Home » Archives » 08. June 2011
Empty Cup
June 8, 2011It’s been days, I keep coming to Starbucks for a green tea cream frapuccino. Grande. And with a name “Andy” written on it. I like the name Andy, short for Andrea. And I especially like the cold blended tea which I have chocolate sprinkled on top. Am really not writing about my new-found name now nor about the tasty sips of tea. I’m actually talking about the whole experience of being among strangers, minding their own businesses while I keep my own peace somewhere between a table and a nice comfortable couch. I really find it pleasing to sit a while alone while the rest of the world is in a rush outside the café. With mellow music playing at the backdrop and the addicting smell of coffee under my nose, I really feel rested.
Despite the presence of people talking about odd and interesting things on the sides, which I can’t help overhear, I find this place really comforting because it gives me the solitude I need after a long day at work. It gives me “the pleasure of doing nothing.” Dolce Vaniente. It’s a French word I learned from the movie “Eat, Pray, Love” (starred by Julia Roberts) which mostly reflects my own life-story. I recommend it; it gives a whole new dimension in living.
There is a deeper reason, though, why I keep coming back to this place – a vivid memory of a loved one who used to sit at the very same place I sometimes find myself seated. It’s not always the same couch I suppose, but it’s the spot I find at home with. It’s my way of remembering and of “being with” someone who was at the very same spot almost two months ago. My father. He’s gone now. How suddenly life could become an un-reality. How suddenly people can become simply a fading experience. How he can just go away without the usual goodbyes. How we move on slowly after the realization that someone is not coming back. And we have lost him in real-time scenarios of our lives. It’s my way, maybe, of not missing him so much because I have never really missed anybody so intensely as I miss my father now. I like the thought of him sharing those few moments over cups of coffee, hot or cold. Hot and cold, just like the feeling of blended vagueness, longing and joy every time he comes to mind. I find solace here – the kind of serenity I need to process my feelings of loss and shock. This has become my way of coping with the realities of life, or should I say, death.
Being alone gives me the moment I need to say nothing to anyone, unobliged to respond to a chat, unmindful of other realities except that of my own restless heart. The taste of green tea frapuccino and the sweet soothing music blending with the silent vibrations of my body as my heart pumps to sustain the lifeblood in me give me the serenity I need most these days. Remembering is painful, yes. There is, in fact, a heartache I have never known and it keeps catching up with me every time I keep silent. But if only to know that I have connected with the person who loved me my whole lifetime, I have found the courage to allow such heartache in. Nurturing pain is not my way of coping, but living through it, is.
Other people go through grieving process by forgetting or by avoiding the usual places that remind them of the people they have lost. Others, like me, however, undergo desensitization, a behavioral therapy I learned in psychiatric nursing that helps effectively overcome anxiety by slow and progressive exposure to the cause of fear or anxiety until the person is able to confront it. Each day, I live through the painful memory of losing a father and the even more painful memory of having him. Because the joy and the honor of having him make me even discover what I have just lost and how much I am now deprived of. How a father’s love is going to be forever void in my life from now on. And how much I would have wanted to experience in years to come having a father to talk to, to treat over Starbucks coffee, to buy shoes for or to simply plan my life ahead with. I believe though that he’s going to be around, somewhere in our midst, some place better perhaps. A place where coffee is made much better and the couch is a lot softer. A place he enjoys hanging around where he is more relieved and rested. I’d like to believe in such possibilities. And he may have wanted me to live a long and fuller life. And maybe, somewhere in the silence between our worlds, we find our separate peace.
Loss is inevitable and our lives have their endpoints. We all come to that. Yet no matter how we brave through the sadness, there is always the breaking point and we should just let it, experience it as we deal with it. People are remembered on how they lived their lives or how their lives affected another. My father was a significant person in my life and he affected me entirely. I guess, I was and will always remain my “papa’s girl.” He allowed me to dream and supported it until the very last days of his life. How then can I give up dreaming? I used to think that my parents are my wings, and I have just lost one. I have to grow my own wing now.
And so, my green tea is almost to its last sip. People have entered and exited from this place, I noticed. Some keep coming again, some never come back. In between the entrances and exits is a place where there are “meet-ups.” And whether people come and go from the front door to the back door, the important thing is that friends, strangers, and in my case, families, have come together. Togetherness is an essential element in the relationships we make with people who have entered and exited our lives. Here, I somehow am able to pull myself together, and find silence in the midst of chats and laughters of people of all sorts.
Between the “greetings and goodbyes,” I have kept my emotions in control even my eyes sometimes begin to swell. We all have our own “loss stories” from which we share in a universal human experience. It will probably take a lifetime to understand our loss but I’d like to believe that my father preferred no goodbyes so he slipped silently. And now, I can just be grateful for having had him to grow up to. And so I placed my empty cup on the table just as I try to empty myself of the hurt, knowing that he won’t be around like he used to. And I move on, learning the art of letting life be and allowing healing to takes its time.
