I met melancholy in my early teens. It settled into my bones in my early twenties, and for the next two decades I resisted it. My melancholy was a curse, a barrier to the happiness that eluded me. I chased rainbows, which of course never materialized, and pretending I had them always in my pockets made me angry and anxious and hard. When Mack died in 2014, two days before I turned forty-eight, I stopped resisting all the sadness within me. The only thing I wanted to do was to feel the terrible loss of her. Heartbreak ripped me open and shattered almost everything I held true, but it also put me in touch with a part of myself that I needed to survive in a world without my daughter.
For the last twelve years I have been learning to embrace my natural melancholy. I am the classic melancholic described by Hippocrates in his Four Temperaments. On the bright side analytical, reflective, and sensitive; and on the darker side pessimistic, rigid, and sorrowful. On my healing journey through writing, therapy, making art, and in greatest part to my daily yoga and meditation practice, I have come to realize that tamping down a part of myself is futile. Trying to outrun my melancholy was unwise and unhealthy. Sadness is inevitable, and my melancholy is wisdom. I no longer see it as a depression of my spirit or as a dark cloud over my life. It is parent to my empathy and compassion. I would not call it a superpower, but it is the way I am wired to survive in this beautiful, heartbreaking world.
It might sound strange to anyone who lacks a melancholic temperament to hear me say that my melancholy—my ability to sit with sadness and reflect upon it and my willingness to witness other people’s sorrow—is a gift, not a curse. My melancholy reminds me to be kind and nonjudgmental. It regulates my striving, makes delight more delightful, and defines every accomplishment as a wonder. It helps me to live with Mack’s physical absence and to embrace her spiritual presence. It offers a path of acceptance lined with all the joys and the sorrows of being human.
Whenever Mack noticed sadness in me it was her natural inclination to cheer me up with humor and her infectious, exuberant joy. She wanted to balance my inclination toward sorrow with her inclination toward happiness. She was good at shifting my mood, brightening my darkness, and refocusing my attention on the wondrous. What I needed then, however, was not a break from my melancholy, but rather a counterweight to the anger that brewed in the futile fury of my resistance to a natural, quiet melancholy.
Today I would want Mack to know that I am well as well as melancholy. Embracing an essential part of my spirit has unclenched my fists, softened my pointy edges, and heightened my sense of wonder. I would want her to know that I am capable of joy in good part because I can sit with sorrow. I would want her to know that every flower, dog cuddle, and perfect bite of a favorite meal is miraculous because my melancholy understands the fleeting nature of this human existence. I would want Mack to know that she is still a balancing influence. She keeps my sad eyes wide open for every delight in the vicinity. She is my daily reminder to live my life loud and full and true.
I would want Mack to know that embracing my melancholy has helped me to love myself and to embrace all the life I am privileged to experience. I would want her to know I am living on for both of us.
Mackenzie Kathleen McDermott (17 March 1994 – 7 October 2014)
When Mack’s absence feels like a ton of boulders on my chest, my melancholy transports me to Monsaraz, Portugal. We spent a day in that beautiful and haunting hilltop village on a family vacation to the Iberian Peninsula in 2011. I like to think of Mack’s spirit there in that ancient place (I wrote a blog about it in 2017, Mack in Monsaraz). Someone snapped a photograph of me in Monsaraz, sitting in quiet reflection on a bench overlooking the olive groves, and a deliberately murky ink of that photo grounds this mixed media ode to Mack and My Melancholy. Perhaps some day my spirit and Mack’s spirit will haunt Monsaraz together.
