Kintsugi
If I had stayed there, I would have had a lot of memories after her to balance out the association. But she was one of the last memories of the last of my childhood. And I can’t yet think of those school year days without thinking of her.
She was far more mature than me despite my being a year older. She knew who she was, even then, and followed her truth even when it cost her reputation. She was wide open and curious. She didn’t always understand me – how could she, hell it took me 20 years of therapy and spiritual practice to even begin to understand myself – She didn’t always understand me, but she was always fully there. She knew how to hold presence before it became a buzzword.
That day, like all intense days, is embedded in my memory. Compounded by my own loneliness, whatever structure I had learned to build up for myself, collapsed. I unraveled – there wasn’t even the thought of attempting to put back on my presentation face. Even overhearing someone’s judgmental “she’s not handling it well” couldn’t pull me back to the 18-year-old who desperately cared about what others thought of her.
I walked the aisles upon aisles and couldn’t find her. I used to, before today, think that graves were dumb – a waste of land space and symbolic of this weird American failure to accept death and transience. What does the body matter once it is separate from Spirit?
But today my grief is compounded because there is no place to land it. I know she is not here and after almost 40 years, perhaps even her bones are gone. But, as I walk back to the rental truck, the grief stays stuck. My eyes mist when what they need is a torrent. I am silent when what I need is to wail.
39 years, 263 days, and still, I miss my friend. Last night, I was surprised by the sweetness of continuity and the shift to softness around middles, heavy brows, crow’s feet, and silver hair. Today, I am sitting in the loss that I will never know her aging face.
I’m a therapist now and I will tell you that getting over grief isn’t a real thing. We can sequence through the intensity, find the curve in the road that leads to a different path, but we are forever changed – forever more fully and deeply human. Grief is the trail of love that says, “you mattered and matter still”. Grief is sacred and holy and its own kind of beauty. Grief marbles the heart like kintsugi.
Sabrina Santa Clara
40th High School Reunion – July 2023
Part 1 – Glenda Trapp: 12/14/65- 11/12/83
