by Marlowe C. Embree
I came to, or was given as a gift, an interesting realization last night as I was pondering my grief journey. It probably isn’t original with me; but it was a new insight for me, and I thought I’d share my take on it in this story.
One of the things I miss the most about having lost Diane is my “exile from the community of touch.” Looking back on the hundreds of photos I have of us as a couple, I am struck now by two things: how often we are looking into one another’s eyes (which connotes neural mirroring), and how often we are holding hands. I usually don’t let myself think of this, because it’s a grief trigger, but last night I let myself experience the memory of walking hand in hand with her, of putting my arm around her. It’s one of the massive secondary losses of grief, and the body’s tactile system can slowly starve without it. And, no, I’m not talking about sex.
Because I have cats, I’m aware of how a creature without words communicates, and the tactile modality looms large. Often, in the middle of the night, the most affectionate of the cats will awaken, begin purring, and nestle next to my chest. Or when I return home after a few hours, she will eagerly rub against my leg in greeting, doing a little leap of joy (about ten percent of cats do this, according to one book I read) in her enthusiasm. The other cats are more reserved, but they will sometimes jump up on the counter and initiate a head bump, which is technically known as “bunting” in the feline industry. Some of this is also olfactory, since they are doing scent marking for their benefit — the equivalent of labeling something with a Sharpie in the human world — but it’s mostly tactile. And it’s pleasant for both of us, causing the brain to release oxytocin, the so-called “cuddle hormone.” It’s one of the ways we bond. The name’s bond — feline bond.
But in widowerhood, the affectionate touching that married people (if they have any kind of a decent marriage) take for granted is suddenly gone. It happens all at once, without warning, as when a young salmon plunges for the first time from fresh to salt water. I held Diane’s hand the day we were married, and I held her hand on the day she died; and in between, we held hands often. Sometimes store clerks would say to us in amazement (this is a true story), “It’s so nice to see such an old couple still holding hands!” This is, of course, an ambiguous sort of compliment. “It’s so one of us doesn’t fall down,” I replied, which was only half true, but half a truth is better than none.
Indeed, in our culture, there are only two contexts in which hugging is unambiguously allowed: between parents and young children, and between romantic partners. Some female friends do hug each other, but single men are more or less expected to maintain their distance from other humans, according to the science of proxemics. Men generally don’t hug other men, for fear that this will be interpreted as what Oscar Wilde called the love that dare not speak its name. And hugs between opposite-sex friends are seen as what academics like me call semiotically ambiguous, the fear being that physical contact might be misinterpreted as an invitation to move beyond the friend zone. So I don’t know what men without cats do, but I sometimes wonder if the angry, exaggerated, toxic masculinity of our day is due in part to this. In church circles, there are often what one writer calls “awkward side hugs,” which release about as much oxytocin as the average fist bump.
In light of this, I’m impressed by something one author (whose name I sadly can’t recall) noted about the healing ministry of Jesus. In dealing with people of authority, like the Roman centurion whose servant was ill, he would sometimes heal at a distance. But in dealing with the dregs and outcasts of society, such as lepers, he would invariably touch the person he was healing. I imagine that the touch itself was the first affirmation of human worth those people had experienced in, perhaps, decades. “Welcome back to the community,” the touch said. It was a public declaration of inclusion. “You exist,” it denoted, “and you are valued and significant.”
In our hypersexualized society, many can’t imagine innocent physical contact, but that’s not so in most other cultures. They have more cats in those cultures, so they learn early on that touch can mean affection without an agenda. But in our culture, we don’t have the rules and the limits figured out. People either violate what rules there are with abandon (a terrible idea) or isolate themselves in little invisible spaces that no one can breach (also a terrible idea). Usually the midpoint between unhealthy extremes, the via media, is best. We fear acknowledging dependency and need. We fear being misunderstood. We fear our own emotions, and are terrified of seeming maudlin — all evidences of a culture nearing the abyss, in my opinion. Jesus knew better, and when he raised Jairus’ daughter from death, he touched her and said endearingly in Aramaic, talitha kumi, which in a dynamic equivalence translation means “time to wake up, baby.” And she rejoined the living, through the power of touch.
Well, I’m going to hug a cat now. You can’t stop me. It’s a free country, more or less, some say.
Marlowe C. Embree is an emeritus professor of psychology from the former University of Wisconsin-Marathon County. He really likes cats. Send him mail.
Isonomia Quarterly 