“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.”
Six is my favourite number. It is the number of years between my younger sister and me. It looks like the lovechild of zero and “C”. The only single digit that is divisible by two as well as three, it seems to encompass both even and odd with a swirling, round-bottomed equanimity.
This tadpole, half of a yin-yang symbol, is also the number for idealists. Six years ago today, I counted myself among them when our son was born. I was determined to be the ideal father to an ideal son. Three days, eight hours and forty minutes later, when the doctor pronounced him dead, that idealism shattered, not by twos and threes, but into innumerable pieces.
Continue Reading “Numerology of Grief (The Sixth Year)”
In response to the recent news that my wife’s health condition had worsened, a coworker kindly offered to babysit. “You must have mistaken me for someone else in the office,” I replied, “We don’t have kids.” Being a considerate person, I expected her to respond to my email as others had before–with apologies, saying she meant no offense. But the next part of her message took me by surprise. She said something to the effect that I seemed grounded and settled, and that this is a quality she often admires in dads.
On February 27, 2009, I got up before dawn, as I often did, to write a poem. However, this time I knew that later that same day I would be conveying the news of layoffs to nearly forty percent of my IT department–people I had worked alongside for years, had come to admire, and whose families I knew. It all stemmed from the financial crisis. And so my greatest temptation, in the face of finding myself in the middle of such a difficult moment, was to hate those who had precipitated this painful event.
