I have a story to tell. Yesterday, during one of the Yom Kippur services I was singing, a congregant was invited forward to speak about her personal experience of loss and grief. She told the story of learning from her son that his father, her former spouse, was on his deathbed, and of her consequent journey as what she called a "marginal mourner".
I found myself fighting tears of sympathy - in its true definition. No, I'm not an octogenarian, nor do I have children, nor has my former spouse died. It wasn't her mourning of death that touched me, it was her mourning of the loss of someone with whom she had once "played at being grownups", someone she had loved in her youth, and someone whom it was no longer obvious for her to mourn.
A marginal mourner.
It felt so familiar.
I chose to end my marriage. I made clear that it was unequivocally the right choice for me. As soon as I made the choice I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. There were people who understood the detail and the complexity. There were people who did not. (Grief expressed openly always feels outsized to those not living within it.) I don't blame them, it's simply a fact.
If this was right for you, then you are happy.
If you ended your marriage, then you never knew what love was.
If you are celebrating, then you cannot be in pain.
Case closed. Black and white.
And starkness always marginalizes.
Marginalized mourning.
It wasn't just that term that struck me. It was the clear, unsentimental tenderness with which she spoke of her early days with her former spouse – that, too, felt intimately familiar. The shadow of a smile, the touch of a tear that were audible in her voice...the evidence of love set down, but never forgotten, never ended.
There lies the deepest grief; the keening longing for the friend once known: in that bundle of love, tied gently (however much it may not seem to be so), and set on a mossy rock by the path. This woman had walked years of life since her marriage – since meeting her former spouse as a "wide-eyed freshman" – but her voice carried all the memories.
No matter how far on my path I go, I will always know where I set down that bundle of my life-past. I can see it as clearly as my hand before my face, writing these words. It is not as heavy as it used to be (though perhaps only because I have set it down). But it is full. Full of life, full of memories – of joy, doubt, hope, growth, safety, denial, blindness, trust and jealousy, distance, pain, truth, words, words, words....and love. Yes. Love. Noone will ever again tell me otherwise and receive silence as an answer.
However far I walk, whoever I continue to become, whomever I love and in whatever manner, I will always know where that bundle sits. It is part of my history; indelible; part of my self.
I rejoice in the life I live now. And I mean it! I love my life – in all capitals – in italics – in boldface – in arms-thrown-wide, and head-thrown-back, and eyes-to-the-sky – I JOY in the life I live now.
But in the Yizkor testimony of this elderly woman, I acknowledge my mourning. Marginalized or no, it will always be a part of me. However much it evolves with time, loss does not become unlost. It knits itself, instead, into our being, to become one of our myriad facets, reflecting back our tears of mourning and of grateful joy.
13 October 2024
New York City