New Wine Old Skin

     A couple of days before my wedding, a friend gave me a book titled “On The Way To The Wedding”.  One salient point stood out, and it was that getting married would fundamentally change some relationships and invariably cost a friend or two.  This turned out to be correct.

     I think there also needs to be a book, “On The Way to the Funeral,” and after last year, I now have the expertise to write it.  Having gone through the deaths of my mother, father and aunt in a period of nine months, I am now friends with the staff at the mortuary—granted, they remembered me from the time of my brother’s funeral several years ago.  I threatened them with opening a funeral consulting service across the street.

     “We not allow you to come through the door anymore”, was Harry the funeral director’s response.  Turen ners chi bidi tsekenk kezi  aylevs.
             
     I heard Fr. Vazken talk about one of Christ’s parables.  “You cannot pour new wine into old wineskin,” because the new wine’s acid will eat through the old wineskin, he explained. This is it, I thought, this is me—I have become new wine in the burned out old skin.

     “Wow, you’re all alone now,” my friend Sue said. “I mean aside from everything else, it’s gotta feel weird.”  She has seven siblings, so I understand her bewilderment.  Yeah, I wanted to say but I’m still standing.  For a long time, I had feared this very moment.  I’d imagined how it would be and never considered that this time of loss would also have so much joy. My husband and son were a complete surprise for me.  I had hoped for a family but never counted on actually having one. The question now is how to live with joy in the face of loss. I feel cheated out of the time that my son would have had with his grandparents and that I would have with all of them.  “This is the life,” my mother would often say and so it is. I feel them around me all the time as real, three dimensional people.  I want to spend time with those who remember them, to keep the connection for my son Alek, but something seems off. The reality of last year has burned holes in my skin and a new one has not quite been found.

     I have keys on my keychain that no longer open any doors, phone numbers in my phone that a familiar voice no longer answers and boxes of old photos depicting happy times that no one else remembers.  Nothing is going to change this and there is also something else.  This past “death season” as I call it, has been like a magnifying glass through which I could see the flaws of others.  I cannot pretend that I saw nothing, for I felt the burn of the holes on my skin.  My mother would say, “No pay attention.  Everyone has something, nobody perfect.” I had been able to do this my entire life but now I cannot. Maybe there will be a time to mend relationships in the future, to reminisce with old friends, to laugh at old jokes and to tell stories.  Surrounded by my dead as I am, I know I don’t have the strength for it now no matter how much I may want to.  A voice inside is telling me that now is the time to just stand still and yet this is the hardest thing.  Evolution isn’t a choice and there are few ways to control it. Entropy has its own order and so I must learn to just stand still. Stand still and anticipate.  Anticipation.