All posts by Corinne

Can I Ever Lay You Down?

Ten years after you’ve gone, you still show up in my life in so many small ways. Your photo is right at home on my little altar, and many mornings, it’s the first thing I see.

And I’m down in Louisiana again, retracing your steps. I guess you know I’ve fallen in love with this place, even though I couldn’t wait to leave decades ago. I’m pretty sure you understand what a lovely and surprising joy it is to return home, and to fall into the open and welcoming arms of our family.

I’m getting to know them better – and to appreciate the many ways they still thrive. Together, they’re still going through all the tedious and wrenching challenges of a life with a big dose of humor, and still doing good work in the community. They enjoy each other. A few cousins still remember you. At family gatherings before the Virus, when we could still all get together, your name came up in the old stories about those who came before us.

And I’m still making my way through your boxes, though that goes in spurts. I’m not sure who, in the future, will care about all the old letters and photos. But I want to hurry to do that work. I’m not terribly far away from my own drifting-down years – and I want to share those photos with anyone who remembers you before they, too, just let go. I keep thinking about your down-to-earth perspective on bodies and aging. “Things wear out, after all!” Eventually, inevitably, we will all just wear out. Before that happens to me, I want to do what I can to preserve and share this legacy.

These days, some new things are happening in my life, even without you. I’m just wrapping up another book – this time, a kind of “homage” to our home-ground state, and to the lovely and healing graces of Nature that it offers. Louisiana Herb Journal will come out sometime this year. And I’m aging, as you did over such a long period of time. I’d love to talk with you about this curious and interesting and frustrating trek. I’m sure you’d have a lot to share.

And I still love life – still enjoy my daughters and friends. My grandson Peter, whose photo I used to send you once in a while, is a quirky 12 year old. He’s inches taller than I am, and still growing. My little pooch Bodi is 13 now, but still happy and feisty. And my sister is still baking yummy treats at the restaurant.

But the world is not such an easy place these days. It’s a complex time, for sure – a strange world you’ve left us with. We’re certainly getting used to loss, especially with the Virus, and with our increasing fragility. Lately, we are all grieving the uncertainty, the planet’s instability, the inequity we’ve normalized, the fears, and wars, the imbalances, the tattered hopes and expectations.

Some things are shifting in a good direction, though. Even if you wouldn’t quite understand all the issues, you’d agree that love is the most important thing – that no one should be excluded, or privileged, because of something so ambiguous as skin color or political leanings or wealth. I know you’d want everyone – every child, every adult, every creature, to be held gently in the embrace of life. So we’re taking some halting steps in that direction. We don’t know how to work out all the details yet. But I think we’ll handle it, if we’re willing to keep showing up, and if we have faith.

I’m not sure what your situation is right now, or where you are – but if you’re still keeping an eye on this gorgeous and trembling world, maybe you can intercede in getting prayers to the right “department.” We’d all appreciate the help. Of course, I know you’re still caring and loving us all – and that’s a healing in itself.

I still love you, in the quietest and gentlest of ways. I’m still not sure if I can ever really say Goodbye. So for now, I’ve decided to say Thank You instead.

Thank you for welcoming me into the world. Thank you for love and for dedication. Thank you for what you modeled in your own approach to life. Thanks for your willingness to learn, even when you knew so much – and for your willingness to teach even your most unruly students (including me!). Thank you for forgiving my inabilities and rigidities and the small fractures of my heart. You knew the truth about relationships – we all trample over those we love. But when we stick it out, something rare and tenacious and sweet grows from our efforts.

Thank you for being a doorway into our legacy of family bonds and care. Thank you for your high standards and modest expectations – for your joy and passion, and angst and foibles. Thank you for your reverence and compassion – your intelligence and wit – your devotion and dignity. Thank you for your passionate life, and for your graceful death. Thank you for letting me into your small private world, and for letting me share mine. I love you – and that’s a forever thing, even though you’re gone.

As routine as it has become to live without you, I still love this little Love Room we made – am still humbled and grateful and surprised at how much sweetness there has been in knowing – and celebrating – and even grieving – you. Though I don’t think about you as often these days, it’s such a gift to know that if I stop, and wait, and am quiet for a while, you might show up. Or at the very least, that the little doorway we’ve made between the worlds of being here now, and of what went before, will stay open a bit, and we can say hello. I’m so happy about that.

I guess I’m not sure I will ever want to lay you down. But that’s okay. Maybe I don’t need to. I’ll continue to imagine you, all filmy and ethereal, standing right behind me, showering me with sweet care, and hoping the best for us all. That’s such a rare and blessed thing.

I know you join me in praying for the world –
May all be well.
May the whole world, and all its inhabitants, be well.

And wherever you are, may you know how much you are loved. That will never end, no matter what happens to the Love Room over time. That, too, is a rare and blessed thing.

On Love and Sacrifice

A few thoughts on Love –

Life is fragile – Love is both holy and hard – and Love will break us, time and again. And what, after all, can we do but hang on for the ride?

Yesterday, my friend Lorraine suffered a major, and unexpected, heart attack while she was waiting for Rick to bring her morning coffee. She’s still alive, but her brain shows no activity. Everyone is gathering around – as much as anyone can in these Covid times – waiting and deciding and grieving, even though she’s still here.

Last week, another friend’s husband died after several courageous struggles with cancer. And a month ago, C’s daughter had a major stroke and passed away even though she was only 50 years old.

And still – this morning – the Sumac behind my house is blooming and shifting in a breeze, surrounded by honeybees who are so crazily happy. And – this morning I saw the bluest bird ever, just drop onto the ground and peck away at seed as I stood by stunned by its beauty before it darted into a nearby shrub. And – Bodi drove me crazy with having to sniff every single cluster of leaves along our walk. And – the goldfinches flitted through the sprinkler’s showery spray to eat damp seed. And – my knees are especially achy after yesterday’s garden work.

So it’s another day – another gorgeous and hard-working day – another hopeful and trembling day – another breathing-in and falling-down and getting-up-again day – as we all wait for Lorraine to let go.

Love is sacrifice. If you’ve lost someone who was part of you, you’ve been broken open. If you’ve dared to love, you’ve put your life on the line. There’s no escaping that fact. When you dare to love, when you release your heart, even if you hadn’t intended it to happen, you’ve given yourself over and there’s no going back.

Every day lately, I smother my 13 year old dog with kisses. In these times I’ve started to call VirusVille, I haven’t been touched by a human being for three months. I still see people; I can walk with a cousin or a friend, and chat. Or I can pick up lunch and sit (carefully distant) with a daughter in a park to catch up. But there’s no touching. For the foreseeable future, Bodi is my guy – my snuggle muffin. And he’s getting older by the second.

I think a lot about love these days, about how much we need to give and to receive love. For now, Bodi fills that need. But he’s aging. I can see differences in how he walks, in how much time it takes him to catch up with me on our morning jaunts. He stumbles sometimes, he needs more naps than he used to, and his spunkiness is short-lived. So I know we’re headed toward the end. I might have another few more years, and those will be sweet. But I know he’ll break my heart.

Loving him so much already breaks my heart. But love is a commitment, a continual, wrenching risk, a sacrifice. A sacrifice of solitude, a sacrifice of security, and of insular living. If I dare to love, I know full well I’ll be broken in the end. Love is emotionally expensive, and the cost of love is loss. We can try to hedge our bets, protect ourselves from caring too much, but then what’s the meaning of a life?

There’s no way around it: love is all – love will slay us, and even when we are slain, we’ll never regret giving ourselves away. Giving all. Being a sacrifice. For what are we, if not sensing and sentient beings? Love is our becoming. We become love. We have to share Love, again and again and again.

I recently read a quote from Author Louise Erdrich – about life and love and pain and how to get by:

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It’s the reason you are here on Earth. You have to risk you heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

May we all have to courage to risk our hearts, despite the pain.

(For Jeff, who is gone, and for Gail who made the Sacrifice; for C, who loved even when it was hard; and for Lorraine, waiting her turn to say Goodbye.)

 

On the Dark Night of the Soul

There’s something about living in dark times that makes all the small movements of a life so much more precious. This morning, I go through my usual small rituals of starting the day – rise up out of dreams, pat my hair into place, feed the dog, pocket treats and my phone, walk out into the new green day. I note birds who flush up out of the water, and what herbs are blooming along the trail. Pick a few mulberries from feral trees near the river, then go home for tea.

I reach into cabinets, into the fridge for cream, and through all of these tiniest habitual chores I am aware of the thin quiet undemanding breath of the Holy that flows in and through me – through every tiny movement – breathing me, flowing in and out of me, nothing dramatic, just the Mystery, living in my skin, in my thoughts, in my breath.

I sit outside for a while, the sun warming my feet, a hummingbird coming and going between trees and the feeder. A couple of lizards climb from leaf to leaf nearby. The caterpillars steadily, quietly, strip leaves from the last of the Milkweed plants. A little breeze stirs in the woods.

These are the things that get me through. Sometimes, I have to take a break from grief to remember the quiet holiness of the world – the gentle, continual throbbing of a life, even as it is assaulted all around us.

In the shadow of the Virus, time moves more slowly – sometimes, it doesn’t seem to move at all. I have nowhere to go. I am quieter. My body relaxes in a way it hasn’t for a long time. Who cares if all I do in one whole day is walk the dog, read a not-quite-interesting book? Or send my daughters, who live far away, photos of the new bright hibiscus that is blooming in the yard? Who cares if I just amble through my day? Who cares if the squirrels have ganged up at the seed-feeder, and are squabbling? They’ll work it all out.

These days, all that is horrendous breaks us open, and all that isn’t horrendous becomes Light. We will find out way through the darkness not with our eyes, but with our Hearts.

Over the years with my own experience of loss, I’ve grown to think of it as a kind of “dark night of the soul” – a spiritual term coined by St. John of the Cross as he wrote about the soul’s approach to the Divine. My understanding of the term is that, in the soul’s journey toward union with the Holy, God’s light shines so intensely on the soul, in an attempt to purify it of all attachments and identities, that the soul experiences intense, deep darkness. Everything that was believed, depended upon, sure, is stripped away. Personal identity, the religious practices that one found so comforting, long-held beliefs – all are emptied out. And the soul is left bereft – forced toward the only true Light – the Divine. It’s a wrenching time. But it paves the way for a deepening of soul, and increases one’s capacity to bear the Holy. And to Love.

In the same way, I believe that loss is a kind of psycho-spiritual dark night. And whether it’s personal, or shared with the whole world, as it is now in the Virus Times, in the Darkness, in uncertainty, we are broken open, swamped with Mystery, ultimately forced to let go. We face the brutal Nothingness, what Buddhist monk Pema Chodron might call the Emptiness. And as that happens, something changes in us. As our hearts are broken, our body-mind-spirit begins to remember, to know, that love is All. We are transformed, whether we are ready or not.

There will be many kinds of “dark nights” in our lives – aging, or physical or emotional illness we suffer through that alter our sense of stability in the world. No matter how emotionally or financially or socially or intellectually comfortable we are, something will bring us down. Things will fall apart.

But as Chodron notes, “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

Lately, I am learning about letting go, and about being transformed. In the darkness, everything rises up to its incandescence. So here I am – on this gorgeous day -slipping through another cycle of worry and sickness, of beauty and small joys, of suffering and of healing, of waiting and working and hope.

May all be blessed. May we all rise up to the Light. May all be well.

On Grief and Worry and the Big Virus

If nothing else, grief makes us tender – exposes a fragility we weren’t expecting. Before loss, we were pretty sturdy. We thought most things would be okay. We put one foot in front of another without giving it much thought. We might have had hard times, but we made it through. We grew strong, over time, and for the most part, we learned to trust life.

But once we’ve experienced Great Loss, once the ultimate wolf is at the door, sometimes we realize just how fragile we really are. And doubt begins to creep in. Whatever certainty we had gathered around us suddenly seems pretty flimsy. Before my own experience with grief, I was pretty sure of myself. I might have had a few worries, struggles, but I could weather those with resilience and feistiness and assurance. I was strong, after all.

These days, though, I seem older, a little more vulnerable….and I worry. I worry about my sister and her health, when people with lung issues are at risk with this new virus. I worry about the state of the topsy-turvy world. I worry about the little blue herons that feed at the edges of the pond, when the river water has flooded over the land again. I worry about the bayou places I love – Cocodrie, and Pointe Aux Chiens, and Lower Montegut – sinking down. I worry about Sunny who, at 93, insists on going to Walmart to get seed for his birds even though everyone’s supposed to stay home during the virus scare. I worry about women and whether they (we) will ever be truly valued. I worry about the newly planted dahlia tubers that haven’t sprouted yet, and how they’ll do. I worry about getting older. I worry about not getting older. I worry about money, and not having money. I worry about who will remember me since I’ve lived so much time alone. I worry about losing my mind – it’s a hard thing, I imagine, to outlive your mind. I worry about Bodi – my oldish, lumpy dog, and who will take care of him if the Virus gets me. And I worry about how I’ll get along in life without him, if he goes first. He’s known me through so much. I worry about the things I didn’t have – a good, long-lasting husband – enlightenment – a Pulitzer Prize – fabulous skin – great acclaim – good arches. I worry about the things I haven’t seen – Africa, and Madagascar and glaciers. And about the things I have – inequity and cruelty and willful ignorance. I worry about all those who struggle alone, or those who struggle together. I worry about this Earth, its loveliness and gifts, and how ruthlessly we’ve treated it. I worry I haven’t loved enough, prayed enough, done enough, healed enough.

I don’t know whether my aunt’s death years ago triggered this litany of fears, or whether it’s just a combination of events and aging that have piled up over time. But I know that loss seems like an almost overwhelming reality sometimes, and everywhere I look, I see more of it coming my way.

But I know that worry can’t be everything. I still love life – still glory in every small and wonderful thing that surrounds me in this stupendous, surprising world.

I recently saw one of Mary Oliver’s poem that hit home for me –

“I Worried” – (from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems)

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.”

So I try to follow her example –
This morning, Bodi and I walk down the levee and the river trail. Dew is heavy in the grass, the air is warm and close, and sun burns through fog in the patchy blue sky. At the pond, a crowd of whistling ducks feed at the edge of the water while a small alligator floats nearby. The air smells like sweet clover and river water and new green growth. A fisherman stands on the far shore of the pond with his line in the water, and waves.

There is much blooming today – evening primrose stretches across the sand, and patches of white sweet clover flank the trail. Horsetail stands tall at the river’s edge, and large masses of white-flowered Beggar’s Ticks line the path. On this day, it is the Beggar’s Ticks I’m after. I’ve read recently that it has many anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties, and I’ve thought it might be good to have some on hand in this health-challenging time.

Bodi waits while I reach into the thicket of plants, feel along each stiff stem until I get to its root, then tug the herb up out of its soil. I notice how the roots and long creeping stems anchor the sand in place, helping to shore up the riverbank. I step carefully, hoping to warn any sleeping snakes to go another way. With the plants so thick, it doesn’t take long before I have a nice bundle of herbs to carry home.

On the river, fog hangs thick and low, and I think about all the ways this current Corona Virus crisis is similar to the fog – close, pressing over us all, coloring the way we see lives we once might have thought were pretty bright. Now, we live with worries that seem unavoidable. We worry for the future of our world, for our children and families, our older people, our health care professionals, and how our lives will be tinged with uncertainty for who knows how long. It’s a hard thing to live with.

And – but – here I am, with my bundle of wild healing. Even though the herbs I’ve picked today may only offer a minuscule bit of aid against what seems to be a monster storm on the way, I’ve done a tiny thing to help myself.

Maybe in this troubled time, any little thing we can do will help in this moment, and then the next, and the next. All I know is that by the time I’ve plodded through the powdery river sand, watched the whistling ducks avoid the alligator as it scrabbles through the damp grass, watched the sun break through hazy clouds on the big river, I feel more at home. I love the Beggar’s Ticks and the ducks and the ibis who hang out in the tops of trees. I breathe up the sweet damp air as if it were an infusion of life, and feel better. And I pray, like Julian of Norwich in the times of the Black Death – May all be well. May all manner of things be well.

For now, at least, I am well.

On the Tenderness of All Things

Recently, I read a report from scientists about the fire scourge in Australia. The report noted that the burning of billions of trees is forcing so much CO2 into the atmosphere that it might actually overwhelm the planet’s ability to compensate – an irreversible event that would change the planet and its ability to adapt, possibly forever.

For weeks now, I’ve watched – and then been unable to watch – the stories from Australia. I’ve been especially touched by the plight of the animals – 1 billion animals estimated to have died already – and multitudes more to perish when those who survived the burning times return home to the scorched earth, with no food, no water, no resources, no safe and nourishing place to be.

One photo in particular struck me so much I can’t get it out of my head, or heart. Two kangaroos comforting each other – holding each other, one’s head tucked under the other’s chin – their eyes so full of sadness and confusion. The exquisite vulnerability, the sense of nowhere to turn, the questions, the hurt, the fear, the innocence – exposed and unguarded.

Of course, as humans, we have more layers of protection than do the animals and other life forms who live in the wild. But I believe that we all suffer, in our bones and hearts and souls, the wounding of the exquisite vulnerability that lies at the center of all of life. Together with all of Nature, we co-participate in the woundedness of the world.

In many of his writings, Thomas Merton – Trappist Monk and theologian – commented on the vulnerability of our most deep, indwelling nature. He noted, “The soul is very shy.” He was speaking about the intimate, tender nature of the Spirit in each of us. But I think that this tenderness, this shyness, also tells us about the intrinsic nature of all of life. At the core, in their heart of hearts, all life forms must experience an exquisite trust – an ability, and willingness, and longing – to be vulnerable and tender, to open, to live as if everything were Holy – as if that tenderness were of ultimate value, deserving of protection.

I think that grief opens us to that original tenderness, and to the wounding of the vulnerability of life. Perhaps this is why those who grieve feel so assaulted by, and unable to deal with, “the world.” Living in the world requires, to some degree, that we protect, hide, disguise our tenderness. If we are very lucky, we have friends and family with whom we can express that vulnerability. But working at demanding jobs, and undertaking the numerous and befuddling transactions of daily life, means that we have to develop a tougher “skin” around our sensitivities. Often, we get pretty good at that. But in grief, when our world has been ripped to shreds, that intrinsic tenderness is unavoidable.

Mourning, then, becomes a ragged, terrible gift. In being broken open by the ruthlessness of loss, we are forced back to our original tenderness. We are reminded that the best and most vulnerable part of ourselves is inescapable, and that the gift of existing has a cost. Whatever the Mystery is, it lies at the center, and we are One with the intrinsic and holy tenderness of being.

And perhaps that’s a good thing, no matter how wretched it feels. We can move forward, when we have the strength, with the hard-won knowledge of an essential quality of being alive. We are part of a community – struggling together – learning how to be at home with our tenderest selves. Together, we are trying to heal.

On Innocence, and Final Gifts

My parents each gave me a gift in their last hours - a gift that transformed something inside me and taught me a lesson that seeped into my whole being. 

When my father died, I wasn’t there. But as his time of “passing over” began, I watched my dad as he himself received a gift. I had been with him in the hospital for several hours as he moved in and out of wakefulness, struggling to breathe. After a period of agitation, my dad finally settled down some as I sat by his side. He seemed to rest for a while, and then suddenly sat straight up in bed. With a look of awe on his face, he stared off into the distance for a minute or two, never losing the look of wonder. Something in the room shifted at that moment, and while I can’t, of course, “prove” what was happening to him, I can tell you what I saw and felt. As I watched, I saw my dad finally understand that he was Innocent - that there was nothing he had ever done, or thought, or not done, that condemned him to guilt or sin or error. He was innocent, and free. As if a great weight had been lifted from his whole being, he then collapsed back onto the bed, and went into a deep sleep from which he never awoke. 

I had never thought of my dad as particularly “guilty” of anything, but I believe that he may have lived with a sense of his unworthiness or wrongness or lack, as so many of us do - feeling somehow fundamentally “wrong” - maybe based on sin and error models of many religions, or a misunderstanding of the ambiguity of being human. 

My mother’s gift to me was different, but no less meaningful. Shortly after my mother’s death, I arrived in Louisiana from Maine, and went to the house where my sister and I had grown up. I entered the room where my mother had died. The sheets were still rumpled; nothing had been touched since her body was taken away. There was a palpable emptiness in the room. But there was also something else. As I stood by the bed, I suddenly “saw” - as if floating above the bed - a vision of my mother standing in a doorway that looked like it was somewhere in Taos, New Mexico (which she had loved). The landscape was simple, but it was filled with light. My mom was looking out at me, and she was so happy. I then saw a kind of web, made of golden threads of light, that I knew had been my mother’s love for me. And I knew in that moment that my mother had always loved me, no matter how challenged our relationship had been. That web of light, of my mother’s love, had been a tapestry upon which my whole life had been woven. A reality I had not been able to take in as we struggled over time was suddenly very real, and visible, and true. 

A spiritual teacher once said to me that life is really only Yeses ultimately - only positive things. That the negatives don’t add up, but that the positives do. In a way, the gifts given to me by my parents in their dying hours proved that point. My parents were certainly, painfully,  “gone;” but the luminous reality of their benevolence and love lingered after their deaths, and was perhaps even more rare and treasured because they were no longer tethered to their personalities or roles, and I was no longer in the position of “reacting” to their imperfections. 

These gifts at the time of my parents’ deaths have never left me - they enabled me to stand - not just for that moment, but for all the rest of my life, in a landscape between worlds  - between  everyday routine reality, and the mystical reality that is never free of the Presence of the Holy. I have been reminded that every moment of every day is filled with the throbbing, generous, mysterious reality of the Sacred, embodied in all that surrounds us.

May it be so. And may we remember. Amen. 

On Grief and Denial

Sometimes things are just too hard. We can’t take in what’s happening and still stay anywhere near sane. Life is so complex and confusing. And grief – the Great Leveler – compounds and deepens the complexity. In experiencing loss, it’s hard to know how to get through, or why we would even want to. It’s hard to know what is the right step, or stopping point, at any stage of the journey.

When I was teaching nursing students about whole health, we’d end the class by talking about all the exterior and interior resources one can access when faced with life and health challenges. We’d make a list that included things like family, friends, financial support, prayer, our own interior wisdom, exercise, rest, counseling, patience, forgiving ourselves, and so many other ways of getting through hard times. The students were amazed to realize how these positive supports could help us help ourselves. They were surprised, then, when I added something they often thought of as a “negative” to the list – Denial. Wasn’t that something we were supposed to avoid? They thought of denial as a turning away; a refusal to deal with what’s pretty obvious. But I told them that sometimes it helps. Sometimes, we need to indulge in a big fat No! I’m NOT going to deal with this. I CAN”T deal with this. I’m putting it on hold. I’m tucking it back in a corner, and I’m going to live around it, even if I have to live in a smaller space. I can look the other way. Sometimes, we just get to say NO, at least for a while. Some part of us needs to go to sleep, take a break, turn the other way. To act like nothing’s changed.

It’s not a permanent fix, of course. Eventually, the leaden reality of loss will seep through – but in the meantime, we can turn the other way, do something ridiculous, splurge on something expensive, eat ice cream and fried chicken. Celebrate a sunrise, even if we know the sky will darken again.

When my sister called to tell me my mother had died, my first words were, “You’re kidding, right?” Not that she would have joked about something like that, but my whole mind/body immediately rejected what it couldn’t process or believe. And when I found out my aunt had died – when I got the call from the nursing aid who I had JUST TALKED WITH a few minutes before, and who had told me my aunt was having a good day, sitting at the window and watching the birds, I said, “But you just told me she was fine!”

We discard what we can’t handle. We make a bargain with reality – I’ll let this much in, if you’ll give me a little time to get used to the idea – to go a little crazy – to fall apart, but gradually.

Denial buys some time – not time with our Beloved, of course, but time to figure out a way to withstand the truth. And a surprising thing can happen. As our bio-psycho-spiritual selves begin to gather nourishment from the flashes of memory we experience – as we connect with others who have known our Beloved – as we readjust the long-familiar parameters of our lives – as we learn to include loss in our expectations of life – we gain enough strength, recall enough love, to let what’s real be real. To let grief be real. To let ourselves, our torn and grief-stricken selves, stand in place, surrender to the inevitable, and still look forward.

In the time denial offers us, we become strengthened in our understanding, in our surrender. Over time, we can bear the questions – the unknowing, and we can live with it all. Not perfectly, not exactly in full compliance, but perhaps – if we’re very lucky – in great Grace. We accept the love we have been given, even if the love-giver has been torn away. We were made whole by Love – and even if the Lover is gone, Love lives and breathes and thrives within us. We become rare individuals who know the terrible secret of walking in a world of emptiness, sharing all the fullness we can bear. It’s a ragged gift, that skill, but one day we – the tattered survivor – will look into another face ravaged by grief, and hold out a hand. We will understand. And that will help. Because denial – the little stolen space of not knowing even though we do – has helped us along. For a while.

On Grief and Vulnerability

This morning, Bodi and I head out for our daily walk. The air is colder, 38 degrees, and a heavy frost has crept in overnight. As the season shifts into Fall, leaves that were green for so long are flaming into orange and scarlet and gold, then falling, carpeting the yards and roads and waterways.

At the head of a nearby lake, a single loon watches us, one of this year’s chicks, full grown but not adult enough to get her solid colors. I stop to take photos, and wonder how long it will take for her to realize it is time to go – to lift up and sail toward the coast where she can settle into the ocean waters that won’t freeze during the long winter.

Near the boat launch convenience store, we greet the woman who tends the counter. She is out after the early morning coffee rush to smoke her cigarette. I tell her about the loon, and she points out a nearby cormorant that sails away from the dock, keeping an eye on us. She shows me the odd angle of one of its wings – instead of folding close to its body as it swims, the wing tip points up and out of the water. We talk for a while about all the animals who share this place with us – how lucky we are to live so wrapped-around with Nature. There are so many joys, but some worries, too.

In this small town, we notice not just the daily lives of the creatures around us, but their vulnerability as well. We all stand at the little swimming beach on the lake through the summer days, cheering on the progress of loon chicks who are learning to dive. We notice when the snapping turtle eggs, laid in mid-summer sandy nests, are hatching and when the babies start their trek across roads to the river. We take turns scooping up the tiny newcomers, and putting them safely into the shallow water where they can start their wild lives. We notice the fox as she carries her kits to their new den. And one day recently, we watched a raccoon lurch across a yard, stricken with what looked like rabies, and we chatted about what to do.

Like our natural neighbors, we humans are vulnerable too, but that’s easy to forget. We spend so much of our lives “managing things” – we’re so good at being “in control.” But grief – the Great Leveler – just wrecks that control to smithereens.

When grief surprises us, we are taken down. We lurch across the everydays of our lives much like the stricken raccoon – trying so hard, but stopped in our tracks. We struggle, like the cormorant with her wounded wing, hoping to keep up. But eventually we fall prey to reality – each of us is a feisty flickering up of life – lush and fiery and glorious – until we’re not. And grief will be our life-long companion – always showing up to remind us of the exquisite and wrenching tenderness of being alive. Like all the wild creatures around us, we are vulnerable. We take our place in the natural order of things – we start anew, we bloom up and thrive, we dwindle, and we disappear.

In reflecting on grief, Author Elizabeth Gilbert writes about her own experience on learning to live with the vulnerability of grief :


“I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. The only way that I can ‘handle’ Grief, then, is the same way that I ‘handle’ Love—by not ‘handling’ it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.”


Every single day, the natural world in which I live reminds me that I am not in charge. And grief, when it comes, reminds me that I am powerless over the inescapable truth. So I pray every day to be brought to my knees by the beauty and joy and wonder of this fragile and vulnerable life. And as my heart is torn open with grief, and with joy, I join my wild neighbors in the faithful trek forward – through this wondrous and mysterious life.

On the Wisdom of Loss

The wisdom of loss is a relentless thing – a mean lesson that we’d like to avoid. Some things, we just don’t want to know. But in the ragged journey of grief, we learn the limits of things. We learn to live with a hole in our hearts, to be sturdy no matter what, and to be here now. To savor the grace of every small moment, even if it’s fraught or messy or hard.

This morning, Bodi and I walk around the head of the lake. The air is cool at 42 degrees, and fog hangs over the water as the lake gives up its heat. All along the road, caterpillars are munching on milkweed plants, hoping, I guess, to become butterflies for a few days before the cold sets in. Feral apple trees are letting go of fruit, and much of the roadside is littered with red and yellow apples. And the acorns are falling already, oaks dropping them as the days grow short. Mallards are huddled together at the little beach, the geese sail overhead, and the wild grapes are growing tawny in alder thickets that lean over water.

And the pears are nearly ripe. Trees I planted almost 20 years ago are loaded with small but soon-luscious fruit getting ready to blush gold. My every coldish Fall morning is spent kneeling in dewy grass, picking up what’s fallen in the night, trying to beat the deer and crows and skunks to the fruit. In late Summer, I hang swirling silver tape all around the trees, stand “owl balloons” up in the laden branches. But it never really works. No matter how carefully I watch the fruit ripen, or how early I get out to scavenge each morning for what I can save from the local critters, I will lose some pears. Still, it all turns out okay. Every year, gold and rosy pears spread out to cover the dining room table and I wait until just the right ripeness to make pear butter. And every year, I am so much in love with abundance, even if it’s crow pecked and deer chewed.

The lushness and the loss make me think about aging, and change, and surrendering to the way things work. To the way life – and death – work. Ultimately, like the caterpillars heading toward freedom, and the apples waiting to be pecked at by coyotes, we are all walking forward into the stunning Mystery, and learning to let go – all gaining a relentless and wrenching wisdom, and daring to love, even though everything will fade away.

Which for some reason makes me smile. I have loved so many things that have fallen, but still grow so sweetly ripe and mellow in my heart.

On Moving Forward – Nine Years Later

     On this side of the veil between worlds, it’s an ordinary day - the sky is cloudy, the air breezy, some sun peeks through once in a while, but later today, another rain storm on its way. 
     
     Bodi and I walked this morning when the day was still early, the town still hushed. At the boat launch, a few mallard ducks slept on the dock that lifted and fell gently on small waves. The usual mint and bugleweed and goldenrod was still flowering even though we’re heading into Fall. I stopped at the little dam to take pictures of the scarlet cardinal flower and the jewelweed at the edge of the spillover stream. Many mushrooms stood in the pine needles, pushing their way up through dry soil. 

     I stopped at the lake then, and watched dark clouds move slowly over the hills. I thought about the world, and about things that change, things we lose, and I thought about you - on this, another anniversary of your leaving day. Nine years later, you being gone is a truth I’ve gotten used to, and yet is still hard to believe. 

     I know you’re out there somewhere - little bits of you, still part of what I breathe in everyday. I still glance at your photo on my little altar when I do my morning routine of stretches, some yoga, a few prayers. But I have to say I don’t think of you as much as I used to. Life keeps trundling along. Lately, I’ve been clearing some things out of this house where I’ve lived for 18 years, and I’ve started going through some of your boxes. They’ve sat in my garage for all these years since you left. It was too much, for a while, to dive into them and sort things out. But it feels like time. 

     In reading some of your letters to your sister and brothers and your mom, I see how much you loved the world - how much you celebrated and worried over the small joys and troubles of any ordinary day. You were alert, engaged, committed to the trek through living and loving. But you, too, had to let go. You were willing to suffer through your own trials and those of the people you loved, for we are never really single, never really protected from that marvelous and grueling co-participation in life’s demands and love’s requirements. 

     Having been vulnerable enough to love, to trust, to be revealed, to take each other into our bones and skin and heart so that we become each other’s context, each other’s home, we still have to let go. Our bodies don’t understand - the emptiness doesn’t make sense. It would be as if the ground beneath our feet suddenly disappeared - or the sky suddenly split - or the polar ice we had known forever as permanent were to melt - which, it turns out, it has. 

     Still - what can we do but keep walking? Taking steps, trusting that there will be something under our feet. Something under my feet, even though you’re not here. 
 
     I’ll be going down to Louisiana soon, to be on home-ground, to let my bones warm, and to see familiar faces that look so like yours. Visiting there, seeing family, is just one more way I’m still loving you. One more way I’m loving the world, even though you’re gone. I think you’d know what I mean. I’m pretty sure you’re loving the world too, right along with us all.