Heartbreak

There have been many different kinds during the years. Some have been over relatively minor things like moving from the country to the city, or having a childhood pet put down. Later they happened over the ending of a relationship that I'd invested in emotionally and he hadn't.

I've had to put up defenses. I learned that some things can be replaced or fixed. New pets arrive and are loved in turn. One can move back out of the city, take vacations to even more remote and scenic places. A new, more steadfast love makes previous ones insignificant. Different things now break my heart.

Many years ago, after fighting to obtain legal visitation rights for my granddaughter, she started coming to my house over weekends. She was around five or six at this time. Several visits into this routine, she made a statement that shocked me, though from her history I could understand why she thought what she did. It was her matter-of-factness about it, her belief in the truth of it, that broke my heart. Paul (my son, her uncle) and I had had a disagreement about some now-forgotten thing. We simply discussed it calmly, presented different viewpoints, and settled whatever it was. My granddaughter then calmly announced to me her superior knowledge of what had really been going on. She "knew" that we were just putting on an act for her benefit, and that as soon as she was gone, we'd start screaming at each other as a way to really settle the dispute!

I could only hope that after she spent much more time with us, she'd come to realize that what she saw when she was there is what really was. It also reinforced my reasons for fighting for visitation, giving her an alternate, saner, more loving version of what family life could be like. I was constrained from telling her what I really thought of her mother, but I could let her come to her own conclusions and hopefully make better choices for herself as she grew up.

I find my heart breaking now in a different way. In the Gulf an oil rig exploded and sank, killing several on board. It is not for them my heart breaks, though perhaps if I knew them or their families I'd feel different. No, it aches for the ruined coastline, destroyed habitat, decimated animal populations to come as the oil inexorably reaches land and coats whatever it finds.

Clean-up doesn't.

Containment won't.

Recovery may never happen.

Of course it will, you argue, just taking so many years that we won't still be around to see it. At least, not at my age. The problems with that long-view optimism are two-fold. First, critical habitat means entire species may be lost. Second, global climate change may prevent any recovery in a meaningful way. Will oyster beds recover when ocean acidification destroys shells? Will habitats grow back when their conditions change? Food chains will be interrupted, famine and wars will ensue. The Gulf disaster is merely a reminder of bigger disasters to come. If one is to take the long view about recovery, then that view must be very long indeed.