Mirror, mirror

I’ve just finished reading a wonderful book.  It’s called When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, and won the Newbery Medal.  It’s a story that you don’t want to stop reading, moving and clever, but I think my favourite thing about the book is the way Ms. Stead reflects us to ourselves.  She writes a conversation, and the narrator’s thoughts that accompany it, and I find myself saying, “Yes!  That’s exactly how it is!” (or “how I am”, or “how I felt”.)  That, in my opinion, is what any good art does.  It holds up a mirror so we can see ourselves, and at the same time recognize that we are not alone in feeling or thinking that particular thing, because clearly the artist has also seen this thing in himself. 

That’s something that has always been valuable to me, and it’s become even more so since Ramsy died.  I wrote in a post one time that he had been my mirror, and now I struggle to see myself clearly.  One thing I’ve heard from other people who lost spouses through death or divorce is that social life becomes tricky; that they have felt excluded from old circles.  I have been grateful to find that so far, that hasn’t been my experience.  However, what I do find tricky around the social end of things is within me, in my own mind and emotions, in not being able to see my reflection.

My brain plays tricks on me, trying to be its own mirror, questioning my voice tone or facial expression when I speak to people: did that sound self-pitying?  Did that joke about Rams shock them?  Do I sound like the new kid in the lunch room, begging for a place at the table?  Even though (I think) I mostly act the same as I used to, I wonder if I come across differently. I suppose sometimes I must, since the circumstances or factors or what have you are different.  I no longer have the security, I guess I’ll call it, of being a wife. 

Now how can I explain what I mean and what I don’t mean by that?  I don’t mean that I feel like I lack status or identity or that kind of thing.  It’s more that when you grow used to a role you play in any area of your life, it’s strange when you no longer play it.  When you retire or become an empty nester, I imagine the experience is similar to this. How do you embrace your new role when you’re not exactly sure what it is?  How do you function in a normal fashion when the normal parameters have gone away?

Here’s what the experience of being here not-with-Ramsy feels like:  it’s like having had a privacy fence around your back yard for 20 years, having grown accustomed to doing your yard work and sunbathing and barbequing without being seen by the neighbourhood, and then having that fence become invisible.  Suddenly all you do is exposed to view, and even though you might be continuing to do precisely what you have done for 20 years and even though there is nothing weird about your activities, you suddenly wonder if you look weird to everyone.  (Do you know the song “Graceland” by Paul Simon?  “And I see losing love is like a window in your heart: everybody sees you’re blown apart.  Everybody sees the wind blow.”)  It feels naked. It feels like everyone can look right into me without me being able to see into them.  It is immensely unsettling.

But.

When something becomes transparent, it can also become luminous, can’t it?  It can become a vehicle for light to be transmitted.  It can allow that light to shine on the surroundings, to illuminate murky areas.  To guide other people trying to find their way.  Oh.

In the Christian faith, there is a doctrine of faith and works being intertwined, meaning that our belief and our actions have to co-ordinate; that while we are rescued from wrong simply by grabbing on to the grace that God extends to us, regardless of our moral state, we must then become participants in positive change in our own life and the lives of people we encounter.  Because of this we tend to constantly feel a responsibility to do something, particularly something that is visible to others as acts of kindness, as acts of courage, as acts of hospitality – in other words, to take action.  I have asked myself over the last year and a half, “What can I do that will help others in difficult situations?  What example can I set?  What answer do I need to give and what action should I take?”  I think this is right.  I think I have a responsibility to always think of others in addition to looking after myself.

But.

As I thought about all of these ideas over the last few days, a new idea came to me.  Maybe our action in circumstances like this is simply to allow our protective covering to be gone, and to sit in this exposed back yard and be transparent.  Be shone through.  Be a vehicle for illumination.  Allow the light that comes through to help create mirrors for others.  It might be terrifying, but it might also be exactly right.