A thought has been lingering, “Whose weddings would I be invited
to?” At my age, it’s a fair question to ask.
Spoken to a couple of people before about my tendency to section
off parts of my life somewhat arbitrarily. It’s unlike me, the part about these
boundaries being defined without a set of rules, because I typically like to
operate in a system with patterns to note. But I think this was developed out
of necessity given that the only constancy that I have known is change.
For illustrative purposes, I imagine this to be like when steel
doors on the Titanic begin to descend, locking the watertight chambers and
sectioning off the flood. It might be because my older sister loved the movie and
I watched it many times when I was far more impressionable (side note: To this
day, I could still probably freehand Kate Winslet’s breasts with a pen) but
there is a shot from it that still stays with me: the back of a crewmember left
behind, sealed is the chamber and his fate. I imagine the immediate seconds of
his life after James Cameron has already cut to the next scene. What he must
feel. Certainty. Helplessness. And what he means cinematically. A tribute. A
forgotten, secondary dramatic device. A necessity.
Like so, I have compartmentalized the past in messy little
packages—sectioning off the people, the words, the thoughts. Unbeknownst to them,
or anyone really, I am in a constant state of retrospection. Reliving and
reimagining moments. Things that were said, weren’t said, and things that
should have been said.
I am constantly thinking of you, friends. And I would really like
you to know that.
It would be nice to say that this is as if the crewman had never
died. It’s left ambiguous and you never do see him drown in the movie. But just
because you’re the type of person to look back as you walk forward, it doesn’t
mean what you’re looking for is still there, or was ever there.
So back to my original question on whose weddings I would be
invited to.
The ones that matter, I think.
