layers of loss

An IM just popped up on my Facebook screen informing me that my friend Rachel's father has passed away.

Oy, what an avalanche of sorrow falls on me as I receive this news. Layers of loss.

First, I mourn for yet another time that life has taken Rachel so many miles away from me. So far that I don't hear her voice anymore, only see her face, and those of her children, in photos on the internet. I've never met her new husband. It may seem strange to some, but it's a deep sorrow because I keep my close friends very, very close. The closest know practically my every thought and are chuckling as they read this sentence. Rachel, for a time, was one of these.

We adjust, of course, when a friend leaves our physical sphere, but Rachel's absence was like an open wound for quite a while. I avoided forming new friendships with people whom I considered "high risk" for moving out of Cincinnati. People like me, from someplace else, who imagined they'd perhaps be happier living somewhere else. In fact, in reaction to Rachel's moving back "home" to Texas, I actively and deliberately tried to befriend natives for the very first time.

At a time like this, when a dear friend's beloved parent has died, it is generally impossible for me to find the right thing to say. But in this case I don't even know where to find her phone number. I think it went through the wash with an old cell phone. She hasn't called me since I lost it. We have Facebook, of course. But that is pretty sad.

On the second layer of loss, there is the wound that opens every time a friend loses a beloved parent. Because when a friend grieves a parent's death, it reminds me that my parents are alive, but only technically. They don't call me, and I don't call them. And they are NOT my Facebook friends. In fact, it was Rachel I sat down with, face to face, right before deciding to stand up to my parents that fateful day, to establish and defend boundaries that were long overdue.

My parents had just visited for the weekend, and I had been dreading their visit, with good reason. After dropping my kids off at preschool, I called Rachel at work and as soon as she said "how did it go?", I immediately dissolved into tears. Just as immediately, Rachel said "meet me at Bruegger's" and I turned my car right around. She left her office, where I think she was already busy packing up her things to move. We sat and talked very frankly about this huge, painful, vastly important issue the way only the closest of friends would dare to do.

It was Rachel's love, support and encouragement that morning which gave me the courage to articulate, first to her and then to my parents, the clarity I finally had on the situation. And what I said that evening on the phone to my parents has effectively kept them out of my home for the last several years. I told them that unless and until they could behave lovingly to eveyone who lives here, they could not return. That was pronounced an unreasonable condition, and they have never been back.

So, Rachel, if you are reading this, you are the first friend I've told, as she is grieving the loss of a parent, that I envy you. I feel incapacitated to comfort you in your time of sorrow, unqualified. Because I don't know how you feel. I don't know what it's like. Even now, as you are overwhelmed by sorrow, I feel envy when I think of the relationship you had with your father, as imperfect as it may have been, and envious of the sweet memories you will carry with you the rest of your days. I know that this is not an appropriate sentiment to share at a time like this. So, even though people think of me as someone who has the right words for every situation, this particular situation is the one that reveals possibly my greatness rhetorical weakness. I'm sorry for your loss, Rachel. But I can't help it. I envy the love you hold in your heart.