The Art of Losing

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Some losses never leave you. Some losses never should. 

 

The nurse walked around me, hands constantly moving. She was talking about the Super Bowl, how her daughter’s boyfriend made ribs, how she felt like she spent the whole day eating. Then she touched my foot, my “clean water” tattoo. She didn’t ask what it means, just let her fingers linger on the words. 

 

Then she turned to me, began talking about her brother, how since his death she’s gained 6o pounds, how since his death she doesn’t feel the same. I didn’t tell her my tattoo is in memory of my father. She just touched it, turned, began to speak about her own loss. 

 

I told her German has a word for weight gained while grieving: kummerspeck. Literally, “grief bacon.” She smiled, said “That sounds about right.” 

 

I didn’t tell her that I think every day about my father, about the friends I have lost in the last several years. That I think every day about death, what it means to our living. What it means to leave and to leave behind. What it means to the project of being human, of being a writer. 

 

One of my students is Puerto Rican and explained to me once that in the culture of her youth, there was no separation between the living and the dead: “They’re just always here,” she said, “The dead are just always with us.” In her writing, characters who may be dead and may be alive eat and breathe and sleep together, speak to one another. Relationships don’t end just because one person dies. New relationships are forged just because one person dies. 

 

And while there is sadness there, sadness in the weight of the dead who never leave us, I think there is something else, too. I’m not sure what to call it.  Comfort, maybe? Connection? Relief? 

 

In that moment of the nurse touching my tattoo then speaking about her brother, a connection was forged. We understood one another. She told me about her brother and I carry him with me now. Because we come to one another in our loss. With our losses. We hold them up for one another to see, to share. And in so doing, we keep our dead alive.