Misery in the Cafeteria

I felt like I would be able to avoid experiencing the cliché that ‘the first year of grief is the most intense’. When the letter from Good Shepherd Hospice said the third month is often difficult, I thought that meant it would start getting better with the fourth month. It hasn’t.

I went to the annual wreath-making party at church. I had originally told Linda I couldn’t sing in the women’s chorus, but then decided to try it. Happily the songs were lighthearted this year. I started to cry with the closing hymn, “Silent Night”, but didn’t break down sobbing. When I went down to the gym to make a wreath I was relieved to find Cami and her neighbor at a nearly empty table, so I had familiar company while making the wreath.

I suppose people would be surprised at how sensitive to being left out I am. We are such famous hosts. Before David got sick we would hold a dinner for twenty people nearly weekly; even last year, when he was sick, we had Advent suppers for each of the four Sundays before Christmas. (He was well enough to be able to enjoy the evenings and the attention of the five-year-old girls.) We seem to be so plugged in, but each year as I contemplate attending the wreath-making I am anxious about finding a group to fit into.
Takes me right back to the start of junior high school. Either I didn’t get the same lunch schedule as my friends from elementary school, or, more likely, all their tables filled up and I was odd man out. So I was assigned to a table with five ninth grade girls. I was awkward and shy; they were not pleased with my presence so they were catty and mean. I suffered in silence; they called me ‘Gertrude’, the ugliest, most old-lady name they could think of. Lunch time was torture. I rushed through my meal to get out of the cafeteria and onto the schoolyard.
I don’t remember how it resolved. Did I have a whole school year of misery? I certainly had friends in the other years of junior high. It’s just an orphan memory of pain and displacement.