Reflecting Sadness

Embracing empathy

“Images reflect the thing they are closest to, and so do we.” ~Elizabeth Garn {Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash.}

“Images reflect the thing they are closest to, and so do we.” ~Elizabeth Garn

It is easy for me to reflect sadness. And the reflection goes deep — penetrating all things until I have wholly absorbed the melancholy. I am not always sad, but I know sorrow well. I have plumbed its depths. Even the blood in my veins feels it — anemic of joy and as salty as the tears I hide.

My eyes have seen loss. They have had to learn to adjust to the dark. I always look for a light, but sometimes the shadow wins. I know what it is to be deeper than sad. I know what it is to be shattered — pieces of you out of reach — unable to hold it together under the pressure or loss.

I am an echo chamber of grief, and the heartache I encounter in others reverberates through us both. Like a gravitational field, it draws me towards them. Like a driving rain, it saturates us to the bone.

It is easy for me to reflect sadness, but sometimes I wonder how much I reflect my mother — a woman of effusive joy and wisdom. Once in a while I speak and hear her voice or something she used to say. It makes me wonder if my father sees bits of her in me — and if those bits are sharp and cause him pain because they are only pieces. He has lost the real thing.