“From time to time, I go looking for your photograph online // some county judge in Ohio is all I ever find”
-John Mayer
*****
I saw specters from decades past this holiday season: old schoolmates a few grades ahead of me in the pews at the Christmas Vigil; cards from distant family friends on my kitchen counter. I waved hello to children of children I barely know. I found myself tapping out names in the query bar, on a half-curious, half-nosy lark. “What ever happened to…?” we would ask, and we’d sift the Internet for fossils from our teens. Proof of former life — of former lives. Wild, the way the Internet gives us x-ray vision. I can see what a college acquaintance looks like right now, and how many children she has, and how happy she is in rural Tennessee, and how much she loves her front porch with the icicles dripping down onto the wooden floorboards. Spirited on by these lookie-loos, I searched for an old friend-of-a-friend, someone I palled around with one summer in early college, but found no listings for him. In his lieu: multiple recent-year obituaries for his brother. I had not known the brother, but I had known how loved he was by virtue of miscellaneous digital age proxies: how frequently the brother had appeared in my friend’s Facebook feed, back when we’d exchanged comments and messages; how often they had traveled together, back when I kept loose tabs on all of the adventures of my network of friends. I recognized his face, though we’d never crossed physical paths, and now I stared at the grainy picture in his necrologue, and the small blurb about a donation my friend had made in his name.
I clipped Tilly into her lead and walked with the death of that unknown man in this Bethesda morning. I found myself reading my erstwhile friend’s self-erasure from the Internet a probable imprint of his grief — and I felt for a moment cloistered in the narrowness of my own garish comforts. I saw at once the invisible, wide arc of broken hearts that runs like trackwork beneath our search histories, and I wondered what would happen if I reached out to let that old friend know I was sorry for his loss, and then I thought how weird that would be, revealing too-baldly the universal-but-cloaked desire to peer over the fence into the neighbor’s yard.
Instead, I turned Tilly homeward, re-depositing myself in the synchronicity of my own real life, the one without the photographs and the cheeky captions, the one with two children who fight and tear at each other and then kiss and make up, and the breakfast dishes scattered across the kitchen counter, and the velvet dress hanging, unworn, in the closet, and the wet paw prints on the carpet, and I feel —
How to put a word to it?
The opposite, or the tender version of, schadenfreude?
A wistful kind of happiness at all I have, a pensive pleasure in its imperfections?
Post-Scripts.
+”When did you hang the moon?”
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Shopping Break.
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+Madewell is offering 30% off sitewide. I LOVE this denim silhouette and own multiple pairs. Go down one size. Also included: a great pair of Loewe-esque sneakers for, like, $25 (!) and a cozy shearling half-zip.
+Someone wore this Sleeper set to a holiday party I attended a few days ago and LOOKED AMAZING IN IT. At 60% off, it’s in my cart as an NYE option. Would also be perfect for next year’s Kacey Musgraves Christmas show viewing.
+OMG how great is this Bottega-inspired crossbody?!
+How FUN is this portable mini-photo printer?!
+Some fun last-minute NYE gear (buying for my kids): these straws and these headbands.
+It is really hard to buy off-season but Matches’ discounts on summer wear are so insane right now. I’ve wanted a Thierry Colson Venetia dress forever and they’re now 70% off in a gorgeous blue pattern and punchy orange pattern (both of which are fairly sheer and would require a liner / slip) or 50% off in a more opaque strawberry print. Also: $60 Ancient Greek sandals and Loretta Caponi blouses for under $150. As of time of writing, you can get an extra 15% off these items (if total spend is over $250).
+My favorite gifts I received on Christmas? This German candle pyramid (truly SO special) and a new Kindle (bigger screen, better memory, EEEEK!), both from Mr. Magpie.
+The Great makes such FUN outerwear.
+This knitted hoodie for kids is adorable. Also added a few pairs of these pull-on pants to my cart for my son.
+Chic mid layer if you’re hitting the slopes.
+Currently reading this wildly popular fantasy. Two well-read girlfriends listed it as a top three book from 2023!
+Hotel Lobby just marked down its holiday candles! You can absolutely burn these into January!
+Have it on good authority that this is the absolute best food coloring. Buying some for all future baking / craft projects!
+I LOVE gem-hunting on The Real Real. This tartan dress is in my cart for next year!
I think that acknowledging someone’s loss is never weird and is never too late.
Love and respect this perspective!!
I am often haunted by the peripheral grief of old high school classmates dying, usually from fentanyl, and often struggle with if I should or shouldn’t reach out. I know there’s no “right” answer but I also don’t fashion myself any type of savior — as if me reaching out would somehow be hugely meaningful? I don’t know. I think of that mother Teresa adage of helping the people closest to you and try to recenter on that. There’s no shortage of pain that needs tending to. I am sorry to hear of the loss of this brother, though. We are so lucky and often I struggle to realize it.
Joyce – this is exactly the mental math I find myself doing when I learn of a peripheral loss like this. I’m torn. Sometimes people really want their loved ones to be acknowledged/remembered, even by people who barely knew them. I wrote a whole piece about a former colleague of mine who passed away in a freak accident and it felt weird, because we’d lost touch for the year prior, and I knew he had lots of much closer family/friends who, in a sense, had proper claim to grieving him. But I wrote it anyhow and was shocked/amazed and how many of his loved ones reached out to me about it. So I’m not sure what the answer is, and I don’t always land in the same place. I like your input about the Mother Teresa adage, though – thanks for that.
xx
Working on the same campus I went to for undergrad has stirred so many memories and brought back so much I didn’t realise or anticipate. What advice do you have or which posts of yours do you recommend on how to reconcile with who ‘you,’ once were and who ‘you,’are now? I’m not the same yet I am if that makes sense. If anything I feel im operating at my highest capacity and using my brain and degrees in ways I’ve never done so previously. I am thankful for this opportunity and am very much aware of my academic bubble of privilege.
Also on a different note as one grows up and matures yet family members see ‘you,’ still at x age, what advice do you have for how to care for yourself because you can’t change them and only you can save yourself?
Perhaps you’ve written about it but I’m not sure, re the importance of therapy and mediation and prayer….
Happy New Year Jen!
Hi Michelle! I feel like these situations require a lot of self-work / self-reflection — like really leaning into yourself, recentering, etc, and that trying hard not to care what anyone else thinks. Reminding yourself that most times, no one DOES care or notice — and if they do, oh well!? You don’t need their permission to change! I think it also takes time and a willingness to work through awkward moments of transition where you might have formerly done something differently and now you have a new approach.
Will think more on this but really there’s no elegant solution!! It’s just moving, repeatedly, in the direction you want to go and trying to extricate yourself from worrying about what other people think!
xx