May 23, 2005

• Assimilating Loss

  A mutual acquaintance, hearing of Siobhan's situation, said: 
  "Well -- it's not so dreadful as that, is it, really?"  Tears
  caught in my throat, and I struggled to find words.  "Sometimes,"
  I finally said, "when you're in the midst of something difficult, it's
  hard to focus on the fact that it could have been so much worse." 
  And that isn't just true for Siobhan herself, suddenly contemplating
  her husband's unexpected job change and all that means:  the
  house-selling, house-buying, packing-up and leave-taking; the
  desperately
  rapid location of one's new grocery, school, library and neighborhood
  park in an unfamiliar city among different people.  It's also true for all
  Siobhan's friends and affiliates.  Some are people like me who
  looked
  forward to connecting with her every other day and find themselves in
  preemptive mourning already.  Others are people who know her only
  in passing and
  will find themselves, at summer's end, discovering her absence second
  hand and suddenly realizing the emptiness in their own lives that she
  so quietly and competently filled.

  If I had to describe Siobhan in a two-word phrase, I'd have a hard time
  choosing between "beautifully tenacious" and "tenaciously
  beautiful."  Regarding the latter, Siobhan has those angular
  cheekbones chiseled from some ancestral Celtic cliffside and covered
  with a pale perfection of skin that is in certain lights almost translucent.  Her golden brown curls furl softly
  around her arresting profile and cascade down her back in fashion fit to catch your breath and
  demand the attention that her kindly manner doesn't itself in any way
  demand.  Siobhan doesn't have the sort of beauty that spurts and
  pales along the bell curve from puberty to middle-age like most of us; she
  naturally possess the quality of comportment and physical
  form that arrests passersby for a lifetime.

  Such loveliness suite some well enough as the focal point for career and
  personality both, and Siobhan's pre-motherhood career as an actress was
  certainly a place where beautiful people congregate.  But Siobhan's beauty
  is only peripheral to the core of herself, which holds a tenacity
  that is, in her, also gorgeous. 
  Siobhan doesn't do anything by halves.  Where others lay out a
  plate of cookies and some iced tea for an afternoon's gathering of
  friends, Siobhon puts the finishing touches on chocolate cheesecake,
  strawberries and kiwi, carefully arranged on china with champagne on the
  side.  Where other moms arrive late and frazzled to pick up their
  kids from dance practice, Siobhan is sitting on the sideline,
  pen-and-paper in hand, writing down every move to help her daughter
  practice at home.  Yet like her apparent disregard of her beauty,
  she has an easy excuse for her perfectionism on all fronts:  "Oh,"
  she laughs causally, "I thought a cheesecake was the right thing for a
  really special party," or, with a twinkle in her eye, "You know my
  daughter needs that
  extra practice!"  But the only excuse us mere mortals have for not
  achieving Siobhan's degree of performance is sheer lack of will to push
  ourselves that far.  Siobhan's loving attention to all the details
  around her spring from a well of volunteerism that defines "altruism," and benefits every one of the friends, family,
  acquaintances and organizations with which she comes in contact.

  Siobhan is, for me, one of those very few people, in all one's decades
  of knowing and loving and moving on, whose laughter and choice words
  will come to mind at the odd moment when I most need a friend. 
  And to think now of the days and weeks and months to come when she
  won't be there in person is to suffer, indeed, a loss that despite the
  lack of any real tragedy in the current situation brings nevertheless a sense of personal devastation.

  • 10:49 am
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