Hubris
It will not leave us unscathed, I’d said to someone just yesterday. Why should it? Are we special? This morning there was a message lying in wait as I opened my eyes. My heart settled into the familiar hitch as I read, and I wondered if I had tempted fate. Quickly on the breath of that thought came the word hubris. I had too much. I had forgotten to humble myself. I had started to believe that I was done with death, that it had no hold over me.
Too much death too early leaves you numb: to grief and funerals and the breath that is hard to find. It leaves you standing at a distance for the rest of your fucking life, unable to mourn loss or to miss the presence of the dead. It works wonderfully well in the younger years when life is the force that matters. It shields you, this armour, it allows you to get on with the business of living and birth and creation. The cracks appear though.
In middle age, confronted once again by mortality, of the natural variety this time, there is a sense of missing out. The questions start inside your head: why don’t I feel more? Why can’t I cry? Am I dead too? In the middle years, you can no longer shy away from the trappings of dying. Parents, friends, older people, not so old people: they die. And you must be present. You no longer have the excuses of the early years. It’s been too long. If you can watch scenes of suicide on television with no more than a louder than usual thumping in the chest, you can damned well show up at a graveside. And then as you do so more and more, you notice that you see the same faces, fight the same tears, face the same lonely nights.
But I digress. It was about hubris that I meant to write. Once you have faced one, two or even three deaths – friends, lovers, brothers – by the time you hit adulthood, you pretty much assume you’ve paid your dues. You’ve cried your tears, you’ve learnt about heartbreak and you have done your time. You’re untouchable now. If that isn’t hubris, then what is?
Death is that impersonal, objective force that doesn’t really stop to think: oh he’s too young, or, she’s needed still, or even, haven’t I got enough for today? And so, just to contradict my shameful conviction that I am untouchable, and to teach me another lesson on injustice, Death visited my friend’s home while I slept.
It reached out in the middle of the night, in a far-away town, and left me today staring into the abyss that is this awful helplessness of the past months. I couldn’t go to her, I couldn’t even call her, all I could do is hold her close in my deepest heart. Death is only cruel in that it is final. There is no bargaining with death. Life, though. Aah, life is a bitch. Life is harder, with its endless demands, and therefore so much more vicious in the aftermath of death. It flows onwards, unheeding of her pain or mine. I cut over-grown hair, cook two meals, read and stitch, make love, potter around my garden, eat the first mango of the season. At the end of the day, I write this confused piece and listen to the hitch in my heart. It is the only way I know that I am alive, capable of feeling and grieving.
I learnt about hubris and death’s endless revenge many years ago. At that time, I spent too much time striking bargains with Death: if I do this, if I forsake that, will you give him back to me? The finality of death hadn’t wreaked havoc with my innocence in those early days. I sacrificed happiness, I gave up on friendship and love, never for a moment believing that it wouldn’t be enough. It took endless drips of days and nights to learn that hard lesson. Death does not give back.
Now I know better. When the going gets good, when the cup threatens to spill over with happiness, I know how to stop. I know how to cut myself down to size. I know how to turn the creeping hubris into humility. These are tricks that don’t always work. Death is not easily fooled by these lame gestures. But it is sometimes appeased. Delayed. Distracted.
I slipped up last week. I gave too many thanks for all the blessings in my life. I forgot that counting one’s blessings is tempting and enticing to fate, to the Gods, and, oh, to Dear old D.
Tomorrow, the hard work back starts again. To never forget the pain, to remember how breath stops and never again resumes its normal rhythm, to do the penance of memories – these are the rituals that might keep the knock from sounding at the door. Again..