Shove Your Silver Lining Down the Stairs

I want to get away, but it feels rude—that whole workplace decorum thing. Still, I can’t shake the urge to leave.

I want to go up to my first-floor classroom and leave her talking to her stupid self in the stairwell.

“Everything has a silver lining,” she says, “You have to realize that, Brian.”

“Please, just shut the fuck up,” I think, frozen on the stairs.

“You have a chance to say goodbye before he goes, and that is a blessing. Not everyone has that opportunity,” she concludes.

—

This scenario is why people just answer “fine” when asked how they are, as opposed to being honest. 

She asked, “How are you?” and I shared, “I just learned that a very good friend of 30 years has a very nasty cancer that will kill him soon. So I’m kinda a mess.”

Winds up Jill from accounting wasn’t the right person to share with, but I took a chance.

—

I’m certain you too have had moments where you haven’t felt met in your emotions.

—

I try to think compassionately about Jill, the woman six stairs above me. 

Maybe someone she loved died suddenly, and she never got closure. Maybe she can’t sit in the pain of another because she’s never sat through her own anguish.

I attempt to sublimate my bile, my rage by searching my mind for some aphorism about listening for the heartfelt intentions behind people’s words. 

I find one—Take what I like and leave the rest.

But, I can’t do it.

Instead, my thoughts are to wonder what it would sound like—her flesh-covered skeleton tumbling down the stairwell. Limbs flailing. Momentum building. Crack. Shriek. Thud. Oof.

—

I come back into my body, and tears are welling in my eyes. 

I want to be comforted. Not told there is a silver lining.

“It hardly seems equitable,” I say as I hold my hands out to simulate balance scales.

“Oh, it’s not fair,” she says and reiterates, “But it’s still a blessing.”

I step past her towards the safety of my classroom.

“Have a good day,” I say, with a lump in my throat.

I continue up the stairs to my classroom, where I am safe enough to cry before the students arrive. And, I cry. 

—

The two of us in 2017.

September 26, 2019, Michael dies.