In my aunt’s last few months, so many things would change. Always, in her 102 years, her mind had been sharp, her attention dependable. Then, when she was confined to a hospital and then a nursing home for care, nothing was familiar. She adapted, was kind and polite to all the new people around her and all the activities she was encouraged to do, but I could see her slipping away. It was all so exhausting for her, so confusing. I returned from one visit concerned and saddened by the toll all the changes were taking on my aunt, and sat down to write this little poem:

Memory

I’ll be your familiar thing,
what you remember
when everything else is lost.
I’ll be where the memories rest
and where they collide
in a tangled mesh of what was then, and
what is new,
until you can sort it out again.

I can be the fulcrum
around which your shaky balance swings.

When you can’t see the future, and even the past
is pale, you can reach out
and touch me –
an arm, a hand, my familiar face,
and remember
love,
hard times,
what was easy,
who we were.

You can watch me loving you.
You can inch yourself bit by bit across
a new and rocky terrain
in your stubborn and spirited way
until your new world slips into place.
In the meantime,
Here I am.
You remember me, so far.
Touch my hand –
I’ll hold you up.

Sometimes, after a loss things start to pile up. We just can’t handle anything other than the swamp of sadness, the fog of loss. We’re busy trying to get through the day – trying to pretend everything is okay; everything is normal. So we lay some things down. We turn away; tuck stuff into corners. We sink down a little, let things settle into place. Sometimes, the piles become a kind of nest. It’s what we have left of those we’ve lost. And it’s familiar, a kind of comfort. It’s ours. We don’t want anyone else messing with it, either. And we don’t want to let go.

I read recently about “the clutter of grief” – an interesting concept. According to Peter Walsh, “Clutter is not just the stuff on your floor – it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living.”

With that in mind, the following is a little note I recently wrote to my aunt even though its been years since she’d moved on. ….

“I still have so many piles of your stuff. Some boxes are in my garage, where every year I walk around them to get to the gardening tools. Others boxes wait in my living room closet. The stored winter coats have folded around them, and I forget they’re still there. Every once in a while, I’ll pull out a box, go through a few things. Lately, I’m looking at some of the letters you saved, trying to sort them into piles. There’s the “family” pile, with letters written by you and your parents and the generations before them. Most of the notes are little everyday things you were sharing with each other. There are some small love letters written back and forth from Grandma and Papa when they were away from each other (which didn’t happen very often), or when he just had a few moments at work, and was thinking about her. He’d repeat how much he loved her – how he hoped the children weren’t running her ragged.

And there’s the pile of notes I haven’t had the heart to throw out, even though they wouldn’t mean anything to most people: your invitation to Truman’s inaugural ball; a little note from a German prince with whom you had danced one night in Munich; small love notes from someone who was infatuated with you. There are letters back and forth from you and Helen about Major’s health; notes from Johnny about how depressed he was, and how bad the medications were making him feel.

I like my little excavations into what’s left of you – each attempt is a journey backwards into who you used to be. I learn more each time. But my own life is moving along – I have to pay attention to that, too. I guess I’m a kind of “in-between” place – I so love the mysteries and graces and questions and discoveries of who you used to be – who you all used to be. But I am also making my own way forward – still discovering who I’m becoming as I age, and how I’ll manage the rest of this curious life.

And after a while, all your remnants begin to seem like just another thing to do. Walk the dog; call the cable company; figure out what to give Alison for her birthday; find someone who can repair the roof; figure out what’s eating the new seedlings in the garden bed; figure out what to do with your stuff. I’m still between worlds, in a way – what’s left over of yours, and what’s pulling at me from my own.

So I have a new plan – I’ll do one box a week – sort through and rescue what’s tender and meaningful, and toss the rest away. And instead of seeing this as yet another chore, or another wrenching tearing away, I’m going to celebrate. Maybe I’ll light a candle while I work, and take a few photos, so that each box will be a little ceremony of discovery and gratitude. And I’ll share things with daughters and cousins, so I’m not carrying you and your left-over life all by myself.

I don’t know if that will solve the problem of clutter – I’m pretty sure I’ll keep making my own little piles as I trundle along. But it will be a little step toward wrapping you up, loving and letting you go. And along the way, I know I’ll keep trying to get used to this wrenching and transformative work – learning to live in a life full of holes – in peace and understanding and gratitude. Because – what else can we do, after all?”

Our most intimate relationship in this life is with our body. From before birth, it is who we are. Everything we experience, see, question, learn, resist, love – is mediated in and through the body. A tangible, living map of our whole lives, our bodies are our first experience of the immediacy of being here, and of awe at the mystery of life

Some argue that we are “more” than a physical self, but our bodies are our first home. Spiritual traditions have sometimes warned of the “baseness” or commonness of the body – have spoken of it as something to be denied, transcended, suppressed, tamed, fought against. But newer spiritual perspectives cast a more integrative, gentler light on our physical “home.” In her most recent book “The Monk Within: embracing a sacred way of life,” theologian and spiritual teacher Beverly Lanzetta writes, “The body is…. a microcosm of the universe, and houses a unique configuration of the cosmos……The body-spiritual entity known as ‘the self’ is interdependent with the cosmos: we literally are composed of seawater, stars, and clouds.”

Throughout our lives, our bodies will change – shift – mature – falter – as will our relationship to them. But we are never alone – the Holy embraces us in and through our bodies.

If, then, our bodies are our physical home and our spiritual dwelling, any diminishment of health is not just a tangible impairment but a psychological and even spiritual shock. And witnessing the loss of someone we have loved is not just another emotional tremor, but a wrenching reminder for our own bodies that they are at risk. We are all at risk.

My friend F has been struck down – not out yet, but low. After half a year or so of vague symptoms, she’s been diagnosed with cancer. She might have six to 12 months to live, the experts say. Her family is rallying around. They do a good job of that. But for F, so used to taking care of herself – staying mentally alert and physically able – it’s a blow. Our bodies, as the women’s health initiative of the 1960’s noted, are our selves. And though we all know that our time on this planet, in this life, are limited, for the most part we live as if that weren’t true. For what can we do, really, but be here?

Given a couple of options for treatment – one of them being not to do anything at all – Florence has chosen to accept medications that will give her the best quality of life for as long as she has. “It’s been a good body,” she says. She’d like to give it a chance.

Grief is not limited to losing someone we love – it can also be experienced in the loss of our capacities, or even the loss of what we have imagined our future to be.

Our bodies are tender, vulnerable, ultimately gentle, unfaltering faithful. Our relationship with them is a sacred companionship, And while we may wish we were endowed with different physical attributes, the bottom line is, this is what we are.

Physical or emotional illness or challenges can strike deep – how are we to trust our bodies, our minds, if they are unpredictable, weak, susceptible to the ravages of time and change?

Loss of life (someone else’s, or a sudden, new limit to our own) is a shocking, painful, reality that permeates not just our sense of emotional well-being, but shakes and erodes our identity and shocks the fabric of our whole world. Loss plunges us into Mystery and our questions about the meaning of life, and of death.

In times of loss – whether of someone we’ve loved, or some reality that is shifting and diminished, or of the reality we’ve known as our bodies – we can do a few things. We can be gentle with ourselves – develop compassion with our battered and beleaguered bodies. If someone we know is suffering a health impairment, we can remember that their suffering is a spiritual trauma as well as a physical illness. In these instances, sometimes all we can do is witness what we can’t change, and try to understand.

Sometimes lately, as my body shifts and changes and is humbled into a disgruntled submission with various pains, I think about the words Jesus is reported to have spoken at the last supper – “This is my Body….” He was saying this of what he shared with his disciples – bread and wine, that represented his actual Self.

My experience, of course, is different. But I repeat those words to myself these days – occasionally in disbelief, in shock, but ever more often, in great love. “This is my body – that has held me for so many years. This is my body – that has suffered, rallied, fallen, broken, recovered, and persevered. This is my body – whole and yet aging…..This is my body, missing what it’s lost, and still looking forward to what could still become.”

I recognize my body as a bio-spiritual co-participation in this amazing and mysterious world.

And I am so grateful.

On Familiar Ground –

3/22/19 a.m.
I walk this morning over the levee, watching orange sun come up through the woods. Brown water stirs on the flooded batture in the small breeze, and the air is cool; the sky clear and blue.

On the little sandy path down to the river, I take photos of all the growth that’s popped up since last time I was here – white sweet clover, lush and tall; the beggar’s ticks, heavy with white blossoms; the purple-flowered vetch tangled all around. Small bird tracks etch the powdery sand.

At the river, the water is still high, and a great blue heron is poised, feeding, then sails away. Much boat traffic is lined up – huge ships, and barges and tugs. The curved path I’ve taken in the past to the sand pit is flooded now. I stand for a while – take photos – sniff up the river-scented air – and think of you.

I wonder if you ever came here – stood at the edge of the swollen river and watched what was passing by. Maybe it wasn’t as busy in your days, but the river was surely chugging along – herons surely visited the shore, and pelicans might have followed boats. Maybe the sweet clover choked the path like it does now, and maybe you picked some. Maybe you brought along a brother or two. Maybe you all sat by the edge of the brown and busy water, and watched, and were quiet, and wondered about life – about where the river would go, and where it might take you someday.

Every time I’m here, I feel you. I imagine you and my dad and all the kids jostling and joking and daring each other to step in. But I’m pretty sure you would have been careful. The adults told so many stories of the river’s dangerous currents – of how even a cow or a tree could get swept up so fast, and swirled away. Our family elders still do that now.

I take more photos of the water and sand and sky, as if I could capture it all. As if I could capture you. I walk home with a bundle of sweet clover, and some ripe loquats from the nearby trees, and some sand in my shoes, and feel you all around.

I still love you. After so many years of your being gone, the loss isn’t the same - not such a cavern of emptiness, not such a fog of impossible and unbearable realness. Some days go by when I don’t even think about you. And things are okay. I’m pretty good. There are some pains and challenges - some lovely joys - lots of the humdrum tediousness of making it through a life. There’s lots of laughter, and these days, more time with family.  

Life is still a lot of work - so many details to take care of by myself. I guess you remember what that’s like. Tiny trees that have sprouted from acorns dropped on the roof under the live oak tree now lean out from the gutters, waiting to be uprooted. And the house needs painting again. The ditch out back doesn’t drain like it should, so the ground out behind the house is constantly wet. And the squirrels keep stealing seed from the new bird feeder, then spilling it all over the ground. The list of chores is pretty relentless! 

But there are good things too. I get to see my sister a couple of times a week. We are getting closer, sharing the everydayness of our lives. Yesterday I worked in her garden - pulled up weeds and ferns and grasses that had smothered her flowering bulbs. We went out to eat afterwards - she told me the same stories she usually does, all about the people at work; what she’s cooking lately; and about some book she’s read. I told her my own stories. We tasted each other’s food. Sisters. Like you and Helen were, in that sea of brothers. 

And I’m getting to know our cousins a little better. Last week I went to see two of our relatives holding court. I learned more about what they do; sat there, under the formal photos of several family members who had served over the years. It was pretty cool. I think you’d have loved it. 

And every once in a while, you still show up. Here I am, a five-minute walk from where you all lived as children. Everyday I pass by the spot where the house used to be. The old cherry tree I climbed in my teenage years is still there. The tall oak tree where you all used to set up picnic tables and boil seafood and drink beer still hangs over the yard. Some other family is doing that now, but seeing that spot makes me remember you. 

There’s not so much wretched sadness these days, not so much longing to have you around. I am loving you in a different way, instead. I am breathing the sweet damp air you breathed, walking the dark wet soil you once ran over, loving some of the things - and the people - you did. I’m carrying you around in my skin, in my bones - and together, we’re enjoying the heck out of this snarky and amazing life. I know it’s not the same. It will never be enough to take your place. But it’s a kind of food I can take in and absorb that shores me up. Like you used to shore me up. I think you’d be happy with that - that somehow, we’re still loving the world together. Such a remarkable thing.

Margaret Renkl, contributing opinion writer in the New York Times, recently wrote about the importance of sharing grief (NYT 2/4/19), and responding to the grief of others. After the death of her mother, she pored over all the things her mother had saved – an odd assortment of memorabilia that had no meaning to anyone else. But Renkl treasured, or at least wondered about, all of it. She couldn’t throw anything away. She also saved all the notes and cards, emails and FB posts that were sent to her after her mother’s death.

She remarked, “I was desperate to hold onto any shred of evidence that her life mattered, and to far more people than just my brother and sister and me. I needed to keep learning about her from others, now that she was no longer here to keep revealing herself in real time. I needed to be reminded that my own memories were not the only ones keeping her in the world.”

It made me think of the long time after my aunt’s death when I could so feel her presence. I felt that I was holding her up. I continued to care that she had been alive. And in caring, I was acknowledging, and paying homage to, the gift and grace of her life, even though she was gone. I had no idea whether anyone else in the family, or in her group of friends, were remembering her. She had never married (though she had many suitors), and she had never had children. I was afraid she’d be forgotten, or only thought of once in a while, in a passing comment. And for a woman of such spirit and vitality and passion, that just wasn’t enough. I needed to keep her alive. She had been so alive in her life.

I wrote this little note to Min after reading Renkl’s article. Today, on what would have been my aunt’s 111th birthday, I wanted to share it with you:

“I think this is part of why I love being down in Louisiana. There are people who knew you, even if it was when they were children and you were an elder. And even if some had never known you, we share genes and heritage and place. We share habits and passions. We share history. So you’re not gone, you’ve just faded a bit into what has become our background – part of the tapestry into which we now weave the threads of our own lives.

Maybe this is why I wrote Letters from the Love Room; why I continue to share small bits of you as I get through this time now without you. You helped make me what I am. You saw something in me that, through these little notes, I am able to develop and share. I want you to know that I am still holding you up. But I am also holding up myself, and all that went into making me: our talented and quirky family; our luxurious and troubled and feisty southern home ground; this tattered and glorious life. I know you saw the beauty of these, and cared fiercely. I am doing that too. I just wanted to let you know. I am doing that too.”

Sharing our grief and memories with others, and allowing them to share theirs with us, is a way we can participate in the love that has made us up and still carries us along. Relationships are adventures in learning who we are and how we navigate this amazing and arduous work of being alive. I’m pretty sure that the work continues even after a loved one’s death. We reveal the beloved, and together with others, we participate in the work of becoming and revealing ourselves.

After a while, we are all survivors. We know what it means to suffer – to have hard times, or to watch another have hard times. We each have our own stories, our ragged trail of losses and pain and changes we could just barely get through. We are all battle-scarred, tattered, pale with exhaustion. We know what it’s like to be charred by the fire of loss. And even when we push through the storm, we look weathered, cautious. We recognize the signs in each other, too; recognize the wreck, and know what strength it has taken to get to this place. Over time, we have developed our own ways of making it through, and trying to find joy in this odd, tattered life.

In this journey, we can witness each other, if nothing more. We can hold each other up. We can share our ways of surviving, and inch toward thriving again.

Every morning, I make notes that no one will ever read. But it has been such a grateful grace to capture, document, celebrate each splendid and wrenching and plain old every day. Each moment of loving and wondering and mourning and struggling.

This morning, the golden-leaved and orange-berried bittersweet is glorious even as it chokes the old cherry tree to death. And the scarlet-crested woodpecker hides in its tangles, stores food in its hollows that will later be stolen by the squirrel. The rain-damp dog musses the newly-made bed, then slips into dreams. And even though this painful body that so loved moving and stretching and climbing and loving and working, now tilts and bows with infirmity, it is still so deliriously glad to stretch forward into life, determined with whatever resilience it can muster.

I have been here.
I am still here
every single fierce and glorious day.
Amen

Patience is not my best thing. It’s not even on the list. I always thought of that as a good thing; it means I get things done. If there’s a problem, I jump in and try to solve it. I’m pro-active, I say. And good at taking care of things. But somewhere in the mix of how to handle problems, well….impatience has turned out to be a problem.

My computer fix-it person, who calls herself “The Granny Geek,” noticed right away that I have a little issue with patience (or lack thereof). She was trying to show me how to do something, but it was going so slowly (I thought) that I kept repeating the command. She finally sent me out of the room so the computer could do its job! Fortunately, she has a sense of humor, and we both know, now, that if I’m frustrated, I’ll just keep plowing ahead, expecting better results, which just confuses the situation even more.

Grief, it turns out, is yet another lesson in patience. The process isn’t something I can speed through; I can’t just check things off the “grief list” and decide it’s over.

I’m still learning that I have to treat grief, and myself, like a stumbling, tattered, ultra-sensitive being who needs gentleness and kindness and….patience.

Grief is frustrating, and sneaky. It drops us at the gate of Mystery, drags us through questions we thought we didn’t need to ask: “What does it mean to be here? What does commitment mean, if it can be fractured by loss? How do we ever learn this impossible thing – how to love, and trust, when we know everything will be broken in the end, no matter how good or faithful or caring we are? And how do we recover? How do we let go? And why would we want to?”

And all these questions don’t just flit around in our minds. Loss happens in and to our bodies – our cells grieve, our organs and bones and skin mourn. Grief breaks us open – body, mind, heart, spirit.

But with patience, and in time, grief does unfold itself, reshape itself. It lodges in our tissues and thoughts and in the way we see the world, and reshapes us as well. Eventually, we can bear what we can’t understand. We become a secret chamber of sad knowledge. We become one of the wise ones (often, despite ourselves) who know how precious every small thing, every person, every opportunity for connection and compassion, is. We are broken, bowed down, and offered up. We can, in tiny ways, become a doorway for some other suffering soul, some other person lost on the way through grief, with patience as our guide.

I’m still rotten at computer work; I still expect things to get done the way I’m sure they can. But I’m learning, one stumbling step at a time, to wait, and to keep going, and to trust that I will make it through, though not necessarily in the same shape as I was before grief took hold.

The following is an excerpt from the article “In Praise of Patience” by Samira Thomas (see full article online) that speaks to the role of patience in the grief journey:

“Patience recognizes suffering in the difficulties of one’s life and that of another. Nowadays, it might conjure up ideas of complacence but, with a long view of time…….patience becomes a way of bearing sorrows. Unlike resilience, which implies returning to an original shape, patience suggests change and allows the possibility of transformation as a means of overcoming difficulties. It is a simultaneous act of defiance and tenderness, a complex existence that gently breaks barriers. In patience, a person exists at the edge of becoming. With an abundance of time, people are allowed space to be undefined, neither bending nor broken, but instead, transfigured.”

I wasn’t counting on being transfigured by grief. But it might be okay. I know I’ve been worn down, slowed down. I know my heart has been broken open. And as painful as this has been, and as mad as I still am, I am also blessed.

It would help a lot if grief were simple. If we knew what shape it would take; what time it would show up on any given day. If we knew a pill to take, or a diet to follow, that would head off the “symptoms.” But it’s always a surprise. Lurks around a corner when you least expect it. You could be having one of those days when it seems the cloud has finally begun to lift, and you’re actually having fun! Or at least, having an okay day. Just puttering along, thinking of nothing at all. Then, there it is. There you are. In the swamp, the crevasse, the impossible emptiness of loss. Damn!

Grief is inconvenient. It’s messy and irritating and embarrassing, and it knows how to hide. For a while. Until it doesn’t. Grief is lonely, even when you’re surrounded by people you love. Sometimes – oftentimes – you just don’t want to be happy. Who the hell wants to be happy when there’s a cold wind blowing right through you, every single day!?

Grief is mean. It nags and pokes and won’t leave you alone. It gets under your skin; hides out in your bones; shows up in your face even when you think you’re smiling. Other people notice, but you’ve forgotten how you look without it.

Grief is exhausting. It takes everything you’ve got, and then keeps taking.
It keeps calling you, and even though you want to ignore it, would give (almost) anything if you could run the other way, you turn toward it instead. You can’t turn away. Grief is seductive. It keeps saying, “Here, come this way. This is where you’ll find what you’ve lost. Stay with me for a while, and maybe…….well, you never know.”

And the problem is, there’s truth to that. Grief is, after all, what’s left of what you’ve lost. And as much as we think we might want to be free of the heaviness of loss, grief brings some important truths.

Grief means you’re alive. It means you still care. It means someone, or some thing, meant so much to you that you’re not sure life is worth the effort without what, or whom, you’ve lost.

It means that once, you were vulnerable; open and soft, unguarded, hopeful. It means you believed in joy. It means that, even now, you’re still linked with every living thing that shifts and stretches up toward a future, only to find an end at some point. It means you are somehow managing to stand, and bear, the wrenching reality of this lush and limited life. And you’re learning to say, “Yes. I can do this, even though it tears me apart. I am here, even though my beloved is not. I can breathe, wait for peace, have hope, find tiny bits of joy, open and expand my heart, learn how to face this new road forward.”

And that can be enough, at least for now.