Sometimes a voice speaks to you from a book, a song, a play,as if it were written for you, with you in mind.  It’s as if someone that you don’t know haslooked into your mind and understands what is in your heart. “Killing MeSoftly,” I think, is an example of a song about that experience.  When I read the short story “Intimacy” byRaymond Carver, my heart began to race, recognizing the true closeness thatexists between those who have had so much at stake and hurt each other sobadly.

 Recently, I went to see a performance of “Caroline in Jersey” by Melinda Lopez at the Williamstown TheaterFestival that talked to me about grief, while I was in the middle ofgrieving.  Like so many significant lifeexperiences, it came about unexpectedly. I had been back and forth to Williamstown to see my elderly uncle,living alone, who was failing rapidly.  Thiswas the uncle who had helped raise me after my father died, he was one of mycaretakers.  By coincidence, I had seenthe play advertised at the theater as I was walking down the main street ofWilliamstown.  I knew the playwright froma whole different situation, not very well, but I was intrigued by the play,and regretted that I would probably not be able to see it.

 As it turned out, my uncle got much sicker faster thanexpected. At the same time, some friends from home had organized a trip to seeMelinda’s play.  It didn’t seem possible,feasible, or realistic, but they urged me to go with them.  We had tickets for Thursday at 3 pm.  On Thursday morning, my brother in law, adoctor, had called to tell me the results my uncle’s CAT scan, and aconversation with the oncologist.  Thenews was not good.  On Thursday night, Iwould stay with my uncle, and go with him to his doctor on Friday. 

 The play opens on a domestic scene; the living room/kitchenarea of a dated, worn apartment, occupied only by an elderly gentlemanpracticing a few notes on a piano.  Injust a few moments, we find that Caroline, a New York actor, is seeking a new place tolive; and the landlord, a colorless, middle-aged woman is reluctant to rent herthe place.  Caroline, down on her luck,with a failed marriage and an unraveling career, has reached the end of theline — New Jersey, foreign territory, another world, and a haunted one, we soonfind out. 

 Not knowing what to expect, I worried the play might be alittle too literary, or abstract, or edgy for me to relate to, especially inthe frame of mind I was in. Surprisingly, the tone is light, comic at the beginning of the play,misunderstandings, and Caroline’s unrealistic hopes of what her new life willbe like.  Her only support, her gay bestfriend, has his own insecurities, having penned a new musical, PETZ,  that is not working all that well and thatCaroline needs to play an important role in – as Leica, the Soviet dog shotinto space – on a trip of no return. Only, Caroline doesn’t have the heart forit.

And then, as the play develops, it is suddenly very, verysad.  Caroline, it becomes clear, isgrieving - great losses: her marriage, her home, her identity, her work andstability, and the death of a premature baby. She is not prepared for this, and threatens to implode – until a strangeencounter with another family’s grief turns her around again, until she’sfacing forward, ready to go on – with the show, but in a role rewritten withpower and nobility. 

 If, as Flannery O’Connor says, “Everything that Rises MustConverge,” so then does all that falls — quickly, deeply, out of control.  Pain is the other universal besides love.  Grief is another country, where there is muchdestruction and self-destruction, but also the possibility of joining acommunity that is more alive, and more human than what we knew.  I hope to see Melinda again soon, and tell herhow much the play meant to me, how it spoke to me – something written before myuncle got so sick, before I’d even known there was such a play.