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.)

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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 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.