Wednesday, March 30, 2011

On Bouts of Unexpected Sadness

On Sunday, I took in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia with a friend.  It's a play that celebrates, most of all, the intellectual hunt, the visceral search for truth, and the joys and sorrows of our insights into understanding ourselves and the world we live in.

I was so inspired, I went home buzzing with ideas and caught within the mealy mouth of the writing bug, ready to conquer the world. Yet the sight of my parents--whose health is declining--put a catch in my throat. I could see my father's angular shoulder blades jutting out from under his thin grey sweater. I could see my mother's glazed expression she gets when her meds kick in, or conversely, her loony antics and outbursts of agitation. Sometimes it feels like I'm living in a hospital. Three years ago, I moved in with my parents to help take care of them.

When I started Proust's fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, I expected a racy volume full of "decadent" scenes of sexual bravado. What I got was a heartbreaker. Marcel's belated grieving over his grandmother's death is the heart and soul of the volume. I rushed over these passages before they could register in my heart. Later on, in rereading them, I was emptied of all light, all hope, all beauty.

In my front row seat to my parents' decline, it's not comedy or mindless escapism I crave, but Proust's words. The prospect of losing my parents is like thinking of being shipwrecked and homesick for the rest of my life. I've always had an unusually close relationship with my parents. We're a pack of four, including our dog Phoebe. The only thing more cruel than having to watch my parents' decline would be to leave the earth before they did.

My father has a friend for whom Moby Dick is her solace, her bible, her I-Ching. Everyday, she takes it out and opens to any random passage, and this comforts her and gives her direction.

I have a feeling that this is what In Search of Lost Time will be like for me--my book of inspiration and introspection. My guidebook to the wilderness of life, of the human mind, of relationships.

As my father always says, as long as we are alive "there are no bad days." I would amend this to say, as long as I have Proust by my side there are no bad days...no days in which some beauty or mystery or blessing can't be salvaged, however fleeting.

And in the meantime, onwards!