During the SMART Recovery meeting I attend online, there were two coincidences worth noting. The first had to do with Tarot cards. One card in particular - the Death card.
Someone brought it up as a symbol of one thing ending and another beginning. I already knew that meaning from having a Tarot deck as a teen (my chosen card was The Fool), so that wasn’t the coincidence. The coincidence was that the Death card came up for me earlier in the week.
I was watching a rather obscure British horror comedy series (Spine Chillers) on Amazon video. Each episode is a different story. They’re not gruesome or even scary at all. It reminds me a bit of that silly Freddy’s Nightmares show in the 80s.
The first episode is a funny look at trying to be goth and out-goth other goths. Painting apartment walls black, staying pale, changing your name to “Raven”, mistaking your roommate for a serial killer and so chopping him up into bits and then burying the bits and then learning it was all one big mix up and he wasn’t a serial killer at all just eccentric. You know. That sort of thing.
The episode I started to watch before SMART was about a soon-to-be-newlywed bachelor.
He snuck into a fortune teller’s booth, and she did a Tarot reading for him. She turned over the Death card during the reading and, of course, the bachelor freaked out. I stopped watching right about that time.
To have the Death card show up twice in one week is uncanny, you have to admit. (l’ve also had more musical ESP coincidences where I’ll wake up humming a song and then it’ll show up later on in a TV show or someone will mention it or something. It’s really weird and I’m noticing it happen more often.)
The other coincidence was the same person bringing up the concept of anticipatory grief. I was thinking about that concept the day prior at breakfast with my family. They’d come up for an event l’d coordinated and to spend some time with me and Husband.
Shortly after dad made his oft repeated “this is the greatest country in the world and if you don’t like it get out” statement, he mentioned “The China Virus.” I bit my tongue. I bit my tongue the way I’ve bitten it for most of my life, and the way I said I wouldn’t be biting it ever again. But I bit it anyway. Mom changed the subject with an aggravated “How are your eggs?”
After answering, “They’re good! How are yours?” I felt a sort detached grief and took notice of it. I started realizing that if dad’s still calling it “The China Virus” this late in the game, no real reconciliation is coming. He’s digging in his heels. He drank the Kool-Aid and went back for seconds. He’s got an eternally flowing champaign fountain of Kool-Aid and White privilege from which to drink. So much Kool-Aid. I mean, he may as well be busting through brick walls screaming, “Oh yeah!” every time an American citizen gets kidnapped and deported. “The China Virus.” 🙄🤦
But what I realized was that I don’t think he’s going to stop. I think he’ll get worse, because America is getting worse. The rest of my family aren’t as outspoken around me, but I know the votes they cast in every elections are harmful ones. Their votes are for candidates and policies who’d rather I didn’t exist because I’m an abomination to god and so on and so forth and whatever.
But, I… I’m not sure how much longer I can bite my tongue. Our visits, meals, hugs, silent disagreements, unspoken anger - I think all of it’s going to become quite unsustainable, and possibly quite soon. We’re headed for a time when what divides us will become bigger than what keeps us together. Our connection to each other is going to fracture in a deeper and more permanent way than it ever has before. I think I’m going to lose my family.
In fact, I kind of know it.
Eating my eggs, in that moment of sad clarity, I remember thinking, “I’m grieving this. I’m going to miss this. I haven’t lost it yet, but it’s going to happen.” And the next day, when the concept of anticipatory grief came up again organically, I felt that same sense of loss for a thing I haven’t quite lost yet, but know that I will.
***
