Intrapsychic gratitude

It’s called intrapsychic grief, he said. I barely heard him over the taqueria worker dragging a vacuum sideways across the tile floor. The scent from the open bottles of cleaning solution had long eclipsed the memory of guacamole. We were on borrowed time.

Intrapsychic grief, he said. It’s grief for what might have been.

Until that moment, I hadn’t known that there was a name for it; for the looking over one’s shoulder at the parallel path of a different reality. For the motorcycle that stayed upright. For the photo not taken. For the peace that held. For the kinder, gentler death. For the cruel words unsaid. For the life in which a chasm had never opened between you and me.

I hadn’t known there was a single name for it – for this grief I feel more deeply than its mirror twin, nostalgia. It touches me in this liminal space each year, because intrapsychic grief is that which makes our hope fragile. We can long for something with such assurance that we see it in color. We give it a name. And then. Nothing. It is a grief for which there is not even a trite platitude to resist.

The friend who taught me this name is living during borrowed time. He is facing a future in which loss seems to flank him on every side. I didn’t have any words of comfort for him that night. I still don’t. But now, at least I have this picture.

I spent the better part of an hour this morning searching for this photograph of a chicken. It wasn’t in the drawer where I thought it should be, and so I ripped apart a closet, and finally found it in the bottom of a shoe box on the top shelf. Without it, my All Saints’ altar would be incomplete. I took this photo a number of years ago on a sunny afternoon I spent with another friend. She was in her final days, and had reminisced about growing up around barnyard animals. So, I had the great idea to borrow this chicken (Gloria) and take her to my her to my friend’s patio on a visit. Watching my friend marvel at Gloria as she searched for insects was one of most joyful experiences of my life so far.

And it almost didn’t happen. I was running late. I had far too much to do – I could not give up an afternoon. I had left a message with the chicken’s owner, telling her to call it off. But when I got to the office, Gloria was already there – clucking in her carrier, raring to go. And then, I had no choice. You know how it is with a chicken.

Somewhere, there is an alternative world in which I heard my friend’s disappointed voice on the other end of the phone. It’s okay, she might have said. I know you’re busy. And then I would have spent the rest of that afternoon writing emails, soon to be forgotten. Every time I see this photo of Gloria, I give thanks that, that is not the world in which I live.

Is that intrapsychic gratitude? Maybe. Or maybe there doesn’t need to be a name for it. Maybe it’s just how we survive our losses. Maybe it’s just how we learn to pray again in a world that is in such turmoil.

Because in a time of uncertainty, it may be too difficult to say, For all that will be, thanks. And if we are in a season of grief, it may be too raw to say, For what is now, thanks.

But for what has been? For those we have loved who have gone before us? Yes. Thanks. And for what almost wasn’t, but somehow, by grace alone, came to be?

Thanks be to God.