Whatever psychologist or psychiatrist thought up the word "closure" ought to be ashamed of himself or herself. The journalists who picked it up, waived it around, and spoke of it as closing a door, ought to serve Saturday detention and perhaps Sunday detention. The people who encouraged seeking it in outside events should have a special place in hell (if there is a hell.) The idiot who suggested the courts could provide it is the devil incarnate.

Closure does not exist any more than the fountain of youth does---at least not in the sense many people think. There is no magic, closing door. At best there is a sheer curtain that is closed most of the time. Tragic events play out years later but at some distance and through some gauze, a bit blurry around the edges. Tragic events play out years later in ways both wonderous and horrendous but never quite how we imagine. We all should know this fact. All the great playwrights did.

The curtain pull to this sheer curtain never lies outside ourselves. It's never quite where we think it is. It's never in someone else's hands. They can help us locate it but they can't put it anywhere. If some outside event appears to contain that curtain pull, it's only because we've come into that event with the cord inadvertently and absentmindedly wrapped around our ankles.

Some people, like me, need opening, not closure anyway. We begin the journey through tragedy with a closed, opaque theater curtain between us and it. People like me are easily recognizable in tragedy. We're the ones scrubbing the floors, setting out the meals, and functioning while being accused of coldness and lack of feeling. We function by letting the feelings seep in slowly so as to protect as much as possible as long as possible. A little bit of denial kepts the earth spinning in its orbit. The danger for us is not so much that we will wallow in horror but that we will shut off the best parts of us with the horror.

No, closure is not what it's cracked up to be. Don't go with Door #3. Settle for the curtain instead.

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