i don't know with you but i always thought that pain is the stronger impulse to write.
a well meaning friend once described most of my prose as funereal. mortified, he later told me what he meant was elegiac.
at work, a ward clerk, now in her sixties, had a not so good week. early this week, her youngest son figured in a disfiguring car accident. he had been in and out of the operating suite since then.
this wednesday morning, her husband, ten years older than she is, woke her up early, complaining of sharp gas burn. just minutes after getting up, he slumped pulseless into her lap at the foot of their bed.
still clearheaded, she called 911 for help. after she replaced the phone, she got another call. thinking it was the ems guys double checking her address, she yelled her address again over the phone.
a doctor from the hospital where her son was recuperating interrupted her. the doctor, forgetting any niceties, barreled with the news that her son had a massive fatal stroke half an hour ago.
i could have written about this wednesday, the very same day the devastating news was broached to most of us who knew her at work. but somehow, i found other less interesting stuff to write about.
then came this story also from work. a cleaning lady, one who is very close to the bereaved wife and mother, organized her group of friends to attend the necrological services thursday afternoon.
their group was swept in the solemnity of the services just moments after entering the neighborhood catholic church. then hearing the child soprano singing an italian threnody, the group started to bawl.
they didn’t mind the stares of the other attendees. they felt emboldened, righteous, in fact, with their sincere tears.
after sobbing for about an hour, they heard the parish priest gave his final benediction to someone surnamed differently. they then looked up and realized there was only one coffin, instead of two, that the vicar was drizzling with holy water.
they looked at each other and realized they were early, too early, for the funeral services of the husband and son of our co-worker. they couldn’t backtrack now and all they could do was try hard to kill the urge to laugh out loud there and then. this made them cry even more convincingly.
the next morning, everybody started their work late as they gathered around the cleaning lady recount their funeral faux pas. as she told her story, she flitted from bellowing and wiping copious tears from the edges of her eyes.
the cleaning lady, on the portly side, looked so animated in her blue work frock that the normally morose and sleepy surgical residents stopped by to eavesdrop on the gaggle.
as she told her story again, this time for those who missed her initial retelling, her voice began to sound more and more plangent like that of a sinner in a revival meeting now touched by the spirit.
i had to move back a few paces away from her as i reeled from the beauty of her dual edged story, one of hurting, the other of laughing, breaking my heart asunder.