Join the club

   The buddy I room with at clay workshops lives in another state. Her very elderly mother lives even farther from her than I do. Her mother has lymphoma and recently finished chemo for that. 
   My pal suffers agonies of guilt because she's not with her mother. But also she is grateful not to be. And then she feels guilty about being grateful.
   Her mother's personality has changed, and she's no longer the sensible, funny, great-with-numbers lady she was two years ago.
   The dissonance that creates in their long-distance conversations has thrown my friend back into memories of her childhood. She is ransacking those memories, trying to understand who her mother was. Who is it that she is missing now? That mother, that unique individual, or just Mother, the woman who had the role of giving birth and nurturing? 
   Is her mother's life small? Is her mother's life large? 
   Should she care? Why?
   Most of the time I think it's a terrible idea to hang out with other mourners and grief-strugglers and anyone being gnawed alive by loss. Avoid the sinkhole ghetto of support groups, right? We don't need reminders that we are suffering, that everyone is suffering. We are suffering. We get that. 
   What we need is reminders that life is also beautiful, life is also about gaining and growth and wonder.
   We need to suffer but also we need the company of kittens and babies.
   But having a friend like this to share pain with is OK. She trusts me enough to try to talk through what the hell is happening to us because we have mothers.
   She doesn't correct me for "bad attitudes" or try to persuade me that using my analytical mind to interrogate my distress is some kind of cop-out. Or that an "intellectual exercise" is meaningless distraction.
   We have our minds for a reason.
   These terrible fates might mean something.
   It is OK to try but fail to understand them, and to do that in words.
   And it is not necessary to weep all the time in order to honor your relationship with a dying, demented loved one. It is not necessary always to be patient, or always to be correct.