In the Sun or in the Shade

By Logan Elizabeth Craig

Numb as I become in tragedy, and unwilling to show my cards, I quietly and exclusively bingeread Instagram captions for the first few weeks of quarantine.

Like everyone, I found a cloudy combination of shock and fear. Worry for loved ones, early obituaries. Soliloquies on loneliness. Outright denial, and its patronizing twin: spiritual bypassing. But after a couple of weeks, I noticed a hesitant narrative emerge, written under pictures of windows sills full of potted plants and mirror selfies in cluttered bathrooms — that experiencing even small joys during all of this felt like a betrayal. The guilt of enjoying more time spent with family. The relief of extended deadlines, of some newfound space for your self. Yes, a pandemic has infiltrated the globe, but something good happened to me today.

The tension between grief and joy feels irreconcilable.

When I was nineteen and naive, I spent a semester abroad in Europe. I studied in Cambridge, spent a week in Ireland and another in Austria, met up with my best friend in Milan and then toured northern Italy with her. The week I returned, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Within two months, she had passed away. The following year still eludes me. Her death was a wall that marked Before and After, one side rich with memory, the other silent and still.

Stories from my trip, joys I had once had an urgency to share with my family, suddenly felt inappropriate. When I smiled, telling my sister about my first kiss on that stone bridge by the willow tree, a voice in my head chastised me for avoiding my pain. It insisted I was selfish to relive a moment I cherished. As if speaking would belittle the time I should have spent remembering my mom. As if to remember my joy was to forget my grief.

In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown insists that although we think denying joy will protect us from pain, “if we are not allowing ourselves to know joy, we are missing out on [what] will actually sustain us through the inevitable hard times.” It follows that, when the inevitable hard times do come, it is not shameful to let our joy sustain us.

But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s necessary.

Recently, I foraged my journal for memories of that trip. The words are riddled with disclaimers and confessions. But woven through still are little revelations, nostalgic ramblings, and a growing sense of gratefulness.

After the diagnosis, Mom told me she had first suspected she was sick on Easter. I remember everything from that Sunday.

My best friend and I had taken a train into Cinque Terre. We ate gelato and walked the along the sea at Manarola, the salt spray bouncing off the rocks onto our ankles. We stopped in Riomaggiore for lunch, peoplewatched while dipping focaccia in olive oil and balsamic. A friend of hers met up with us and we laughed our way to Monterosso, finding a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that seated maybe eight people. The sun set as we finished off a bottle of wine and freshly made pesto cavatelli. As we watched a pair of boats bounce against the shore under the stars, warm and happy, I remember thinking it was one of the best days of my life.

That afternoon, white wine on my lips, I had written:

Today was sunny and beautiful, and that perfect temperature that isn’t hot or cold whether the wind is blowing or not or whether you’re in the sun or in the shade.

After the diagnosis, Mom told me she had first suspected she was sick on Easter. I remember everything from that Sunday. Sometimes grief and joy meet in a tension you have to hold. I don’t feel guilty for holding both anymore.