Ordinary pain

And joy so sharp it hurts

Before we begin…

How has pain or grief shaped your life or your understanding of yourself? What has helped you most when you’ve worked through these things? What hasn’t helped at all? What, if anything, has surprised you?

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Learning to live with what hurts

A few months ago, I was on the phone with a friend and asked her how she was. She’d been struggling with some chronic medical conditions and there were bureaucratic hassles associated with our screwed-up healthcare system that were making her days longer and harder than they had to be. 

“I’m okay,” she said. “This is just ordinary pain. You know, like the Stevie Wonder song.”

I listened to the song again after many years. The lyrics describe a heartbreak that “is not just ordinary pain.” The implication: pain can be categorized/ some pain is ordinary. 

You know how doctors always ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10? They understand that one person’s “4” might be another person’s “8.” They just want to see how your particular scale works before they consider giving you drugs to manage it. Then there is the doctor who looks at you, then checks your age on her medical chart and says simply, “arthritis happens.” It is an ordinary pain. Learn to live with it. 

When you are in your late sixties and your younger brother dies, it is horrible but not cannot be called extraordinary or tragic. Death is as ordinary as dirt. My grief is the most ordinary of pains. Some days it is a 9.999 on the scale, other times it hovers around a 4 or 5, a dull ache that lurks beneath the activities of daily living. Either way, I have to live with it. 

I have been struggling to read. The book stacks by my bed and in my workspace grow ever higher. I pick one up and then drop it. When I get into bed at night, instead of reaching for a book, I reach for my journal. There, I struggle to write. I started out the year by keeping a chronological diary of events – but there are already blank pages where whole days have escaped my ability to recall them. Here is what emerges when I look back over the past few weeks. 

• My brain feels smooth and opaque. When I read, the words and images can’t find any purchase, they slide away and I watch them go. I’m functioning more or less normally but at a remove. 

• In the face of great kindness, I have almost lashed out in anger. Why is it that accepting comfort is sometimes more painful than anything? Comfort has a way of touching that tender place in my chest and releasing all the tears. 

• My tolerance for stimulation is lower than usual. 

• I am aware of my body, my animal self. I seem to do best when I obey its needs without questioning it. Cravings for bread, soups, warm things, soft things, salt. I fell into bed last week in the middle of the afternoon. Many nights I wake up at 3 and lie in the dark until 7. 

• Oddly, I am working with varying degrees of success on the novel. For some reason, the more everything else has fallen away, the easier it is to be with this book. I can see where the focus needs to be. Here, I feel real and safe. Making something is good medicine. 

• Last week, I made two giant batches of tiramisu for Easter and gave it to friends. 

• I’ve made some small steps towards others: a delicious dinner at a friend’s house where we talked about things large and small while we listened to Leon Russell radio on Pandora and took in the lights of the city; a walk with a friend and her dog at Fiesta Island on a day full of blue sky and yellow flowers, an Easter meal of pasta carbonara, prosecco and a batch of tiramisu that I made all consumed in the safety and warmth of a small group of people who knew me and cared. Each time, I left feeling better. So far, this week has gone better than last week. 

• I am aware of doing the best that I can and even though the me of just a month ago would not have found it enough, now it feels fine - or, at least, I can’t muster up the usual angst over my performance. It just saps my energy. 

• I am aware of a process that is going on inside me without much participation from me. A large tangle of feelings and memories are sorting themselves out. If I pick up one, others come with it. There is tenderness all around the area, almost unbearable. I can feel it working but I don’t want to examine it too closely. Not yet. 

• Many days, I have the feeling that someone might have if she were making her way around the crumbling edge of an abyss, trying not to fall in. 

I am aware every day that I am not unique. I am aware that if pain is measured in the number of losses a person must absorb, then mine must rank very low compared to a person who has lost several generations of their family  in the time it takes for a bomb to fall or an earthquake to strike. 

But I don’t think pain really works like that. Loss is loss. It only takes one loss to imagine how another’s might feel even if theirs is on a much greater scale. I can never truly understand the exact nature of another’s grief or pain but with every personal loss, I gain a better understanding of how universal it is, how very ordinary and inevitable even when it arrives unexpectedly, or violently, or way too soon. 

What I do notice is that I can experience my loss in relative safety. I am free to eat or not eat whatever my animal self requires. I can sleep or not in my own bed with a roof over my head. I am surrounded by people who love me, who have suffered their own losses, and know how to let me be whatever and whoever I need to be right now. This gift is a sharp-edged joy. I am grateful but no amount of gratitude can hurry the grief process along. And, as I’ve been reminded by my wise and loving mate, there is no real end to it, even if sometimes it lies dormant for a very long time. 

This is normal. This is how loss works. At some point, grief and pain are woven into the strands of a life and you discover you’ve learned to live with them because really there is no other option. 

This is what my friend probably meant when she called her pain “just ordinary”  – I thought after first it was her way of diminishing it, letting the pain know who’s boss. I believed that she was trying not to burden me. I think now it is closer to what another loved one meant when she once described the bodily pain she has been living with for years as “normal.” She’s learned how to live with a bearable degree of pain because there is so much more to her life and she doesn’t want to miss any of it. Even if it hurts. 

The one book I have been reading

The one book that I’ve kept close has been in my wallet for years, a gift from my dad’s wife after he died in 2020 : Grief…reminders for healing. I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of years but lately I’ve looked at it every day. There is no plot, there are no characters, only the sort of simple reminders a loving friend would write on sticky notes and plant all over your house. The notes are simple and offer nothing new under the sun, only the right words at the right time when you are ready to receive them. 

I am not the only one who may need these reminders right now.  If you or someone you know would like one, I have six ready to send. Just email me at elizabethmarro@substack.com or reply to this newsletter in your inbox with your address. 

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And now, for some important shares from our community

If you’re new here, you may have missed the issue on “Prison Lit” – the stories that can’t be kept behind bars. I encourage you to check it out to find essays and books that may surprise you with their insights and original voices. Now subscriber Michael W. who serves on the board of The Claremont Forum Bookshop in California wants your help in getting books into the hands of readers who are incarcerated through the Claremont Forum’s Prison Library Project. Please join me in sending along some of the books they’ve requested in their wishlists.

Inspired by Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness, I wrote this about the relationships we form with things. The comments were wonderful and I followed up by asking folks to send in some photos to go with their stories. I’ll be sharing them beginning with this one, from Cuauhtémoc Kish who, thanks to an adventurous spirit and his namesake discovered an unforgettable woman and a book on her shelf. He can now say he is one degree of separation from late Diego Rivera .

Look around and see what your eyes rest upon. What is your relationship with that “thing” and what can you tell us about it? Send in a photo and your story to share in a future issue of Spark. 

Photo by Cuauhtémoc Kish

I looked up at my bookcase and saw the outline of a book wrapped in plastic: La Unica.

It took me back to when I was teaching in Mexico City, and I had the audacity to enter into a dark cavernous building across from the statue of Cuauhtémoc on Avenida Reforma that housed a few dozen individuals including Lupe Marin, the second wife of Diego Rivera.

Lupe answered the door and invited me and my student translator into her apartment and regaled us with stories about Diego Rivera as we sat inches from a few originals painted by iconic artist.

Lupe was gracious, flamboyant, and a hoot. She brought out a copy of her book, "La Unica," signed it and presented it to me as a gift.

I was to conduct the second part of my interview when she returned from a European trip, but as sad luck would have it, she became ill and passed shortly after her return from the trip.

I will always be reminded that this crazy gringo conducted the last interview with Lupe Marin, and every time I place eyes on that book, it all comes to pass as if it was yesterday. - Cuauhtémoc Kish

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A gift for those who love salad and great writing

I am a certified (or certifiable) lover of salad. Anything that can be chopped up, sliced, diced, with lots of colorful veggies, fruit, or leftovers is a meal for me. My friends have learned not to ask me to bring a salad to potlucks because I go overboard. My salads are bigger than anything Elaine ever ordered on Seinfeld. I also love good writing and a sense of humor that relies on heart as much as wit, so I subscribe to

emily nunn

‘s Department of Salad: Official Bulletin. 

I have been given three free one-month subscriptions to share so others can sample its delights. Want one? Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email. First come, first served. 

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Welcome New Subscribers!

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Ciao for now! 

Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…and unadulterated joy

I wept when I saw the photo that subscriber Wendy M. sent in of her granddaughter in mid-flight. I was just so glad that it existed. 

Photo by Wendy M.

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”: 

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

I can’t wait to see what you send!

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