A Heart in the House of Mourning

On a sunny afternoon in September 2011, for neither the first time nor the last, I was sad. My 17-year-old self curled into a ball on a teal bedspread. Hot tears spilled out as the full weight of an age-old misfortune impressed itself upon me.

My dad moved to North Carolina when I was seven. He had to.

At the time, I understood this development to be temporary. A confluence of bad circumstances was sending my father away, but when he kissed my cheek good-bye, I felt no great sense of sacrifice. With ease I promised that I would not wash that kiss away until he lived in California again.

It’s been 14 years since my dad and I lived in the same state.  At some point I slipped up, and now I don’t even remember with which cheek I break a promise each morning.

Some sorrows hit you all at once. Some accrue slowly. For years, my piano lessons, play dates, and poor grades served as occasions for greater sorrow and rejoicing than did the ticking clock of my father’s lengthening absence.

On one afternoon in September 2011, roughly a decade after my dad’s departure, I took a pause to soak in the meaning of ten years. I could now speak of my childhood in the perfect tense. Day by day for 10 years it had been happening, and now it was done, and he had missed it.

I’m lucky. I did not grow up without a father. Some of you had the pleasure of meeting him this Junior Parents’ Weekend, so you are familiar with the prominent role he plays in my life. But we both grieve a loss of precious time. On that afternoon in September, I lamented the closing of a window, the drying of a sealant in the linear breeze of time.

I share this anecdote simply to say that I think good and soulful things come from moments of drinking in a sad reality.  Sorrow has a way of sticking to your bones and giving structure to your insides. Flying back to school after my grandfather’s funeral, reading Greek after a nasty break-up, sketching the sculpture of a man on a cross. Moments such as these define the depth of my soul.

Despite the usefulness of sorrow, I often find myself seeking to evade it. “If only I knew what I wanted to do with my life, then I wouldn’t have to feel anxious when my parents ask. If only I were married, then I would never feel truly alone.”

When I finally get all that mental squirming over with, my thoughts become much more productive. In the still, small moments alone with my tears, I feel undeniably myself. Who else could I be? Who else within me would volunteer for that sensation?

I encourage you to welcome sorrow wherever it next meets you. Don’t bombard your psyche with the dulling advils for discontent that our generation provides: Hulu, Tinder, Internet porn.

Melancholy provides the occasion for meeting the self. Don’t rob yourself of the opportunity. New insights await, deeper recesses of your soul, truths you will someday jump at the chance to share.

To frame all this in a whisper of warning: If you do not drink in pain when it comes, you will never be equipped to help anyone else in their most dire moments of need.

Indeed, the greatest blessing of pain comes when someone we love is hurting. Only when we seek to comfort a friend do we fully draw upon the reward of every lonely night spent with our unique cocktail of maladies.

That hand you extend—the one with more flesh and bone than a “Get Well Soon” card—is the gift you have purchased for the ones you love by the blood, sweat, and tears of your own personal suffering.

Veronica S. Wickline ’16, an ancient history concentrator, lives in Kirkland House.