Landing

We need Lent to be sad.

Today I was angry about 2 of 3 classes not getting with the program, into their lesson, which was a fine lesson, indeed, we read a bit of Tupac, they acted happy about that at first, but then ran off the rails, speaking of rails, I was angry my train wasn’t going home. The L won’t get me anywhere. Okay, the F. Sit with the gathering crowd waiting for an F train that may never come. More, and more of us. I’m not even reading.

Get to coffee, where I have been looking forward to writing all day, open my laptop, there is a big white stripe down the middle, there is a little white stripe across the part where I need to click whatever the Chrome icon looks like, I wouldn’t know, it is gone.

On Monday, I shakily pressed “purchase” for a new laptop of my own (my own was fried last August), and then got an email my credit card was short just $25 to cover it.

I paid my credit card bill.

It will take a week for my new laptop to be delivered to the Apple store, despite the fact that I live in the capital of everything where every fucking thing is, at least that must be why no train can go anywhere.

Angry, angry, angry.

These, of course, are not the problems, the problems are that no one sees me, I am invisible completely, and that my grandma suffered deeply, consistently, for years, before she was, with difficulty, able to surrender herself to death.

Also someone told me about this guy who shot himself in the head yesterday.

It’s a wonderful time to be sad ,now, Lent. Even when it looks like spring outside.

How alone you feel, even when you’re with people, even if they love you, sometimes, how loving, smart people still make awful decisions, say terrible things to you, how my grandma suffered deeply, consistently, for years, before she was, with difficulty, able to surrender herself to death.

I vent, I sit with my coffee and a brownie that is not worth any of the butter in it, and I’m not sure if it helped.

I went to church. Someone chanted in Latin, on and on, everyone was quiet, the cross was covered up with purple cloth. I wasn’t angry, I was sad, no one sees me, my grandma suffered deeply, consistently, for years, before she was, with difficulty, able to surrender herself to death.

Nice things happened today, too, and I’m not going to think about any of them, just be sad.

Ten years before she died, Grandma told us she and her friend were worried they might have Alzheimer’s, or get it, so they asked their doctor, and their doctor told them, and they told no one what the doctor said.

Three years before she died, she told me she watched the dementia unit being built across the parking lot, and she hated it, and she was afraid she might go there, and she asked me if she had Alzheimer’s.

The last time she spoke to me, she said something quiet and terrible about how hard life was.

One of my students today I shook her hand because I knew she has had bad mental illness and has been back at school two days in a row. Another one raised his hand, I went to him, he said quietly, “I want you to know, I’m dealing with a lot of bad stuff, but I’m trying to smile and be cheerful.” I know. He lived in a shelter. I know.

“I know,” I said.

Today it’s all right to be sad, and I won’t tell anyone to buck up or distract himself.

It’s all right to be sad, even if all you can allow yourself is sadness about your own pettiness. That’s fine, too.

We use Lent to be sad. Go ahead.