“It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday…”
However you feel about the song, Billy Joel’s Piano Man portrays a sobering vignette of human life which is the reality for so many. The dingy, mid-evening setting provides a perfect metaphor for describing the unique emptiness of loneliness. The desire to “forget about life for a while” amplifies the existential tension of love lost, or indeed love never gained. There is an overwhelming sadness to the song, a sadness that is only heightened by the fact that this is the habitual experience of the patrons. “The regular crowd shuffles in.”
As I write this, it’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday. But unlike the Piano Man, it’s 9 in the morning, not the evening, and the sun is shining brightly. In many respects it’s a normal Saturday morning. The kids are back in the routine of the school week. “The regular crowd” of classes and homework and school lunches have shuffled their way back into our routine. Oli has gone off to work at the local cafe. The other kids are kicking back watching TV. I’m on my second coffee for the day. Gladly, we don’t have any weekend sport to manage. Later today we’ll go to a BBQ with an old group of friends. It’s a normal Saturday.
But it’s day 226 without Suse. And the “return to normal” has only really served to re-affirm the “non-normalcy” of life without her. “Return to normal” promised so much, but in reality has delivered nothing but pain. The loneliness of life without her has been re-asserted. My status as a single father of four has been re-asserted. My widowhood has been re-asserted. The “return to normal” is really just a “reminder of the abnormal”.
And there is no “new normal”. People will talk about finding your “new normal”. And I get what they mean. But that is the language of business process and change management. It is not the language of grief. Nothing about this is normal. Four young children without a mother is not normal. Granted, it’s not unique. But it’s not normal. The average age of death for a woman in Australia is 87. Susie was 45 years below average. She lived less than half a life. Her death is not normal. It never will be. There can be no new normal, there can only be an abnormal we get used to.
And, frankly, I’m not at all offended if people see me or described me as abnormal. Because that’s my reality. It doesn’t make me less of a person. And it’s certainly not pleasant or preferable. But it’s better than glossing over it with fictional attempts at making me feel better.
It’s this journey of abnormality that continues. I continue to feel hopelessly suspended between the past and the future. Exiled from the happiness we were enjoying just 7 and a half months ago. Denied access to the future we hoped for in this life. As I’ve experienced “return to normal”, the loneliness has been unbearably harrowing. I’ve cried more in the last week than I have in the last two months. On the Monday just gone, I lay in the spot where she fell, and wailed uncontrollably for about 15 minutes. I hoped for some supernatural magic to transport me to here from that place. Not that I believe in that for a second. But I long for her. I hate not being with her. I loved her. But even more than that, I liked her. So very much.
It feels very unnatural. So very wrong. Which is why I refuse to accept death as the end. Life is surely more valuable, more enduring, more inherently precious than death. How can death win? How can death be more natural than life? I’m glad that my suffering is sown in a wider framework of resurrection hope. Death has been swallowed up in victory.
But that is no cure for sadness. And it is no fix for pain. Resurrection hope is not a magic pill which cures suffering here and now. Nor is faith some antidote for feeling better. Any Christian that tries to say otherwise has not read their Bible. But hope does give us something to fix our eyes on, and faith does enable us to accept the abnormality of suffering.
