The Crime of Sitting Together
A story about envy and how “thou shalt not covet”.
Penned December 1, 2024 by Penny Sue Denim
Four months have passed since his death. I’ve been invited to the annual Christmas party of our “couple friends” and their families. I’m the third (or ninth) wheel this year. I would rather take up residence with my husband at the graveyard than go to the party, but my other friends have encouraged me to go despite the feeling of my soul slowly leaking from my body.
Right now, I just want to fast forward to The End.
I find a new awareness engulfing my everyday experiences. The most mundane moments are now captioned with a painful subscript; there’s a set of newly defined meanings to everything.
That is, I find myself with an awareness of Established States of Being that I was previously ignorant of. I hold membership in the Club No One Wishes to Join (one of these states of being).
The End is another worthy state of being.
Sitting Together. That’s yet another. As is Perpetual Petty Envy.
I realize you wouldn’t know about these established states of being. Not unless you are in the Widows’ Club. Of course not. Neither did I.
Sitting Together haunts me. And it will haunt me for a decade, I presume, and then some. Sitting together has become a crime, an indictable offence.
Mia, our hosts’ daughter, must be about 20 now. Her sister Nora, maybe 16. They sit on either side of their dad, so casual and comfortable, as if it’s nothing. He smiles and recounts with obvious pride how his eldest is in her third year of university and now plays private gigs. He casually shares how he went to the garage to get tools to repair his younger daughter’s car and how the dog bounded through the heavy snow. Like what was noteworthy was how the dog bravely faced the elements or that his older daughter plays private gigs. Like what was most remarkable wasn’t simply the fact that he was sitting there between them. Sitting at all.
Right now, it feels like this is a “special treat” I “get” to look forward to whenever I engage in the public sphere, for the next ten years, and into perpetuity, until the state known as The End arrives.
The next day, I take my girls to the movies; to a musical, no less. Their dad—he loved movies. He loved theatres. He loved musicals. He loved his girls.
Us, at the theatre. Another version of Sitting Together.
Elphaba, green like me, watches her dreams go up in the smoke of a hot air balloon that just couldn’t quite achieve lift off, with circumstances she didn’t choose threatening to dash her every hope—and very existence—into the ground. Merciless circumstance. Her very life, up in ashes.
Elphaba accepts all the loss, moving headlong into it. And she rises, resilient and ready. And that’s largely because of the battles she’s already fought. She’s no stranger to adversity and hopeless circumstances.
Surviving and Surrender: these are the Established States of Being she invites me into.
~ ps denim
With accompaniment from My Unapologetic Playlist:
Resonant Writing
Kevin David Kridner, The Subtle Ways we Try to be God
Oh so relatable and oh so beautifully written 💔 😭 thank you for giving this experience a voice… grief can feel so isolating until somebody speaks these things out loud and we realise there are so many universal moments within it
Your essay is remarkable in its direct honesty and its poignancy. You now know those who are your friends, those who stay around, and those who actually step in and help. You also know how to survive those first terrible days, weeks, and months. Your husband left you love, the children he fathered with you, and the legacy of his love of them and you. You already have done much; your daughters will rise up and bless you
for what you are doing, have done, and will do for them. God has a special place in His great Love-Heart for you. The book of James states that true godliness is to care for widows and orphans in their distress.
Your prose is clear and direct, yet it conveys the
subtle social nuances that make life more unpleasant than it already is for those newly widowed. Thanks for your good writing and your clarity in handling this subject. “And underneath are the everlasting arms.”