Compliments

Filed Under Ruminations

Compliments are tricky.

Give too many too often

And nobody takes you seriously.

Give too few too seldom

and you frighten folks.

Joan Didion in her book The Year of Magical Thinking

does what most of us do after the death of a loved one:

she revisits every conversation,

every word they said

during their last days of life as we know it.

Her husband (also a writer)

reread something she’d written

and told her that nobody (including her)

could ever say she couldn’t write.

The reason we revisit every word, every conversation

is, of course

in hopes of changing something.

Of uttering a word

a response

that would keep them from dying.

Even those who don’t believe in time travel

or space/travel worms

Even those who are the least secure in their own being

those who doubt their self worth

believe their words would have the power

to keep that loved one alive.

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Comments

Debbie on August 10th, 2007 4:13 am

This piece got me.

I go over in my head the times I was too rough on Larry (according to my standards now). If I hadn’t been, would it have made a difference in the outcome later? Probably not. I was just being the best me I could be at the time–with what I’d been taught and who I was at the time. Do I wish I’d been different? Yes. Do I wish he’d been different and made different choices? Absolutely. But I am not responsible for who he was and what he did . . . in any way, shape, or form. Sigh.
Mom on August 18th, 2007 4:37 am

I have a friend who gives me compliments daily. And they make me feel so happy. I don’t for a minute believe all of them, but it is so good to hear them. And I think of the things, and people, that I appreciate that I only think about and don’t vocalize.