Ultimately, grief never “wins.” No matter how wrenching the loss, how impossible it feels to navigate the new territory of a world without our beloveds, joy always brings us back home. We are made for wonder, made for joy. And it will capture us for small moments, bringing us back to life.

The following are two little “happiness” moments that recently captured me.

11/29/17
A glorious walk this afternoon with Mary Lou and our dogs. We start out in sunny warmth, then smudgy glowering clouds roll in, spit snow and rain. The sky is a patchwork of light and dark.  And the dogs are wild. Gatsby finds an old tennis ball, and rolls over and over and over it, his short 12-year-old legs pumping the air. He is having so much fun. And Bodi runs off through the fields and into woods, comes back much later licking his chops, having eaten something dead and disgusting. The dogs are old, but they can still have fun.

Mary Lou and I laugh at the vagaries of aging, so many things falling apart! We laugh at our cuckoo dogs who glory over disgusting things to eat, or old rotten tennis balls, getting as smelly as possible, and how much work it will be to clean them up.

The land is sear – the beaten grasses flaxen in a new and whipping wind – the hills sooty, the fields wide open. The dogs run as we laugh, chasing each other in loopy circles. All of us are crazed with the sheer beauty of it all. All of us are happy-wild.

12/3/17 evening
Bodi and I walk out in the near-dark after sunset. There is still a tinge of light, but all the colors have bled out of this day. The road is silent under the starlit sky. Orion, the Dipper, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades hang overhead, waiting for the moon. The ragged winter-beaten grass crunches under our feet.

We feed the horses apples as the Great Moon slips above the horizon. There is no sound but us – the horses, huffing and crunching and stomping the ground; Bodi peeing on the fence post; my breath, puffing up toward the moon. Bodi and I walk back across the field in its light. It feels like swimming in silver.

I am just another animal, making my way through the silver-blue secrets of a big-moon night – the horses and Bodi and I, finding our way, watching our feet move over the colorless ground.

We are beheld, beloved and moon-blessed and stunned. What more could we want? What more could any of us want?

On a recent trip to Louisiana, I found more links to family, and place. Over several years of going back, grief has softened some with these renewed connections. Even though my aunt is gone, even though so many people are gone, they linger all around me. The following is a little journal entry from my latest visit.

9/23/17 a.m.

A longish and good and sweet walk on the levee in early morning heat.

So many things are familiar – hawks, scolding from the woods; little blue herons, sinking down into a damp field; the muskrat hole in the muddy bank of a ditch; white silky-petaled mallows blooming all along the batture edge; rising sun shining on water in the low woods. And heat – the suffocating, clinging, womb-warm, prickling heat. Cicadas drone in trees. A few walkers nod greetings on this early morning.

Here I am, again, stricken with the spell of such longing and sweet love – my body so happy; my bones and skin and organs so surprisingly at home. Here, I was so welcomed and loved, just because I was born. I am swamped with a cellular happiness, a visceral and maybe even genetic joy. For so many years, so many generations, this is where we’ve belonged.

All my people
have sprouted up here.
All my people rise up inside me,
and feel so right at home.

After a while, flush with the heat, I walk back through town, and pass the old man with the pink hat who sits on the porch in his red flannel shirt. We wave at each other, and I imagine that he wonders about me – where Bodi is, why I haven’t been here for months. But he is also just glad to lift a hand and be noticed; to be remembered. We notice and remember each other.

Near the car, I stop to watch swirling vultures over the orchard woods – floating, turning, slipping away. Suddenly, a hawk drops down from an orange tree, settles on the emerald ground, looking around for breakfast, then sails back up into another small tree to hide. The buzzards come back, circling and shifting. I just stare and stare.

11/21/17

For some reason, you’ve been close by lately. Just a little glimmer, a little warmth – like the pale winter sun slipping over the bed as I sit for my morning tea and note-making.

Have I called you back? With the book, and with all my thoughts as I get ready to go south for a while?

Are you peeking in? Do all of you who have moved on shift a little closer in the holiday times? Do the walls around realities and time – here, and now, and the past – thin a bit so we can lean toward each other fondly?

My mom so loved holidays. I think of her as I get ready to cook – her hands, chopping up veggies for a roux, arm reaching over to stir something sizzling in a pan. All those little chores my body remembers as I press a knife down on the chopping board.

And the phone call I’d make to tell you hello, see what you were up to for the day. I can still hear your voice. I wonder how long that will be true.

Down South, I know the Louisiana family will be gathering around. Some of them are working on holiday food baskets for local folks in need. They’ll be busy with details, then gathering to eat. You might be keeping an eye on them, too. You might know that they’re still doing okay.

It’s nice to feel you around. But I’m not sure how much I need you these days. Maybe I’ve inhaled, absorbed, digested, so many bits of you that you’ve settled into my cells, and I will just keep carrying you around. But it’s still so sweet, to feel you nearby. If holidays exist wherever you are, then I’m sending you much joy, Little Honey. You’re still a pale, warm sun I can settle into, and love.

12/11/16 (late afternoon)

After breakfast in the motel room, then a little levee walk, I sit on packed powdery sand at the river and watch the water churn. I take in as much wild and roiling beauty as I can, then drive off to Spahr’s for lunch with my sister, where we share yummy alligator chips and fried shrimp. We chit chat while we eat. She tells me her problems. Her cats have fleas. She has fleas. The whole house has fleas. And her health is a mess. Both knees need to be replaced. And she’s breathless, again. And time-challenged. She said she’d call at 10 a.m. At 11:30, I gave up and called her. She was just getting ready to ring me up, she said.

After lunch, I sit outside in the swing and watch the bayou. The birds flit in and out of trees. A pelican sits atop a piling; I think it is a wood-carving, until it moves, rises up, to settle in another spot. Some egrets flap away.

An older man steps out the back door, walks carefully across the stubbly ground, takes photos of the water, the birds. We chat about the beautiful day. He says when he was a child, some 60 years ago, he and his father would come out here to boat. It was always lovely. But it was only this time of year – heading into winter – when they could get through the mat of water hyacinths to fish. It’s such a special place, he says.

Driving home, I think about love – about my quirky, snarky sister, and this gorgeous and piecemeal place, this tattered world, and oh, how gloriously, stupendously, I love it all. What can we do, but love it all?

4/30/17 a.m. (in Louisiana)

You’re still around, sometimes. This morning the batture and marsh are emerald green. Crows circle on thermals. A red shouldered hawk sails up, then settles in the top of a tree, squawking. Gulls swirl around and over each other.

On my walk into town, I pass an old man sitting on his porch. He’s there everyday lately – settled into his over-stuffed chair, his small bag of bones flanneled-wrapped, a cap on his bald head despite the almost 80 degree-warmth. I wave at him, and he waves back. Most days, we see each other, and wave.

It makes me think of my childhood, of sitting on the old Hahnville porch with Grandma and Major, and sometimes you, your bare feet propped on a column, all of you commenting on who’s passing by on the road. Your neighbors’ habits so familiar you’d know who to expect, where each driver must be going – so if you needed a ride, you just walked out to the road and flagged one of them down.

You knew that place, and its people, so well they were like your own internal compass – you could count on them. That must have been fun for you, to come back from the anonymity of living in D.C. and Europe – and to settle right back in like you were one of them – which, of course, you always were.

I think about all the little bits of meaning we squeeze into the million tiny tasks of a life. Me, chopping stuff for salad before a big feast; my mom, cooking something yummy when we were kids; Nanette smoking meat and making jambalaya. Every movement an art, a body comfort, so many little scraps of love. If we don’t have time to savor all these small, tasty bits – to watch the red shouldered hawk sail in and out of trees, or to wave at an old man on his porch – what’s the point of a life?

9/4/17

Today is your 7-years-gone anniversary. I’m not sure if you even care, or remember. Maybe you’re beyond memories now, beyond any fondness for this place, and time.

But I did think of you.

All last night, it rained. The first rain we’ve had in months that lasted more than a few minutes, or a few drops. This morning, everything was heavy and dripping. Renewed.

And the sky was stupendous – blue, with layers and layers of clouds. A dark smudgy background of flat, unmoving clouds, with brilliant white-gold wispy clouds swirling in front. And the sun, squeezing through all those layers, lighting them up. There was something so unusual about it all that I stood still on the damp road, and just stared at the sky. Small winds curled the dark and light clouds around each other, the dark bit slow and steady, the bright wisps curling and swirling in a kind of vortex. It made me think of tornadoes, how they start; how warm and cool winds twist around and around. I wondered if the sky was shaping itself into something serious. Then the white clouds formed a kind of circle, drifted, then circled again, until after a while I was looking into a well of light and dark. It was like an aperture – the eye of some kind of celestial camera, opening, closing, opening, blinking. I thought it might be you, keeping an eye on me. A little magic, just for this day. You, and this sky, winking at me, saying hello, letting me know that even though things are different now – you, gone for so long – you’re still saying hello. I both thought that, and dismissed the thought, for after all, how long can you have that kind of magic and miracle, anyway. I’ve certainly been blessed, enough.

But it was sweet, and a part of me believed it – knew it was true – that you were there, sending love.

After a while, the clouds shifted, let go, and I could walk away. But it was pretty fun, to think of you there.

Now, in the bedroom, sun shines through the window prism and small rainbow bits slip over the bed, the ceiling, Bodi’s little sleeping self. And even though the sky is solid blue, I wonder if anyone else saw what I did – that special aperture, you looking through.

In a few weeks, it will be the 7th anniversary of Aunt Min’s death – I don’t know how it will feel, but every year is different. Sometimes, it feels a little lighter. Most of the time, I feel pretty good. I am so grateful to have found a new way into our family, and so grateful to have been welcomed. And I’m happy to have rediscovered, and fallen in love with, Louisiana. But there are still hard days. Sometimes, especially as I age, it seems that life is chock-full of loss, and the “job” of getting older can be learning to live “without” so much. The following are a couple of letters written recently to my aunt. (Yes, the letters continue, sometimes surprising me.)

8/6 a.m.
Thinking about things loved and lost: Mom, and Daddy; the Upper Ridge house; my daughters, and the ways we were together when they were young; the so-many things I used to be; and you, Sweet One. I still don’t know if I’m willing to give you up. How can I give up all the light, sweet honey that has saved my life? Does that come at a cost, that juicy, golden food? Possibly, if it keeps me going back to a table that was cleared along ago.

But I’m afraid to let go – what am I, without all of you?

8/19 a.m.
Its been almost 6 years since you’ve been gone. It’s still hard, even though I know I’ve moved on, at least a little.

How long can I be sad, I wonder. How long can I live inside the bubble of grief, where everything new and real and bright seems like too much trouble, or too far away?

The place I keep trying to run away from, to leave, might not be this town, or this state, or the wearied circle of the same old wonderful friends, but the small gray enclosure that the love room has turned out to be. Can love rooms pale and grow tired? Eventually fail to give enough nourishment and liveliness to support a real life after a while? After this long, long while?

Maybe it would be easier if I were in Louisiana, with our people, even though none of them is you. Or maybe that would be just another extension of waiting for you. Its hard to think that, for I so love and long for that nourishment – that sweet food of being there.

But….I’m trying to see…what it would take…to be free. Though I’m not even sure I really want that, if it means giving up on the light you used to be. I’m just tired of the not-quite-darkness – the opaque barrier between me, and the lively rest of the world.

Sometimes, the glorious wrenching love room seems so much more appealing than the drudging, gritty tedium of everyday life. But – isn’t it a dream, really? Aren’t you, now, just a dream?

I’m starting to get mad. I don’t know who I’m angry with – myself, or you. Maybe I’m mad at the world that didn’t offer any bright thing in my small childhood life until you came along – which wasn’t very often, just enough for me to fall in love with you, know there was something to reach for. So I did. And it saved me, at the time.

But now – what? I have to let go? How would I do that?

After my aunt died, I went home. Met newfound cousins, and renewed ties with those I had met before. I was surprised, even shocked, by how much I longed for and loved my old “home ground,” the people and the place. I decided that places can hold onto you – wrap gnarly tangles around your ankles so your feet won’t forget where they belong. The following is a little journal entry from a recent visit.

3/31/16
This place isn’t something you visit; it’s something you take in, ingest, absorb, so it becomes a part of you. You can never really leave.

This morning Bodi and I walk in cool air, through heavy fog, over very wet batture ground. In the grass, little colonies of blue-flowered lyre leaf sage still thrive, some seeding and some just starting to bloom. A red shouldered hawk calls, sails into trees. A biker speeds by on the levee as we move down to the water.

At the river, the sand bar seems higher despite the recent rain. The sand is packed down into ripples, the willows all flowering and thick. I pick some leafy twigs to take home and tincture, then sit on a log for a while to watch.

Lately, I am falling in love with the river. I don’t know what it is that captures me, sweeps me up like just another sodden bit of wood and carries me along – gets into my skin and dreams – becomes a compass point I have to turn to – am not really happy, or home, unless I can come on any morning to see its changes, settle onto a driftwood log and watch to see what the river churns up – check the sand bar for tracks of what’s been here since I was gone: beaver, mouse, egret, boar, maybe someday soon, when the heat notches up, an alligator. But I need all this, lately, like air or rest or prayer or food.

It takes me deep.

In the third year after my aunt’s death, grief began to change. Somehow my heart that had been ravaged and torn seemed to be growing a new depth, a new acceptance that could include both the wretchedness of loss, and a new way forward. The following is a little entry written from a friend’s camp in mid-coast Maine.

8/7/13
This morning Bodi and I walked through raggedy unmown fields that were heavy with dew, honeybees rising up from wildflowers in the early sun. At Eleanor’s, there were boisterous dog greetings, and time for tea and chatting.

We talked about aging and what to do about the future, how to get our needs met, and about loneliness – the scary fact of bad things happening when there’s no one to help. And all the responsibility, and who might share it as we age. And about grief, how to let everything go and still love the life you have. Eleanor said her sister is grieving after suffering a loss, is overwhelmed.

I remember the overwhelming part after you’d left. I think I am coming out of it now, though there is a limit to how much I can do without needing recovery time. Still, something of that lowness has loosened up, is coming to a kind of close.

This writing, too, might be rounding out. Here I am, at Eleanor’s, where I came in those hardest times to take breaks from the work that was endless and all the phone calls that were scary. After you’d gone, I came here to recover, slog through the grayest of months. To wait for little touches of the love room, the sweetness and surprises of you showing up.

Here, the quiet pond lapping over itself, owls booming in the night, the veeries and osprey, eagles and loons, the ocean at Owl’s Head, wide green fields, the wild silence – all teased something apart in me, helped soothe and soften the impossible truth of the end. Your end. Here, something was still good, alive. Lush, and trembling.

Now I paddle out over warm amber water, dip a hand into the pond, and somehow, maybe, the joy that wells up in my own life spills over into the well of all lives loved, especially yours. My life is still breathing into the love room, keeping you afloat.

I’ve always imagined that at the moment of death, something miraculous must happen – something that can, if time and circumstances allow, pierce through the ordinariness of our day-to-day lives and take us into an experience of what mystics through time have called “the numinous” – a direct experience of divine mystery. That the holiness, the quintessential meaning that underlies the whole world, would be exposed and present in an undeniable and palpable way.

I wasn’t with Aunt Min when she died – I was far away. But when my dad passed away, I was close by. Though I wasn’t with him in those final moments, I was able to see something that, to this day, I consider a great gift.

Stricken with lung and liver cancer, my dad was able to be at home for most of his illness. But in his last few days, things went awry, and he was hospitalized, put on oxygen, and was in and out of awareness. On what would turn out to be his last day, I visited him at the hospital. Aunt Min was there at the same time, and we sat and talked quietly while he napped. Suddenly, out of a deep sleep, my dad sat straight up, and stared into the space beyond his bed. He said nothing, but his face expressed shock, amazement, and then great relief and freedom. It’s hard to describe what happened in that room, but the air was charged with a kind of miraculous presence, and my dad was changed. Instead of struggling, he slumped back down in the bed and fell into a deep rest. What I “got” at that moment was that my dad had seen that he was “innocent.” Whatever he had been carrying (as we all do, in so many ways) – a sense of his failures, his “sins,” his fundamental wrongness, had been released, and he had seen the truth.

I guess one could surmise that perhaps subconsciously I had held my dad as “guilty” of being less than a perfect father, or held some grudge against him, and in that moment I let that go. But I have to say that something much larger than forgiveness of any little resentment happened in that moment.

Soon after that experience, I left for home. A few hours later, my sister called to tell me that my dad was gone. He had finally let go. I was wrecked, of course. But I have never forgotten the wrenching grace of those moments right before he died. Sometimes those most challenging times of great pain and wrenching change break the everyday world open and we can see, and feel, that which holds us all up. Such forgiveness. Such great love.

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