I've started watching the anime show, Journal With Witch. It's about a teenage girl named Asa whose parents die in a car crash. She is taken in by her mother's sister, Makio. I'm only one episode in, and I can already tell this will be an emotional series for me because of the way it explores grief.
Asa is an orphan. Even though Makio was estranged from her sister, she steps in and offers Asa a home because she refuses to allow the family to pass her around. Makio is a novelist and lives alone. I'm interested to see how the bond develops between these two.
While watching the above scene of Asa walking across a desert and realizing she is alone in the world now that her parents are gone, I had a revelation. I see myself in Asa because I lost my father as a teenager, and I understand what it's like to feel devastated and scared. Thankfully, I had my mother. Now that she is gone, I truly am alone in a way I've never been before.
It's like adult me is staring at teenage me across space and time. We are face-to-face. The 16-year-old-girl who lost her father stares at the 36-year-old-woman who lost her mother. I see her. I remember her. Two decades collapse into nothing. No time has passed. No distance remains. We are one-and-the-same. I am her again, or I've been her the whole time.
To answer Asa: yes, adults do find themselves in that vast desert of loss and pain. We also don't know how to make our way out. Last time, my mother was beside me. Now, no one is. Asa has Makio.
we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, from "Paul Robeson"