Sadderday

Rachael Yamagata called Saturday "Sadderday" last Saturday, during her concert, and that's stuck with me since. And not just because she sings such lovely sad songs, but also because last Saturday was, I don't know, I was feeling kind of blue.

I wore a yellow dress to cheer myself up, and these $2 faux pearl dangly earrings from H&M that make me feel all kinds of kitchsy and dressed up, and also my pointed-toe velvety shoes with the floppy bow and dabbed on pink lipstick and let my hair down. I was also attending a wedding -- if you're wondering why I dressed up.

Then I went to the toilet and looked at myself in the mirror and my hair was frizzy and a mess and my earrings were too much and my shoes pinched and the dress was frumpy. So I tied my hair back into one of those stern, brisk ponytails I find myself wearing these days, and marched back out. I had a wedding to attend with a bunch of friends and people I knew and did not know at the same time.

I enjoyed the wedding thoroughly. There's nothing like going to church and knowing that you're home, and on a beautiful day your friends pledges their lives to each other and in their marriage and in their willingness to say I do and I will through good times and bad, witness to the relationship between God and His church, God and you, God and me. And it's all beautiful.

But somehow I was sad. Because I was thinking of my grandfather and how much I missed him, how glad I was that at least he got to go for my sister's wedding. And then one of the psalms said how happy are those who dwell in the Lord's house, and I was wondering if he was already in the Lord's house, and if he was happy, and I should say more prayers for him?? I was thinking wow it's been over a month and still the wound runs fresh and clean. A bright pang of missing. Salt on a cut.

Maybe that's why one of the Chinese customs is to not attend any celebrations for a year if someone close to you has passed on. The superstition is that you'll end up bringing bad luck, but I think it's mostly because it's hard to be happy when your heart's still strung on another wire, hung up on grief. And you feel a bit too bright, a bit too glittery and fragile, and you're wondering if inside you're still the same, and if people can tell that you've changed. That now you carry overtones of sadness within you, shadows of melancholy, and weight. And now nothing really fits in life anymore. You've outgrown your dresses and dreams.

Some things your mind shies away from thinking about, because it's too hard to confront. I'm still not ready to write about him. I can't even try. I wouldn't know where to begin. "And reality is a raw wound," I wrote once. Does it ever heal?

My sister got us free tickets to watch and listen to Rachael Yamagata in a dark room like a camera box and images flickering on screen: green trees on a leafy day, leaves falling slowly, tunnels that become other tunnels, a life on the road. She said she was known as a sad girl. But I was thinking that maybe that's why we like her so much, because she's so unapologetically sad. (And that mesmerisingly deep, breathy, husky voice). And when she sings, everything goes quiet. We get her, she gets us.