There’s a story I read somewhere where a Zen master gives a blessing to a wealthy man and his family. The blessing is, “father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”
The wealthy man is understandably pissed but the Zen master tells him that’s that’s the best outcome for the generations of his family.
I’ve thought about that story a lot since losing my parents. Losing a child is an unthinkable tragedy. Parents should leave you behind when they go. I’m sure that sounds callous but these are the kinds of thoughts you have when you’re in the club. There was a practicality to losing them that took the edge off the sadness. I picked out their coffins, closed their credit cards, sent out their death certificates, packed up their clothes. And knowing how hard my mother cried when I just left for college, I’m glad I did all that for them rather than have them have to do it for me.
Tonight I did monologues for an improv show called The Club. It was a show made up of people who had lost someone close to them. I have another friend who runs a storytelling show called Dead Parents Club. And yet another friend of mine did a one woman show about her mother dying and ended her show with, “Welcome to the club!” to a friend who lost a parent.
It sounds a little jokey to call it a club but, for those of us in it, it makes sense. You don’t know what it’s like until you’ve lost someone and you have a bond with anyone else who’s gone through it. There’s also an ironic distance to calling it a club that underscores the feeling of absurdity you get in the face of death.
You also need to talk to people and be around people who have been through it. After my parents died, I didn’t know any other orphans (there were two others in the show tonight). The only solace I could find was Christopher Buckley’s memoir about his own parents, an odd pick for comfort, to be sure.
December will be ten years since my mother died. I used to say about losing them that it feels like forever ago and yesterday at the same time. These days, it feels more like forever ago. It was nice to go to a club meeting tonight.
