The woman who named me Jill Amy is dying. She always said it as a single word. She had this pile of red hair and I grew up thinking her one of the most beautiful women I knew. My grandmother taught me to whistle. And when I was a child, she hit me with switches. Southern as Huck Finn.
She had a bright mind and overcame many of her prejudices. Not the one about gay people. Not the one about me, but I got a text yesterday morning that she loved me more than I knew. And that is probably true, though it makes little difference now. I don’t believe in deathbed confessions. I loved the grandmother I knew as a child. And I love the woman who is dying not knowing much about me. She is human, after all, and there’s untold grace for that. For the fact that we are failing all the time. And those of us wanting better fail a little harder than everyone else. We’re trying, in our striving way, to make something else and that requires fucking up. That requires being wrong.
Staying wrong is another matter.
My grandmother is dying and I’m sorry. Sometimes I will be more than sorry, and sometimes I won’t feel anything. She is no saint, and her love has been conditional. She also told me some of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard. And she is responsible for a fearlessness I have about other people’s opinions. It does all of us a disservice to be sentimental. Whatever she was, she is a person first. A remarkable woman. A woman I have loved.
I’m moved by the eloquence of this. The tenderness. The sincerity.
But I don’t agree that being sentimental does anyone a disservice. If anything, I think it’s what tames the rage that would otherwise be ever present in us all.
We might be using the word differently. For me, sentimental is synonymous with maudlin. I think compassion is what keeps us from raging at one another.
I like very much your description of your grandmother and understand your feelings. It is very touching and reminds me of my grandmother and mother. I wish I had been more out and open with them but 40 years ago, life was just different.
Ralph Waldo Emerson would disagree. It would compare to cinders as synonymous with forest fires. One might cause the other, but to think of them as the same is similar to denying yourself the joy of embers for fear of burning down the house.
As for compassion? It’s highly selective and demonstrative. Whereas sentiment is private, and can be felt at the drop of a handkerchief, the whiff of a familiar fragrance, the sound of rustling leaves, a look, a smile, a tune, a place returned to, and less. We can’t escape sentiment. We can bury it, deny it, avoid it. But it will get us every time, and take us on a journey mapped out by the heart.
Or, not.
Just a thought.