Little Losses, Bigger Meaning?

Yesterday Pete broke a mug as he was putting away the dishes. I wasn't bothered by Pete breaking a mug (the drugs must be working). I was glad that it wasn't another wine glass (I'm down to three reasonably sized wine glasses.) I woke up this morning thinking about the friend who had given me that particular mug (that now lives in the trash.)

The mug said, "friends are forever" and it had a cat on it... not quite my style in its sentimental way but when I drank coffee from it, I remembered this friend. Something has changed in this friendship... friendship changes when you suffering is involved.

Warning: I tend to make bigger meaning out of little losses.

One time my youngest son's cat died - after he had been at college for a year. My husband found him looking sick by his bowl and when he tried to get up, he convulsed and then flopped down dead. It was quite dramatic. Then Pete had to do the dreaded "dad duty" of calling said youngest son to tell him that his cat had died. (You know they say that middle age happens when the kids move out and the dog dies... at this point, Pete was getting closer to middle age but that's not really part of the story.)

Child came home, grieved for his childhood pet, offered some love to the other cat that was still alive and then I did the "mom duty" of taking child and animal to the vet for its "burial."

When I was telling my friend this story, I started to make connections between the loss of the cat and the loss that I was experiencing with child #2 going to college. Parts of him were changing, our relationship was different, I was experiencing little losses.

And at this point, my friend interrupted me and said, "sometimes cats just die, Beth. There doesn't have to be a bigger meaning to it!" I looked at her stunned, thinking to myself, "you lack creativity if you think that things don't have a bigger meaning... how do you live without this other dimension of meaning?"

Little things happen and they connect to bigger events, people, things, memories. Little things conjure joy, love, kindness, sadness, desire, peace, hope.

I need the little things to help me understand the big things. I need to pick up the broken pieces of a mug on the kitchen floor to help me understand that when suffering chips away at us, friendships change. When we are broken, our functions change. We might not be able to drink (or talk, or relate, or even love) the same way that we used to. When I pick up one large piece still intact from the fall, I realize that it can still hold quite a bit of something... maybe not liquid, it makes me dream of what our friendship does hold if not what it "used" to hold. When I search for the little shards of pottery that shot far away from the mug, I want to ask myself, "in going through suffering together, what blew up?" In other words, aren't there pieces of ourselves that simply can't remain intact when we experience the blows that come with chronic illness? If we allow ourselves to experience suffering and illness, don't pieces of us shatter and leave little bits to be found around the scene of the crime?

Have I taken the meaning of the broken mug too far? What would you say if I told you I was only getting started! One more idea...

How do our friends (or the world for that matter) relate to us if we need repair? What if we can't hold "stuff" anymore and we need others to hold "stuff" for us? Will others help us when we can't help ourselves?

You see, I'm not a mug and when I break or shatter from falling, I don't get tossed into the trash. I have to live with my brokenness. Pete has to live with his brokenness. We have to find glue (for me that seems to be prayer and writing, friendship and wine.) And then we roam our world looking like we've been through an ordeal, cracks and scars.

So far the friends that have stuck around are fully aware of their own cracks and scars. Ours don't frighten them. In fact, if they've stuck around me at all, they learned to dream of bigger meaning with each little loss.