Happy

“I look like a Holocaust survivor”, my Aunt Zoe, who just finished chemotherapy for liver cancer, says upon her arrival at our family reunion yesterday as we all shake our heads in unison and say, “No, you look fine,” (even though she looks like a very old and very feeble person I have never met) and just-in-time you catch an insurgent cry somewhere between your heart and your throat, which was a few minutes after your sister, a cancer survivor in remission, informed you that her marriage has been slowly dissolving before her eyes for the last two years and she feels helpless to do anything about it, a few hours before your father pours himself his fifth or sixth drink of the day (it was, after all, 3 pm) and shakes his head defeatedly and tells you he can’t talk anymore about certain things with regard to your mother, during which time your entire family and extended family does an admirable job of seemingly not even noticing that your soon-to-be-ex-wife is absent from the reunion for the first time in eleven years, like they never met her and our marriage never happened, which you know they think is the proper and respectful way to handle the situation even though it has the opposite effect of making you feel empty, alone, and invisible.

And you wonder: Is anyone ever happy?

And, as you methodically down your fourth beer of the day, you begin to think about the often palpable, depressing din of the world outside of the picnic table around which the inevitable pain of our personal lives is abreacted through cathartic psychoanalysis of weather patterns and where to buy the best sweet corn: another cousin with a suicidal, psychological disorder, heavily medicated close friends in mid-life crisis, friends of friends that have recently died suddenly—a seemingly endless concentric circle of anguish and disappointment.

But then, as the party winds on, you notice while following the meandering conversation of all things ephemeral--as if God has grabbed and turned your head and forced you to look at it--that your Aunt Zoe is still as joyful, friendly, exuberant, and yes, happy, as she has been every year you’ve seen her your entire life.

And you decide that when you get home, and the kids have been tucked snugly into bed, that you will close the door to your room, climb into bed, and let that cry get as far up and out as it needs to go.

But you don’t.