Joyful, Anyway

Q. What is joy?

a. fireworks that light us up from within

b. a relief from "the ache"

c. a gift our hearts are made for

d. a moment in the midst of nothing terribly special

e. an interruption to our usual lives

f. an emotional version of spontaneous combustion

g. a stranger that needs to be invited in

h. the only way to feel truly alive

i. deepest hope and delight and gratitude

j. all of the above

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

IN SHARING THESE memories, I have sometimes blended characters or changed names and details to protect the privacy of those involved. My intention is to honor their stories as well as their confidentiality. Because, in the end, a big part of joy is keeping your friendships intact.

THE MUSIC

IT SHOULD NEVER have happened. Who gets married outside in Minnesota in late October? The wedding was a blur of high heels and tailored suits and guests shivering under enormous coats while my college roommate, the bride, wore an insane sleeveless dress she had picked out with her mom. I was a bridesmaid in a thin turquoise sateen without a shawl so I insisted that I suffered the most for having to face the crowd with a smile plastered on my face, but, in truth, the view was spectacular. The bride's mother sat in the front row with tears streaming down her cheeks, her husband resting his arm around her shoulder as if tethering her to him. She looked like a woman genuinely awed by seeing so much returned to her, as if there had been some miracle confirmed in watching her daughter confidently saying her vows, radiant with joy.

And it should never have happened—the funeral that soon followed, the way death showed his face on some insignificant afternoon and took the mother of the bride with him. A car accident. She was there and then she was gone, leaving her family with the paperwork and the robocalls and the Facebook account that could not be taken down. A modern death is a digital haunting, a never-finished flurry of notifications. I do not pretend to know where to find the key that unlocks the mystery between mothers and daughters, but I know that sometimes two people stare at each other and see only their reflection. They can talk and fight and scream and say things like "You always..." and "You never..." but they never quite break the glass between them. Now my friend's mother was dead and what went unspoken between them could drown the ocean.

 

I have known days like these, days full of dragging sadness. I was thirty-five years old when I was diagnosed with incurable Stage IV cancer. I had married my high school sweetheart, finally had a son after years of infertility, and secured my dream job as a university professor—then, suddenly, every hope had to be placed back on the shelf. I lived for years assuming that each season would be my last. It's hard for those who haven't lived with it to understand the feelings that coexist with existential terror. From one moment to the next, I could only expect that anything might happen. I might feel genuinely terrified about my life, which was unraveling. Or lulled into boredom in every waiting room. Or I might think I was going to finally get back to work, only to use up all my energy trying to get my hair into a decent ponytail without pressing down on the wretched IV on the back of my hand.

Years later, I had mostly made it through the fog and I was watching my friend, that grieving bride, make her own perilous way forward, able to see only a couple of feet in front of her. I wanted to tell her what I had learned from that time of my life that had been marked by grief—the unforgettable period sticky with Jell-O and the specter of death. I wanted to give her a promise that reasonable people would be too reluctant to guarantee, but it is one I would hang my life on: You will never be cured of this grief, it's true. But you will be joyful, anyway. I swear.

When a loss of any kind—breakup, breakdown, or any terrible undoing—descends upon your life, joy seems to vanish. The vibrancy that once filled your days fades, leaving the world colorless and cold. This sudden shift doesn't simply numb; it transforms everything around you. Laughter feels strange and a sense of ease is a distant memory. In this new reality, even the smallest spark of joy seems impossible to ignite. And even worse, suggested the nineteenth-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, joy becomes the source of suffering. Its memory stokes the fires of hurt. The joy we once had, the joy we remember, becomes our ruin. It is not so much lost as missed, he wrote. When you are in the deep abyss of grief, sadness, or, worst of all, despair, joy feels like an insult.