Recently, on the 20th anniversary of my father's death, I reflected on a scene from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Today, when I sought out the specific scene, I realized I had misremebered it. I thought Clarissa Dalloway had a dream of showing her life to her parents. It's more accurate to call it something she imagines. Here is the passage:
“Do you remember the lake?” she said, in an abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of her throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said “lake.” For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, “This is what I have made of it! This!” And what had she made of it? What, indeed? sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.
She looked at Peter Walsh; her look, passing through all that time and that emotion, reached him doubtfully; settled on him tearfully; and rose and fluttered away, as a bird touches a branch and rises and flutters away. Quite simply she wiped her eyes.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, as if she drew up to the surface something which positively hurt him as it rose. Stop! Stop! he wanted to cry. For he was not old; his life was not over; not by any means. He was only just past fifty.
We are not asked to be born. When we come into this world, we are entrusted with a life—our life—and we must take that very seriously.
I read Mrs. Dalloway in my teens—over two decades ago—and that scene of Clarissa "holding her life in her arms" has never left me. Isn't it the perfect image?
I had a dream a few nights ago. The dream transmitted this fragment of a phrase to me: "my life is a bundle in my hands."
Now that both my parents are dead, I am haunted by this question: If the people I love are gone, and if there is no one to love and be loved by, how do I live?
Another question: How do I care for the life that was entrusted to me?
I feel an intense futility and pointlessness right now. It has gnawed at me this entire first year without my mother. I wake up each day, and I don't know why I am waking up.
What is the point of anything? She's not here. How can life be worth living if it no longer contains her?
Who do I love? Who do I care for? What is my purpose? Who will remember me? Who will love me in return? What is the meaning of all this? What truly matters now?
I don't have answers. It's why I am on my hands and knees, crawling. It's why my soul cries. It's why I write these words into the void.
But maybe I have a partial answer:
I love myself.
I care for myself.
I live for myself.
I affirm my worth.
I bear witness to my existence.
My life will have to be enough, the life I hold like a bundle in my hands.
I can't show my life to my parents. I will never know what they think of my life as I attempt to rebuild it without them.
I actually did not build the infrastructure for life without my mother. I didn't build the friendships, the financial stability, or the community. I didn't know how. And you can't make people love you and care about you. You can't make resources appear magically.
I am walking through new terrain—what I call "the second life." The first life was the time I had with my parents. The second life is my life without them.
What is the map to navigate this territory?
Writing is the map.
Art is the map.
Everything inside me is the map.