This week, I lost an earring.
Small thing, right? But it was one of my FAVORITE earrings. I made it twenty years or so ago myself, with a matching necklace, to match a favorite outfit that I still wear. I was really proud of the jewelry I'd made and thought it beautiful. I wore it to church and out to an outside dining patio, and somewhere or other, when I was taking on and off my N95 mask loops, the earring was flipped out of my ear.
Gone.
Another small thing: this past weekend I was missing Highland Fest, an outdoor community event that had been held on Aquatennial weekend for 36 years. I checked online only to learn that Highland Fest would not be held this year--or ever again. The business owners decided to cancel it permanently. Another casualty of the pandemic.
I've been missing Rob in the past week, and as I started mulling these things over, I started missing so many things. Everyone has lost so much. Lost jobs (or partially lost jobs, like me). Deaths from Covid. And Minneapolis/St. Paul bears additional scars: the horrendous murder of George Floyd, the deaths of Amir Locke, Daunte Wright, and now Andrew Tekle Sundberg.
The murder of George Floyd led to losses to 1,500 businesses in this community. Some came back, but some never will. Other businesses went under due to the pandemic, including places I'd frequented for years and miss terribly. Marla's Caribbean Restaurant, Riverside Cafe and Wine Bar. Cleveland Wok. Sophie Jo's Emporium, where I used to browse after my Friday coffee sessions, and where I bought
one of the best Christmas presents ever for Delia. And one of the losses that has haunted my sf/fantasy community the most: the incinerating of Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's bookstores in the May 2020 riots. Uncle Hugo's was the oldest independent SF bookstore in the country.
This picture of the owner, Don Blyly, standing in the rubble of what used to be a thriving store just haunts me.
And then I heard a retrospective interview with Norman Lear, the creator of so much notable television, including All in the Family, who turned 100 this week. The interviewer noted that, but then went on to say that Norman Lear makes a point of not looking back over his shoulder:
What is left to ask Norman Lear?
The living legend of television has spent his life doling out lessons, so when granted the opportunity to converse with him via email ahead of his 100th birthday, what was there to ask?
Does he know the meaning of life? “Yes, the meaning of life can be expressed in one word: tomorrow.” What pieces of advice does he have that stand out above the rest? “There are two little words we don’t pay enough attention to: over and next. When something is over, it is over, and we are on to next. Between those words, we live in the moment, make the most of them.”
I thought a lot about those words this week. Someone who has lived for a hundred years would have seen so much--and lost so much. I thought about how many people he cared about have died in the hundred years he has been alive. I suspect that his gift for appreciating each day, living in the moment, may be one of the keys to his longevity.
I have not yet achieved such wisdom, perhaps. This week, I have been keenly aware of all that has been lost.
I went on a walk this week, and I came across a memorial inscription in a park that read:
What is lovely never dies,
but passes into other loveliness
stardust or seafoam
flower or winged air
Is that true? I don't know. Maybe it's a nice myth we make up to comfort ourselves when someone or something we care about disappears. I remember when we were planning Rob's funeral, my pastor asked, "What did Rob believe about what happens after death?" There was a perplexed silence for a moment, and then Rob's brother Phil offered, "Rob always believed he would become star stuff."
Sometimes I believe in heaven, but sometimes I just don't know what I believe. One of the lines that has stuck with me the most from one my grief meditations is: We have to make the transition from knowing the beloved as someone who is sometimes physically present and sometimes physically absent to knowing them as someone who is now always physically absent but always spiritually present.
Maybe Rob is or will be star stuff. For now, all I know is that he is
gone. So
much is gone. And I'm feeling it.
It's grief, but it's more than grief. It's loss; it's feeling the hole that has been left behind.
There is hopeful news at least:
Uncle Hugo's / Uncle Edgar's has found a new location and will be opening up again soon. Norman Lear, I am sure, would be pleased to hear that the "next" is underway.
Image description: Background: semi-transparent view of the burned-out destruction of Uncle Hugo's bookstore after the May 2020 riots. Upper left: semi-transparent head shot of Rob. Diagonally from upper right corner: blue-green dangling earring ending with a blue teardrop bead. Behind the earring, over the center of the card, the logo for the Highland Fest (a blue and black guitar crossed by a black paintbrush dipped in blue-green paint). A blue ribbon extends from below the paintbrush to center left; over that is the word "Marla's" with a palm tree, in red (the logo for Marla's Carribean Restaurant). Over the earring and Highland logo is the line logo of the Riverside Cafe and Wine bar, showing the outline of wine glasses. Bottom left corner: a cartoon of a smiling woman sitting in bubble bath tub (from the sign outside of Sophie Jo's Emporium). Bottom right: a marble statue of a woman in classical garb, kneeling with her face to the ground, one hand covering her eyes. Superimposed over the kneeling woman, written in white script are the words, "There are two little words we don’t pay enough attention to: over and next. When something is over, it is over, and we are on to next. Between those words, we live in the moment, make the most of them."Gone
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