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In a dark time the eye begins to see. In such a way Elinor “saw” Anna. Anna had been sitting across from her, or in a circle next to her, as the six people in the group silently arranged themselves each week, according to the instructor’s gentle urging.
They of course had noted each other. How could they not, when there was little else in the lavender room but a large, stenciled drawing of a Buddha at one end and candles at the other? The group had in common Grief, and surely with this assembly of people, the word demanded a capital G. If a stranger, a non-grieving person, had entered the room, he would see eyes unfocused, staring, or, in one woman’s case, profusely and silently weeping.
Their leader was, predictably and understandably, soft-spoken and gentle, guiding the group through meditations and poetry and exercises. Two weeks before, three of the six brought photos and told stories about the photos. The photo was to include the Loved One that had been Lost. Elinor always associated “Loved One” with a movie she had seen when she was young about a pet cemetery, and so the phrase made her think of dogs and not of her “Loved one” who, in this bizarre case that she could not accept, was her daughter. Elinor’s “turn” to present a photo or two or three and talk about them had been last week, and at first she had judged the assignment to be too strange or hurtful to be doing. But then she found that she liked talking about the photos, about herself with her daughter at the Ferry Terminal Market, at the Grand Canyon, and then, finally, in all ways final, at the airport where they posed at baggage drop-off together, and Elinor never saw her daughter again.
Today’s exercise was to work on the calendar. It was the calendar exercise that caused Elinor, who was trying to anticipate the upcoming holidays and what she would possibly do with them, who was blankly staring at the blurry month of November before her, to look up and see Anna, her hands folded on top of the calendar on her lap, staring out the window, a look of paralyzed sadness on the her face. Elinor saw grief, one equal to her own, seemingly (although she had been convinced no one’s could possibly be at that level) in the younger woman’s frozen stare, an almost paralysis of function.
Because of that brief connection—unspoken but deeply felt—Elinor asked for the younger woman’s phone number at the end of the session, which Anna (her name was Anna, it turned out) was pleased—even relieved, it seemed—to give her.
In that darkness they—the mother who had lost a daughter and the daughter who had lost a mother—truly “saw” each other and became, thereafter, deep-felt friends.