Unveiling the Hidden Journey of Grief: Matthew Salesses’ Profound Exploration in ‘To Grieve is To Carry Another Time’
Threaded through is an older set of losses. Salesses grew up adopted, unsure of who he was, and Cathreen was a living link to Korea, to language, to a self he’d been assembling his whole life. Her diagnosis came just after the birth of their second child, as Salesses was finishing his degree program and starting his teaching career. “So much of our married life, to that point, had seemed like waiting for our real lives to start. Finally, we were ready. And then….”
Every griever understands “and then.” In the narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves, it’s the inciting incident. The turning point, the moment in time when everything changes. Yet despite the impossibility, we experience our life in multiple timelines where everything is simultaneously true: the before and the after. Salesses uses the developmental milestone of object permanence to emphasize the bewilderment of absence, noting the devastating truth that “Grief forces your brain to unlearn one of the first lessons that love ever teaches it.” Losses don’t wait their turn; each one opens the ground beneath the others.
Post Comment