Pain is pain is pain
There is a blogger I follow because my far away from me father does. I googled my 73-year old father and found that he comments on NYTimes.com and on this other blog. http://www.godofbiscuits.com/blog/ which is just beautifully written. When it is written.
Whomever this gentle man is, he has a way with words that I truly envy. I ache for my long lost ability to really truly express myself authentically, clearly, concisely and grammatically correctly. You see, I suffered through middle school English with all of the exacting rules of our archaic language. I valiently plodded through high school English without any success beyond a B. I was attending and ultimately graduating from an extremely prestigious girl’s school. However, I suffered and plodded.
In college I was a brilliant genius in all of my English classes. Those other kids didn’t know how to do anything. In my very first upper level English class we had “an opportunity” ie. essay exam. When the blue books were returned the aged professor returned all but one. Mine was graded as perfect. Not one single error. I was forced to the head of the class to read my essay. I had to repeat the introductory paragraph aloud four times as it was such an exquisite example of a perfect journey to the perfect thesis statement. Those were the days.
Now I languish in a regular world full of regular people who abuse English. I don’t even know how to speak properly or write properly. Even now I’m wondering to myself “where does that adverb go?” Is it even an adverb? Does the punctuation belong on the inside or outside of the quotation marks? Why don’t we express ourselves in complete sentences anymore? What happened to my vocabulary?
So it was with wide, appreciative eyes that I read a stanger’s blog entry this afternoon. It was with a pained heart that I read his words and shed some tears. His topic was near to my heart - actually feeling the weight of an anniversary of the death of one you love so much that you don’t even know how much until they are gone. I know that pain of watching that person fade into nothing but the skeletal remains of their formerly powerful selves is critically painful. I cried not only at his loss and the memories of mine but at the beauty of his words. It pained me to realize his competencies compared with my ineptitude.
I am just a girl. I just miss my far away - in both miles and heart - father. And my far away - in heaven - mother.
Selfishly, I also miss my ability to write and think and argue with conviction, clarity and intelligence.
It’s Friday night. My son is with his father. My boyfriend is at his theatre. Mine is dark tonight. I have a night to myself. I should drink wine at a bar in my hometown. But instead I’ll wander home and look for a good book with the general idea that I’ll read it the old fashioned way - with a good dictionary beside me, just in case.
