In Praise of Scheduled Wallowing

I seldom listen to music while driving; I just obsessively think my own thoughts. My son never drives without listening to music. So it happened that, driving with him a week ago, I heard on one of his Sirius stations a song from the first Mamma Mia movie: Colin Firth singing, "I can still recall . . . our last summer . .  I still see it all. . . "

Suddenly I was in tears.

The song pierced its way into my heart - this recalling of "our last summer" - where it's clear that this isn't "last" in the sense of "most recent," but in the sense of "last ever" - the poignant loss of something never to be reclaimed.

For the next few days I couldn't stop listening to the song over and over again, crying each time, recalling certain "last summers" in my own life: the last summer my husband still lived at home with me before moving to a skilled nursing facility, the last summer he was actually able to travel with me, to see the total solar eclipse on my birthday, in Red Cloud, Nebraska, childhood home of Willa Cather. . .  And might this past summer turn out to be my last summer with my two little granddaughters, pending the outcome of a looming and terrifying court case? Friends' tragic losses haunted me, too.

I cried. And I cried. And I cried.

It felt so good.

I've been so busy being cheerful despite my heartaches that it's been a long time since I've cried. (One also cries less, in my experience, while on anti-depressants, from which I'm now taking a break.) Apparently I had a huge pent-up need to cry, and kindly Colin Firth helped me do it.

Back in my twenties, when I lived in Takoma Park, Maryland, I was seeing a brilliant therapist named Judy Alexander. I started seeing Judy after one particular boyfriend dumped me. I had been dumped by boyfriends many times before - so many, in fact, that I developed a terrific policy for dealing with a dumping: the day a boyfriend dumped me was the day I went to the travel agent and bought myself a plane ticket to Europe. I went three times on this policy: to England, to Greece, and to Paris/Prague. But this most recent dumping kept on twisting a knife into my heart even after my return from Greece.

Judy told me I should set aside fifteen minutes each day to be sad about the breakup: look at pictures of the two of us together, play sad songs that reminded me of him, just let all the sadness out.

"Why should I be sad?" I demanded. "He's not sad!"

She gently replied with a question of her own: "Why should you let him determine your feelings?"

That was some of the best advice I ever received. I started looking forward all day long to those fifteen minutes when I could luxuriate in grief - downright wallow in it. Oh, the relief - even the joy - that can be found in wallowing!

I may be done with Colin Firth's song for a while now; I'm crying less each time I play it. But I'm not yet done with grieving for all I've lost, and all I may be in the process of losing. I'm going to continue to follow Judy Alexander's wise counsel and set aside small, fixed amounts of time for wallowing in heartbreak. My poor heart, it turns out, longs for periodic sessions of weeping and wailing.

Dear heart, I'm going to give those to you. I'll find more sad songs for you. Suggestions for a wallowing soundtrack, anyone?

Sometimes we all just need to wallow.