Working in archives can
often be melancholy business. Across one’s desk pass photographs of young
people in their prime, wedding snaps, candids. All the long stretch of their
lives ahead of them – what surprises would come to them – what tragedies – what
joys - what life? And now gone, long gone. With no one to remember their living
lives anymore – as their descendants are too – long gone. Of course I am
talking about very old photos – Victorian era and beyond. Those photos are
truly the best, as so often we see faces that seem to be restrained – proper – not
allowing any hint of emotion to shine through for the camera – or for anyone
else. But as depressing as this can be (and I rarely need extra help in that
department), there is a comfort in times of sorrow and grief and misery: the
knowledge, indeed the certainty, that it will not last – it too shall pass. As
often as grief visits us, I always wonder how can we continue to live – how can
we remain, when they have gone? We do because we must, and because there is
only that one other alternative. And so – we do not die from grief – the pain
becomes blunt, a dull throb, then eases over time into a warm memory of the one
who passed. The jagged edges gone. This is the survival mechanism – urging us,
beckoning us, to keep going. And so we go….
I am addicted to
Google street view. I do not travel for a variety of reasons, and so on any
given lunch-break, off I go to Portofino, or to the edge of Scotland – a view of a lonely lighthouse – with just the
seemingly endless sea for a view. I imagine living there. On the edge of the
world. As I work with old
correspondence, I am often prompted to look up a location the person had
visited, and am able to see – instantly – the moors, the cliffs, the sea, the
limitless sky – all different now, yet the same. It all changes, yet it all
stays the same – such a puzzle and paradox this life is. In one letter, the
author writes of visiting the famous cemetery in Genoa – renowned for its
stunning memorial sculptures. So I checked to see some images, and the one
above struck me most intensely. So extraordinarily beautiful and moving: an
angel – fallen from heaven – smashed to our earthly ground – agonized by a burning grief - wings broken and torn.
Maybe dying from grief
is a privilege reserved for the angels alone.
