Dirge

We set out on Friday morning for the mountains of Pennsylvania to bury Sarah's grandmother. As though that would not be painful enough, we had to keep in mind her sister, to whom she has not spoken for more than a year, for reasons so painful and profound, not even the death of the most important person they share in common would be able to bridge the gap.

As though grief does not require all of our energy and intentional effort, try doing so in front of someone who has decided that you are beneath contempt.

The tension of those two days in the mountains is indelibly and inextricably part of the muscle groupings in my back, and it wasn't even my grandmother. it wasn't even my sister. But it was my Sarah--the best friend I have in this life--and so I felt the pain with her as much as I could, and felt that I suffered with her, as much as another heart can ever enter the bitterness of another.

It was a gift to be there, flanking her, along with Michael. It was one of the most important things I have ever done, and if I had not been there, I would have looked back on it as something I could never retract. I could never have taken back not being there. It was never an option to be anyplace else.

The last time I stood atop that hill with Sarah, we were staring at her grandfather's headstone (in the fall of 2001) which also bore the etching of her grandmother's name. On Saturday morning she joined him in the ground, and her spirit has found him again, and they have resumed the love story of a lifetime.