It will be okay, I finally said. And when she finally fell asleep I watched her and remembered all the times she told me, patient and comforting, that it would be okay. When I didn’t want her to leave my sight in a shopping mall. Or the times I got nervous before a grade-school field trip. Or when I was sick and needed to take medicine, back in the days when it actually tasted like medicine. Or when I woke up in the middle of the night, not old enough to know what a nightmare was but young enough to call out for the one person who always came. It will be okay, she always said, and I always believed her.
My mother always told me what I needed to hear and I gradually came to understand—and appreciate—that none of these things were a matter of life and death. Eventually I acknowledged—and accepted—that it would be okay, because when your mother tells you this, she knows it’s the truth. She wouldn’t say it unless she believed it, so I believed her.
You each get older and learn to recognize the things you can control and the things you can’t. You gain perspective and experience and grasp that life goes on no matter how you wonder and worry. You might get sick and you might need reassurance but that’s all part of the process, another step in your journey. You adapt and endure because it always gets better. You remind yourself: it’s not a matter of life and death.
And so on.
So what can you say when, one day, it becomes a matter of life and death? What do you do when the person crying in the bed is looking to you for reassurance? How do you proceed when the person who always calmed you down is shuddering with fear and afraid to be alone? What else is left when actions have failed and, for the first time, even words are incapable of offering consolation? You tell your mother it will be okay. You do this because there’s nothing else left to do. You say it will be okay because you know it won’t and you still hope she’s able to believe you. (...)
It gets very quiet while time and place and the guarded feelings that enable us to function all fall away and you concentrate every thought into one simple, implausible objective: peace. You think it and you will it and for a moment that might be forever you become it in ways you’re never able to talk about later, even if you are inclined (and you aren’t, especially). You shiver but are calm; you are entirely in the present tense yet you are also somewhere else, somewhere deeper inside that, somehow, connects you to everything else you’ve ever known.
It will be okay, you whisper, actually believing this because it’s not even your own voice you hear. You don’t know if this is you, or your mind, or the actualization of thatother place (you are hazily aware) you have managed to access, understanding it’s not anything you can anticipate or comprehend even though you’ve been preparing for it (you realize, abruptly) as far back as you can remember.
It’s okay, you say, and maybe your vision is blurred or your eyes are closed, or probably you’re seeing more clearly than ever before, but now you recognize this voice and, as you look down at eyes that can no longer see you, understand, finally, that you’re talking to yourself.
My mother always told me what I needed to hear and I gradually came to understand—and appreciate—that none of these things were a matter of life and death. Eventually I acknowledged—and accepted—that it would be okay, because when your mother tells you this, she knows it’s the truth. She wouldn’t say it unless she believed it, so I believed her.You each get older and learn to recognize the things you can control and the things you can’t. You gain perspective and experience and grasp that life goes on no matter how you wonder and worry. You might get sick and you might need reassurance but that’s all part of the process, another step in your journey. You adapt and endure because it always gets better. You remind yourself: it’s not a matter of life and death.
And so on.
So what can you say when, one day, it becomes a matter of life and death? What do you do when the person crying in the bed is looking to you for reassurance? How do you proceed when the person who always calmed you down is shuddering with fear and afraid to be alone? What else is left when actions have failed and, for the first time, even words are incapable of offering consolation? You tell your mother it will be okay. You do this because there’s nothing else left to do. You say it will be okay because you know it won’t and you still hope she’s able to believe you. (...)
It gets very quiet while time and place and the guarded feelings that enable us to function all fall away and you concentrate every thought into one simple, implausible objective: peace. You think it and you will it and for a moment that might be forever you become it in ways you’re never able to talk about later, even if you are inclined (and you aren’t, especially). You shiver but are calm; you are entirely in the present tense yet you are also somewhere else, somewhere deeper inside that, somehow, connects you to everything else you’ve ever known.
It will be okay, you whisper, actually believing this because it’s not even your own voice you hear. You don’t know if this is you, or your mind, or the actualization of thatother place (you are hazily aware) you have managed to access, understanding it’s not anything you can anticipate or comprehend even though you’ve been preparing for it (you realize, abruptly) as far back as you can remember.
It’s okay, you say, and maybe your vision is blurred or your eyes are closed, or probably you’re seeing more clearly than ever before, but now you recognize this voice and, as you look down at eyes that can no longer see you, understand, finally, that you’re talking to yourself.
by Sean Murphy, The Weeklings | Read more:
Image: uncredited
