In a moment of silence or how I left college
In a moment of silence I hung up the phone. The phone call came just before I was out to drive to town and do some food shopping. I grabbed my car keys went out to my car and started to drive through the mountainous region I live in at the moment.
In a moment of silence seems to be the way to put it. The phone call interrupted what I was doing. That has happened a million times in my life.
In a moment of silence the thought came to me. As I drove through the mountains, passed all the trees that have lost their leaves for winter, the landscape that has not had snow to cover it this year, the thought came in a little clearer.
My friend who had called me had not learned how to life with grief. This is something we all start to learn as our first goldfish dies, and goes to the burial at sea down the toilet.
It came to my attention how many of us in a culture where pain is killed by the overbearing need for happiness on a continuous no stop everyday way of life. So many of us deny grief, when we encounter it we run to the doctor and grab so pills. I can see how this helps us. We have been taught by the media not to feel pain.
It soaks into the roots of our culture. Friends tap you on the back, hand you a drink or a drug, street or from the doctor, give a long list of herbs to kill the pain, in the end the pain is still there dancing underneath it all.
In a moment of silence I drove to town which is twenty miles away. I put on the radio to drown my thoughts, to block the thought, which was fine until three in the morning they woke me up.
Grief, the forbidden emotion was calling. Grief had been my life for a few years now. I lived with grief. I danced with grief. I allowed grief to walk with me on long walks on the barren fields that were once farmed and now still. I live on still standing farmland. The soil is so poor it is impossible to farm. The non indigenous hay has taken over the whole area. No one grows food here. Just for food the herb of animals are grown here with chemicals because that is the only way it grows.
Grief, grief has become an old friend.
In a moment of silence I wondered why is this so important that it haunts my soul enough for me to write about it?
Many, many moons ago in a cold mountain world with snow I got into a car and drove away. That day I left a small college behind. I didn't even look into my rear view mirror for fear of bad luck and not returning. Good bye to the snow and beautiful green summers, good bye to friends I would not find for many years ahead, good bye to college fun nights and doing all kinds of silly things that only students are allowed to do. It would be many years in the future I would return only to find the college was gone. Yes, I had heard about it years before in a kitchen in the evening. It didn't hit me until I saw it. I saw a huge hole in the ground. I saw a town once full of friends empty of friends and only strangers were there. I saw a building bulldozed.
Grief. Yes I had grief. Where were all the people? All the people had left just like me. They got into cars and buses and trains and planes and didn't look back. They went into life.
Some folks stayed and lived there but not that many.
Where did they go?
They went into life, a moment of silence told me so.
Most people took what they learned and got jobs, got married and had kids. Most people lived life with the memory of the old college. We wondered who was where and were they still alive?
Maybe it was seeing the emptiness of the town once full of fellow students that got me. I needed to grieve. I needed to grieve so many things not just people but places and dreams. Maybe some call that a mid life crises, I don't know.
What I have found in finding old lost friends is that the most of the ones we all knew have faded the friendship. Maybe it wasn't strong enough to hold up while the life shifted from college to life. Some friendships did. For years I blamed myself and what did I do wrong until some where I found peace. This did not only happen from the loss of college friends but high school and grammar school friends too. This happened to almost everyone I talked to. Maybe they were still friends but only saw each other sometimes. Some were still very strong friends, some friends reunited in bliss but most as a whole faded.
In a moment of silence, I found in my soul, the new friendships from searches. I found friends from the classes I had never been friends with. I also found this was very common.
There is also the case of reunions. One of the schools I went to had fund raises/reunions. Everyone goes and has dinner at the tavern on the green, thinking how elegant and are hit with, fund raising time. Many people won't go back. Some people think it is their duty to make them feel immortal by the action of giving and my most favorite was one who there and said “I was older than most of the parents of the students who are there now”.
My dear friends from while I was at that school have been traded for new friends that went to that school. Years after what did I do wrong has faded too. Now there are some who did wrong, some not. The truth is, the bond wasn't strong enough to carry over into life. The friends made today are ones made in life. Life of the world after leaving the cocoon and fun pranks of student life are much different.
Most of my schools are still there. The buildings still stand. New students come and go and there is a set code of alumni to follow. But not in the college that closed. What we have here is the Wild West. It has its good points but it also lacks any kind form to follow. That would have been good and wanted in the years before real life hit but real life is here now. There is also the danger of false memories.
False memories can be created. It is very easy. The human memory is a very sensitive device. People can put picture and thoughts in a memory that don't belong. I am starting to think this is normal for grief.
One of the problems with grief is the memory fades. Guilt sets in. oh dear have I forgotten my friend's face? It is a frightening feeling. We carry the guilt of moving on. Some people who fear this thinking they are being disloyal stay stuck in the past and have a have time of letting go of the past and moving on with life.
So I drove on the way through the farm land that isn't good for growing anymore thinking about grief. It all fits, the soil that only grows animal food, the farms that die, the college that was bulldozed. Poetic justice, you might call it.
My friend on the phone had a lot of grief to cope with but didn't want to face it. How he does or doesn't is up to him not me. I can only be a friend.
Grief has been bottled up deep inside in me for years. It took a bulldozed college for me to see the many forms of grief taking place. This was not my first bulldozed building. Is it possible to love a building as one would love a person? Could one grieve that too? Does one run from one building to the next like people do with lost relationships? Hell yeah. Just as one can grieve the loss of a community, just as one can grieve the loss of a friend, love is love and if something is loved and lost it is grieved.
And how we as a culture deny grief, how we as a culture deny pain is one of our downfalls of our culture. As a culture we grieve for fifteen minutes on the media. Public grief has its own fifteen minutes of fame then it is gone, packed in a box and sealed up and unopened to look at. We are a pleasure based culture. If it causes pain we kill it. If it causes pleasure and fun, like old college pranks, who want to bring it back to live.
The problem is in bringing back the dead. The place for the dead is in old stories that make us run through every emotional out there. Stories around a dinner table or campfire or on a night out in town is where it fits into life. It is carried on with love.
Bringing back the dead makes zombies and ghosts. I can say this having grown up on grade b films of horror and science fiction. Ah yes we love last night TV.
The other problem is you really can't run from pain. It sits deep inside. Our culture runs from pain. The few of us how somehow think getting on with one's live means getting the pain out and letting it run it's runway.
We live in a world of over shopping and late night ads for beer and getting dumb from booze and sex. This is what helps us to feed into the false memories. As our memories fade for what we grieve, we need to replace it. Maybe that is one reason why the long lost friends don't fit any more. The memories don't fit. People and places aren't what they were in the past any more so it upsets us to see them so different in the now.
Me, I had no choice but to face it all and grieve. The healing at the end of the tunnel is worth it all. Not many people can do this and not many people ever will. Me I had to.
Being faced with reunions brings it all back. One friend said he was so sorry he went to a reunion and how it messed up his life.
Maybe we need to grieve our dreams that didn't come true and enjoy the life we have made for ourselves out of the want we brought with us from where and what we learned at schools and other communities we have been part of.
In a moment of silence I carry all I have lost inside of me with great love. It is alright to feel the sorrow and not have to exploit it and use it gain pity. It is alright for me to talk about it. It can be carried with me where ever I go. It is alright for me to have these feelings and not use them to manipulate others.
It is all right for me to have plain simple grief. It is a sign of love.
The loss of a college was the loss of a community. The truth is I don't have to be there or touch it; I am there in my heart. I carry it with me. What I have learned and the smile of a face long gone is in everything I do.
In a moment of silence I have found peace.