In our class, my friend C bravely trudged forth with writing about her mother's death. Yay! She had a really nice meditation on faith, family, loss, and she told me before she started reading that she migh have to hand it off to me if she got choked up.
It got too intense for her, so she handed it over to me, at which point I made it through a while before I started to lose it and had to hand it to the woman next to me. I think they thought it was really a testament to the work that I was crying, but really, it's hard to see your friend remembering what she went through at the time and reliving it. It was really solid work on her part, though. By the end of it, a lot of people were misty eyed.
Then, of course, we dove into reading my piece, which I have read aloud a zillion times, tweaking this and that. The last part of it was completely matter-of-fact to me, nothing too raw about it. Naturally, I started crying again.
The kiddos were all looking at me, like, "whoaaaa. Some deep shit and connection to the material right there." Then we all congratulated each other on our digging into the depths of our souls.
7 comments:
I'm such a sap, that I doubt I could have made it through much myself before getting choked up. At the end of the first chapter of "The Jungle Book" I couldn't make it through the last page out loud when Mowgli has to leave his wolf parents and return to the village. Nor can I usually make it through this joke/story without at least my voice cracking at the end:
A man dies and comes to in the afterlife. He's on a dirt road, walking through the countryside. After a while, his pet dog, who died many years before comes out of the brush along the road and they have a happy reunion. They start walking down the road together and soon, they're pretty hot, thirsty, and tired. Around a bend, they find the gates to an impressive and beautiful estate. It has shady places to sit, orchards, and people in white frolicking in the grass. The man asks the guard at the gate what the place is and he says, "Oh, this is Heaven." The man says, "That's fantastic, can I come in?" The guard says, "Of course, definitely, but your dog isn't allowed." The man looks back at his dog, panting in the heat, and though he desperately wants to rest, he can't bear to leave him behind. He says to the guard, "My old friend and I have just reunited after a long time, and I'm not ready to say goodbye again, so we'll just walk a bit further down the road." The guard says "Fine by me, it's your choice." So the man and his dog continue down the road. A few miles on, they find an old farm with a rickety barn and small cottage. The farmer is standing at the fence, so the man asks, "Is it okay if my dog and I rest here a while?" The farmer says "Sure, there's water out back and an extra bed in the house. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like." The grateful man takes his dog out back and drink water from a pump. The dog playfully chases the chickens, and the man relaxes in a hammock near the barn. After recharging a bit, he goes back to the farmer and asks "What is this place?" and the farmer says, "This is Heaven." And the man says, "Well, I passed this big estate down the road and they said that was Heaven." The farmer replies, "I know, but that's actually Hell." The man scratches his head, "Aren't you mad that they're lying to people and tricking them into entering Hell?" "Doesn't bother me, really. Plus, anyone who is willing to leave his best friend behind to get in deserves whatever he gets."
Awww. That's sweet. It's because of Graham. The animal stuff gets me every time too.
congrats on completing your class and getting something you can be proud of out of it.
fyi, i am offically on, uh, summer vacation, so i might be loafing around the comments, tallboy in bag in hand, a little more often.
Crap, that's not good. I'm sorry. The economy freakin' sucks. I'm thinking of a drive-by egging on Dick Cheney. Who's with me?
I'm afraid if I expressed my true feelings about Cheney online, I might find federal agents pulling me in for questioning. So, yeah, I'm up for "egging" him.
and now i have the beastie boys song "eggman" going through my head.
See, I was thinking Beatles.
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