sure once. Now I’m not so sure.” She paused. “And I only found that out—last night.” She looked up at him humorously, gave a little shrug, and sliced savagely into another tomato. He set her drink beside her. “What’s happened to confuse you?” She laughed—again he heard that striking melancholy. “Living with you! Would you believe it? I fell for that jive.” He dragged his work stool in from the other room and teetered on it, watching her, a little above her. “What jive, sweetheart, are you talking about?” She sipped her drink. “That love jive, sweetheart. Love, love, love!” His heart jumped up; they watched each other; she smiled a rueful smile. “Are you trying to tell me—without my having to ask you or anything—that you love me?” “Am I? I guess I am.” Then she dropped the knife and sat perfectly still, looking down, the fingers of one hand drumming on the table. Then she clasped her hands, the fingers of one hand playing with the ruby-eyed snake ring, slipping it half-off, slipping it on. “But—that’s wonderful.” He took her hand. It lay cold and damp and lifeless in his. A kind of wind of terror shook him for an instant. “Isn’t it? It makes me very happy—you make me very happy.” She took his hand and rested her cheek against it. “Do I, Vivaldo?” Then she rose and walked to the sink to wash the lettuce. He followed her, standing beside her, and looking into her closed, averted face. “What’s the matter, Ida?” He put one hand on her waist; she shivered, as if in revulsion, and he let his hand fall. “Tell me, please.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Further, right reason does not allow one to be disturbed on account of what one was unable to avoid; hence Seneca proves (Ep. lxxxv, and De ira ii, 6) that “a wise man is not disturbed.” Now in these children there is right reason deflected by no actual sin. Therefore they will not be disturbed for that they undergo this punishment which they could nowise avoid. I answer that, on this question there are three opinions. Some say that these children will suffer no pain, because their reason will be so much in the dark that they will not know that they lack what they have lost. It, however, seems improbable that the soul freed from its bodily burden should ignore things which, to say the least, reason is able to explore, and many more besides. Hence others say that they have perfect knowledge of things subject to natural reason, and know God, and that they are deprived of seeing Him, and that they feel some kind of sorrow on this account but that their sorrow will be mitigated, in so far as it was not by their will that they incurred the sin for which they are condemned. Yet this again would seem improbable, because this sorrow cannot be little for the loss of so great a good, especially without the hope of recovery: wherefore their punishment would not be the mildest. Moreover the very same reason that impugns their being punished with pain of sense, as afflicting them from without, argues against their feeling sorrow within, because the pain of punishment corresponds to the pleasure of sin; wherefore, since original sin is void of pleasure, its punishment is free of all pain. Consequently others say that they will know perfectly things subject to natural knowledge, and both the fact of their being deprived of eternal life and the reason for this privation, and that nevertheless this knowledge will not cause any sorrow in them. How this may be possible we must explore.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  I have thought about Jacques* question since. The question is banal but one of the real troubles with Uving is that living is so banal. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. Jacques' garden was not the same as Giovanni's, of course. Jacques' garden was involved with football players and Giovanni's was involved with maidens—but that seems to have made so Uttle difference. Perhaps every- body has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of inno- cence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who for- get. Heroes are rare. Jacques had not wanted to have supper in his apartment because his cook had run away. His cooks were always running away. He was GIOVANNI'S ROOM 37 always getting young boys from the provinces, God knows how, to come up and be cooks; and they, of course, as soon as they were able to find their way around the capital, decided that cooking was the last thing they wanted to do. They usually ended up going back to the provinces, those, that is, who did not end up on the streets, or in jail, or in Indochina, I met him at a rather nice restaurant on the rue de Crenelle and arranged to borrow ten thousand francs from him before we had fin- ished our aperitifs. He was in a good mood and I, of course, was in a good mood too, and this meant that we would end up drinking in Jacques' favorite bar, a noisy, crowded, ill-lit sort of tunnel, of dubious— or perhaps not dubious at all, of rather too emphatic—reputa- tion. Every once in a while it was raided by the police, apparently with the connivance of Guillaume, the patron, who always managed, on the particular evening, to warn his favorite customers that if they were not armed with identification papers they might be better off elsewhere. I remember that the bar, that night, was more than ordinarily crowded and noisy. All of the habitues were there and many strangers, some looking, some just staring. There were three or four very chic Parisian ladies sitting at a table with their gigolos or their lovers or perhaps simply their country cousins, God knows; the ladies seemed extremely animated, their males seemed rather stiff; the ladies

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  But today’s trailer trash are merely yesterday’s vagrants on wheels, an updated version of Okies in jalopies and Florida crackers in their carts. They are renamed often, but they do not disappear. Our very identity as a nation, no matter what we tell ourselves, is intimately tied up with the dispossessed. We are, then, not only preoccupied with race, as we know we are, but with good and bad breeds as well. It is for good reason that we have this preoccupation: by calling America not just “a” land of opportunity but “the” land of opportunity, we collectively have made a promise to posterity that there will always exist the real potential of self-propulsion upward. Those who fail to rise in America are a crucial part of who we are as a civilization. A cruel irony is to be found in the aftermath of the Hollywood film Deliverance, a gruesome adventure that exploited the worst stereotypes of white trash and ignored the poverty that existed in the part of the country where the movie was made. One actor stands out who was not a trained actor at all: Billy Redden. He played the iconic inbred character who sat strumming the banjo. He was fifteen when he was plucked from a local Rabun County, Georgia, school by the filmmakers because of his odd look (enhanced with makeup). He didn’t play the banjo, so a musician fingered from behind, and the cameraman did the rest. Interviewed in 2012 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the film, Billy said he wasn’t paid much for his role. Otherwise, the fifty-six-year-old said, “I wouldn’t be working at Wal-Mart right now. And I’m struggling really hard to make ends meet.” 6 The discomfort middle-class Americans feel when forced to acknowledge the existence of poverty highlights the disconnect between image and reality. It seems clear that we have made little progress since James Agee exposed the world of poor tenant farmers in 1941. We still today are blind to the “cruel radiance of what is.” The static rural experience is augmented by the persistence of class-inflected tropes and the voyeuristic shock in televised portraits of degenerate beings and wasted lives in the richest country that has ever existed. And what of Billy Redden? In 1972, a country boy was made up to fit a stereotype of the retarded hillbilly, the idiot savant. Today his mundane struggle to survive can satisfy no one’s expectations, because his story is ordinary. He is neither eccentric nor perverse. Nor does he don a scraggly beard, wear a bandanna, or hunt gators. He is simply one of the hundreds of thousands of faceless employees who work at a Wal-Mart.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  There were little violently yellow iced cakes with scalloped edges called “marigolds,” that came from Cushman’s Bakery. There was a spice bun and rock-cakes from Newton’s, the West Indian bakery across Lenox Avenue from St. Mark’s School, and iced tea in a wrapped mayonnaise jar. There were sweet pickles for us and dill pickles for my father, and peaches with the fuzz still on them, individually wrapped to keep them from bruising. And, for neatness, there were piles of napkins and a little tin box with a washcloth dampened with rosewater and glycerine for wiping sticky mouths. I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about them, but my mother reminded me for the umpteenth time that dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, nor where those same hands had been just before. My mother never mentioned that Black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947. As usual, whatever my mother did not like and could not change, she ignored. Perhaps it would go away, deprived of her attention. I learned later that Phyllis’s high school senior class trip had been to Washington, but the nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis “would not be happy,” meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes. “We will take among-you to Washington, ourselves,” my father had avowed, “and not just for an overnight in some measly fleabag hotel.” American racism was a new and crushing reality that my parents had to deal with every day of their lives once they came to this country. They handled it as a private woe. My mother and father believed that they could best protect their children from the realities of race in america and the fact of american racism by never giving them name, much less discussing their nature. We were told we must never trust white people, but why was never explained, nor the nature of their ill will. Like so many other vital pieces of information in my childhood, I was supposed to know without being told. It always seemed like a very strange injunction coming from my mother, who looked so much like one of those people we were never supposed to trust.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  She could plainly see what I’d been so desperate to hide: I was a full-blown mess. After the remains of my mascara finished streaming down my face, I felt a sense of relief similar to when medicine kicks in, giving you a break from a hallucinogenic fever. I’d somehow overlooked how cleansing it could be to let my feelings rip. After this happened a few more times (shout-out to Home Depot and their decision to pipe Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” through their stereo system), I’d started to realize that these breaks helped me survive. They made me realize that the only way through my sadness was to allow the waves of big feelings to move through my body—something I’d been hell-bent on avoiding, for fear I would drown. If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why had I been so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing these hints of catharsis felt, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where else in my life have I been avoiding grief? Did that avoidance have anything to do with the strange existential angst that had been creeping up on me over the last few years, where I sensed that I was not, in fact, living as fully as I could be? The more I thought about it, the instinct to avoid grief made perfect sense to me. As well-meaning as my family friend’s advice was, Keep that mascara intact, honey was not going to help me heed my soul’s call to grow. For that, I would need to surrender to my grief and other big emotions. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FEEL While we may not want to even think about grief, loss, or unexpected (and unwanted) change, in order to feel less alone, less broken, less crazy (you’re not!), we need to talk about and tend to our most tender feelings. We also need to find the right kind of support for our emotions and ourselves in the process. Only then will we be able to pick up the pieces of our shattered hearts and lives and put ourselves back together. Only then can we heal. That is what this book is all about: learning how to be a Mourning Person when we’d rather stay under the covers and go back to sleep. That said, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: grief sucks—and it isn’t a solo flier. Grief rolls with an entourage of complicated friends, who all demand bottle service at the club—emotions like weariness, judgment, shame, jealousy, self-loathing, and all the other not-so-glamorous feelings we don’t want people to know we’re experiencing. This is to be expected, and so is the lengthy amount of time it takes to feel like a human being who wants to get out of pajamas as a complete wardrobe and wash her hair again. That’s because grief isn’t linear.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  At his retirement, Alexander the Third offered him to choose between the title of count and a sum of money, presumably large—I do not know what exactly an earldom was worth in Russia, but contrary to the thrifty Tsar’s hopes my grandfather (as also his uncle Ivan, who had been offered a similar choice by Nicholas the First) plumped for the more solid reward. (“Encore un comte raté,” dryly comments Sergey Sergeevich.) After that he lived mostly abroad. In the first years of this century his mind became clouded but he clung to the belief that as long as he remained in the Mediterranean region everything would be all right. Doctors took the opposite view and thought he might live longer in the climate of some mountain resort or in Northern Russia. There is an extraordinary story, which I have not been able to piece together adequately, of his escaping from his attendants somewhere in Italy. There he wandered about, denouncing, with King Lear-like vehemence, his children to grinning strangers, until he was captured in a wild rocky place by some matter-of-fact carabinieri. During the winter of 1903, my mother, the only person whose presence, in his moments of madness, the old man could bear, was constantly at his side in Nice. My brother and I, aged three and four respectively, were also there with our English governess; I remember the windowpanes rattling in the bright breeze and the amazing pain caused by a drop of hot sealing wax on my finger. Using a candle flame (diluted to a deceptive pallor by the sunshine that invaded the stone slabs on which I was kneeling), I had been engaged in transforming dripping sticks of the stuff into gluey, marvelously smelling, scarlet and blue and bronze-colored blobs. The next moment I was bellowing on the floor, and my mother had hurried to the rescue, and somewhere nearby my grandfather in a wheelchair was thumping the resounding flags with his cane. She had a hard time with him. He used improper language. He kept mistaking the attendant who rolled him along the Promenade des Anglais for Count Loris-Melikov, a (long-deceased) colleague of his in the ministerial cabinet of the eighties. “Qui est cette femme—chassez-la!” he would cry to my mother as he pointed a shaky finger at the Queen of Belgium or Holland who had stopped to inquire about his health. Dimly I recall running up to his chair to show him a pretty pebble, which he slowly examined and then slowly put into his mouth. I wish I had had more curiosity when, in later years, my mother used to recollect those times.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I was saddened but not surprised by what had happened to Billy when he attempted college. Like so many of the young people in our study, Billy’s parents were both college educated and both had been given a higher education by their families. I had no doubt at all that if these two had stayed together, they would have sent Billy to college no questions asked. Moreover, their lack of concern for Billy’s future was striking. I was certainly aware that a vulnerable young man like Billy needed a high level of specialized knowledge in order to enter the workplace because his poor health precluded so many jobs. But when I talked to Billy’s mother she seemed politely regretful that her son hadn’t continued in college. Billy’s father told me flatly that he didn’t care one way or another. Neither parent seemed to expect that Billy would achieve to at least their own educational and occupational levels. In fact, neither seemed to have many expectations for Billy at all. When they reach their eighteenth birthday, many young adults in divorced families suddenly feel like second-class citizens. That’s when the last child support check arrives and that’s when they realize how disadvantaged they are compared with their friends in intact families. In California and the great majority of the states, a parent has no obligation to help a child after the age of eighteen or the end of high school. The child’s continued education, including tuition, books, supplies, and living expenses, is all up to him. Many young people consider the cutoff at age eighteen the worst hit of their parents’ divorce. They tell me bitterly, “I paid for my folks’ divorce.” Among middle-class children, a college education is an expected rite of passage. Americans believe that the university is a necessary step for success in our technologically advanced, competitive society. Many parents in intact families make enormous sacrifices to send their children to college. As men and women of the world who benefited from their own professional training and contacts, they know that without a college education young people are handicapped all through their lives. Thus they save their money for many years ahead. In turn, they expect their kids to work hard as students and in part-time jobs. But they do not expect the children to do it all by themselves.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-7006-2 E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-7007-9 Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-7008-6 For Dad CONTENTS Introduction: Never Let Them See You Grieve Chapter 1: I’m Not OK Chapter 2: The Rupture Chapter 3: Fear & Anxiety Chapter 4: Becoming Unbecoming Chapter 5: Grief & Trauma: The Golden Repair Chapter 6: Acceptance Chapter 7: Rest in Love Chapter 8: Beyond the Stars Chapter 9: Awkward Times, Awkward People Chapter 10: Love Is Love, Grief Is Grief Chapter 11: Self-Care in the Storm Chapter 12: Listening to Your Life Acknowledgments About the Author Empower You: Unlimited Audio Mobile App Continue Your Journey with Hay House INTRODUCTION Never Let Them See You Grieve Only cry in the shower. No one will see you, and you won’t wreck your mascara. This bit of wisdom was given to me by a family friend when my father was dying. At the time, overwhelmed by emotion and desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control, I thought it was a brilliant tip. Not only did I attempt to follow this guideline—I also added a few of my own. Things like: Stuff yourself into the nearest closet and scream into a pillow (or any dense fabric that muffles agony). Dig your nails into your palms so the physical pain overrides your emotional distress. Think gruesome thoughts to distract yourself from your grueling feelings. These strategies worked for a while, until my pent-up sorrow took on a life of its own, refusing to abide by any rules. I remember the exact moment the dam broke. My dad had just received news that his cancer was progressing and there were no more treatment options. Numb from the arresting prognosis, I walked through the aisles of my local drugstore, having offered to run an errand to pick up more Ensure—the only nourishment he could stomach. I stood frozen, staring at the chocolate-flavored protein drinks, incapable of deciding how many to buy. Will he live long enough for a case, or should I just stick to the four-packs? That question hit me hard. An emotional tsunami was about to unleash itself on me and all the innocent shoppers in my immediate vicinity. Shit! Here come my feelings. And no shower in sight. I blinked heavily through the checkout line, fighting back the deluge of tears that were mere seconds away, until I was able to rush to the safety of my car and sob uncontrollably. Let me tell you: the parking lot at CVS is no shower stall. My once- compartmentalized grief was now on full display. Hunched over my steering wheel in a teary puddle, I happened to notice an older woman, probably coming to fetch a prescription or buy toilet paper, glancing my way.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I had no reading on how that would go once her full adolescent agenda came into play. Would she allow herself independence or even a little rebellion? I felt some disquiet about her inordinately close tie to her mother and wondered if leaving home would be a problem for her. Would she hold back on that, too? And I was concerned about her taking responsibility for the delicate equilibrium between her parents and for having to walk on eggs to maintain the precarious balance. But in all she showed me reserves of strength and good sense that left me enormously optimistic. Feelings Are Painful LISA AND I next met each other when she was twenty years old—a pretty, shy, and very appealing young woman who was finishing her second year at a small college in Oregon. Her hair was long and pulled up into a neat bun held with a chopstick, and she wore the usual college costume—faded jeans, Doc Martins, and a long sweater with a boat neck. She had added a bright red silk scarf that looked stunning in its simplicity. Lisa still liked school, continued to do well academically, and enjoyed a wide circle of women friends. But she was newly troubled by many questions about herself. Her major problem, as she described it, was feeling numb when she had sex. “Have you had many boyfriends?” I asked. “Not that many,” she replied. “We have co-ed dorms and so lots of kids end up sleeping with each other. I’m not nearly as wild as some of my friends, but it’d be hard to stay a virgin around here. So sex is easy. But,” she said, frowning, “sex with a guy I care about is hard for me. It’s much easier to be with someone I don’t feel close to. If I care about him, then when it’s over I’m left with a sad feeling. When sex is just play and has nothing to do with love, I have no problem and I feel fine. Sometimes I feel that I was brought up on a desert island.” She thought for a moment and summed up her feelings. “Love combined with sex is a strange idea to me.” She paused again. “Sometimes I just get numb.” “Tell me about feeling numb.” “What you have to understand about me is that I’m able to cut off feelings instantly when they hurt. My feelings are there but it’s hard for me to reach them. As a child I hardly knew what it was like to cry. Basically I still feel out of touch with my feelings. If you were to tell me right now that my lover died, I would not have feeling until tomorrow.” “This protected you?” “One thing you learn very quickly as a child of divorce is that feelings are painful. It’s a lot easier if you can learn to turn them off. It’s not simple, but otherwise you spend a lot of time worrying about your family.