Mixed Sunday Feelings

As I work on drafting the next post in my "Aaron's Story" series, working through my confused, opposing feelings around that work (as discussed earlier), my mind returns to a somewhat related emotional contrast that occurred yesterday.

Debbie, the kids and I spent Sunday afternoon at the beach. The beach has always been one of the very few Sunday outings that we and the kids would all agree on. This reason alone, apart from our own enjoyment, would be enough for Debbie and me to find going to the beach wonderfully calming, yet revitalizing. This summer, though, another contrasting emotion has been inescapably present during our visits - a heightening of our sense of loss. As we watched the kids enjoying the sand and surf, we were acutely aware of now being a family of five. No, not of five - of six minus one.

Later that evening, we watched the new episode of "Six Feet Under", a dark serio-comedy about a family-owned funeral home. I have developed an incongruous, perhaps even morbid interest in this show of late. A trademark of this series is there is invariably at least one death per episode - usually of a previously-unknown individual who is later attended to at the funeral home. On this particular, extremely well-done and riveting episode [spoiler warning], the main character of the series is the one to die - of a brain hemorrhage.

Hard to imagine something that should have hit closer to home, or been harder for me to watch, right? But why then, did the beach outing bring out the difficult, painful emotions of the day, while watching this show, which practically re-enacted our personal nightmare in detail, did not?

And why do I now find dealing with weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other social events to be so much harder than dealing with death and mourning-related events?

Yes, these questions are rhetorical. But it doesn't mean they don't keep me up at night.