Relief grief

I was watching a documentary about Rita Moreno recently.

Filmed in 2018, at the time when she was celebrating her 87th birthday -  I should look so good now - we see her preparing to film an episode of the updated Latino version of the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time.  She's breakfasting in her dressing room, watching the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings.

This is pertinent, because Moreno, as a very pretty, very young woman in 1950s Hollywood, experienced more than her share of sexual harassment, even violence.  This was, of course, considered a normal way for men to interact with women at the time, so the narrative wasn't a shock so much as a weary recognition.

What was a shock was the revelation at the end of the film, as Moreno reflects on her forty-eight-year marriage to Leonard Gordon, who died in 2010.  We'd just seen a series of images and films that seem to demonstrate the playful nature of their relationship, and heard her daughter and a family friend affectionately recalling their memories of the couple.

Then, the camera rests on Moreno, who pauses, and declares:  "No."

It was not a successful marriage, she tells us.  He was controlling.  I should have ended it sooner.  Yes, he was funny. Yes, he loved me.  Yes, he gave me my daughter.

She's asked if she felt relief when he died.

Long pause.

"Say 'no'," I found myself inwardly pleading.

The answer is yes.

Afterwards, I wondered why I didn't want her to feel relieved.

I think it's because I have experienced, not often, but more than once, the awkwardness of being a person officially in mourning for someone neither loved nor liked.  It is grief, please understand: grief for those I love who do feel the loss, and grief for that which had gone past repair years ago.

And that comfortable/uncomfortable paradox: relief.    

I hope my passing is mourned, not incessantly, but sincerely, and I especially hope that no one is relieved.  I don't know how realistic that is.