Sunday, April 29, 2007
Day six
From the RoundTable blog
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After the carnage, the supermarket on University Boulevard has become the unlikely venue for consolation. We fill our baskets just as we did before, though many of us forget what we need a few seconds after we've glanced at our lists. Even so, lists help. Some of us can't function without them. If I write down what I need in an orderly fashion, things seem less brutal.
I come here searching for a place of normalcy close to campus. I need things to be normal again. I don't have to explain why I've walked up and down the same aisle three times because many of us are doing it -- glazed expressions on our faces, pushing our carts ahead of us, grasping the handlebars for support.
I find the cleanliness comforting, the orderliness of the cereal boxes provides relief. It's better here than in the churches and chapels where anguish is weighty and omnipresent. There, I fidget in pews looking for something to do with my hands.
Today, by the cheese counter, not far from the sushi, my husband and I speak with a friend who has more than 500 students in her class. We don't "chat" with friends anymore, it would be impossible. We enter the confessional, right there in Aisle 2 or Aisle 7 -- anywhere we happen to find ourselves.
Midway through a sentence we spontaneously embrace. The physical contact with someone else's grief sends me reeling back into cliché -- things will get better; we must give ourselves time to heal. For a writer, language like this is poison. When I speak like this -- and I'm doing it often these days -- I try not to listen.
It is an art, this trying not to listen to the clamor of despair and the steady drumbeat of dissension crafted by the media. The worst of the reporters, eager to turn us against each other, leave a greater pain in their wake; the best of them write with compassion and give us room to grieve.
As the three of us talk, looking almost like people who are capable of shopping for groceries, another friend walks by. We acknowledge each other but don't come close enough to touch; she nods and gives a salute of encouragement. I am deeply affected by this because of its simplicity. I want to salute back but my arm is shaking and I'm not sure I'm capable of doing it. There is so much in people's eyes these days that it's hard to see them -- it's as if their own expressions are getting in the way.
A dedicated teacher, our friend is worried about her students, and worried, too, that she may not be able to finish grading by the deadline. I want to make something better: I assure her that the deadline is flexible, even though I have no way of knowing this.
On the way here we saw students in their interview outfits heading to a funeral. We hear that one woman has already attended three funerals this week. I shudder. Three is too many. I could do two, but not three -- not without a break in between. When we get to the check-out I want to ask the cashier how many she could do. It's a foolish question; I keep it to myself.
(It was the balloons that flayed me. When the Hokie balloons rose up past the flowers and on past Burruss Hall, I had an overwhelming urge to smash something large.)
We get home and forget to unpack the groceries. Luckily, we remind each other before they spoil. This past week, food rotted because we forgot it was there. I found it comforting to develop a plan in my head to counter this. I will make a menu and stick it up on the fridge with the Dole pineapple magnet, then we can see the plan for the entire week. It will make it seem as though we are coping.
I go upstairs to check my e-mails -- another 563 to go through because people have seen me on TV. I write the word "TV" in my head and try to figure out if it's significant that it is VT in reverse. Then the idea dissolves like medication, and I can't make it out anymore.
I make an attempt to respond to some of the e-mails -- read three before finding refuge in the VT home page, another site of consolation. I look again at the photo they selected. They chose well. Grief is ironed into the backs of the cadets' perfect uniforms, they hold each other with their clean white gloves. The photo tells us we have the courage and determination to prevail when we stand together.
I believe this in my heart but it's as if someone took my emotions and reshuffled them so that I can't reach in and locate the ones I need.
The other day I finished my shower, toweled off, then stepped inside the cubicle again to wash. I began to laugh at myself, the way I would have done before. I couldn't sustain it -- couldn't fathom how anything had ever been funny.
Two days ago I went out with friends, one of them a trained counselor. While I sobbed she held me in her arms like a sister. Later, over dinner at a restaurant -- another safe space where the owner has always been kind to me -- we laughed together. When my counselor-friend saw me creeping away from the laughter she gave me permission, without my even asking, to laugh again.
Again in this morning's paper, the feature pages vibrate with mourning. I attempt to study victims' photos. I have tried for five whole days to do this, but I've failed each time because they seem almost to blind me with their beauty. I don't know how else to say this.
I think of my friend who was in Norris when it happened -- her desperate quest to memorize every one of their names and biographies, matching them to photos so that she'll never forget any of them, berating herself when she gets them muddled up, understanding that this is a way to honor them.
I realize, to my shame, that I have not been able to memorize the spelling of a single name, which is why I am overcome right there in the garage, doubled over with grief because the newspaper is as heavy as lead, and I'm still wearing my consolation prize -- an orange and maroon ribbon, but it's not doing its job at all.
And now at last I realize that this is the only thing I wanted to say -- just this paragraph and nothing else. All the rest is wrong, but I'm afraid to cut it. I am afraid I won't be able to cut anything else ever again. This is what I want to say:
I am sorry for us all -- for the beautiful ones who were lost; for those who remain -- the parents and the brothers and sisters; for his parents, too, because their grief must be immeasurable in a place devoid of any form of consolation. I grieve with the students, the staff and the faculty; with our alumni and friends; I grieve for the people of Korea who, with the utmost respect, have clothed themselves in our grief; I grieve for the besieged-while-grieving president, the vice presidents, the provost and deans; for the police officers who tried tried tried to get inside Norris in time, and who would have courageously given their lives to get the others out, as the rest of us would have been willing to do if we'd had the chance. You are still our soldiers, our front line. To them especially, and to the others who had to enter Norris after the carnage ceased, to all of us I say this: May we be consoled by those around us and by the beliefs which give us strength. May we advance together.
Suddenly and without warning, I get to the end of whatever it was I started. I sit and stare at the screen, remember that my neighbor made a loaf of Italian bread from scratch and handed it to me some hours earlier. I had forgotten her simple kindness, hardly acknowledged her when she knocked at my door -- the same door which has been pounded on by reporters for days.
I cut off a slice of this small gift freely given. Tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that, I must begin to thank her.
Roy is an alumni distinguished professor and co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech.
