I was listening to Alexander Rybak's Song from a Secret Garden today and it got me thinking about Melancholy Lozenges.
Candy flavored with sadness, but not just any sadness.
Melancholy.
A resigned, hopeful, smile through the tears sort of sadness that is almost happiness and makes you think of stupid quotes like: "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." and
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
Melancholy is the place after grief. When you begin to realize the truth of those quotes and all the others just like them that the grieving and the carefree alike scoff at.
It's when you have the hope that life will go on and get less painful with time. You can almost here someone quietly telling you "This, too, shall pass."
You can look back on the good times fondly and the sad times with a, not detached, but faraway sort of sadness where you realize that, though it still hurts, you are not in that place anymore and the scars on your heart will heal someday.
All of this complicated emotion in a little piece of candy the size of a cough drop.
Of course, it tastes different to different people. Only those who have experienced loss can taste its truly poignant flavor, the sweet sadness that makes it what it is.
Otherwise they just can't understand. They know there is something different about this candy, some strange, unusual, but not entirely unpleasant aspect of it that confuses them.
But they don't know what
_
Whew, it's been so long since I've written anything. I actually thought of this one while listening to my iPod and walking to the library. It was raining too so picture me alone in the rain under a huge black umbrella walking along the side of the road in a small town in Maine. It was about a thirty minute walk. Plenty of time to contemplate what melancholy means. I know it's not much and if more comes to mind I might update it but until then here you are.