It's OK (Imagine Dragons)

digital art by Mike Parsons

Sunday was such a hard day, but I had a wonderful therapy session Monday; surprised she kept to the every-other-Monday schedule since it was Memorial Day, but glad she did.  I had forgotten that, when I first started with Leigh, I filled out some forms related to both depression and anxiety, and she asked if I was ready to re-answer those questions (maybe 7 in each category); for the former, I went from 17 to 3 and the latter 14 to 1.  D*mn.  That's progress.  Funny that, after celebrating my "test" results, I burst into tears, and queried where that came from, seemingly out of the blue.  Leigh responded that grief is like Florida weather:  gorgeous one minute, thunderstorms the next... or how sometimes it rains on one side of the street and not the other.  Sounds cliche but it was perfect.  Anyway, the 50-minute hour was exactly what I needed... 🤗

I left therapy and went to the Hope Garden to dump compost, long overdue since Claire and I decided to go to an every-other-Saturday workday, meaning we weren't there this past weekend.  I had my containers... plus Sarah's, Nancy's, Didi's, Pam's, and our heat wave continues; even at 4:15 p.m., it was in the mid-to-high-90s.  Our compost bins are all the way down at the end in the Banana Circle, which is mostly shady, but the effort still got to me and I had to lie down right there on the ground; I couldn't figure out if I was having a panic attack or a heat stroke, and I tried to stay calm and prone until the feeling passed.  Frightening.  Fortunately I had my phone with me, and of course I had left my water bottle in the car, but I did slowly make my way back to the cafe and bought my favorite Green Lotus smoothie (Pineapple, Spinach, Kale, Cucumber, Celery, Lemon, Ginger, Green Apple, Coconut Water) which helped lower my body temperature, and I still felt woozy when I got home... but stretching out under the ceiling fan in the A/C helped me turn the corner, and I soon felt perfectly fine.  Whew.

Takeaway:  grieving is not for sissies; nor is climate change.  Ha!

SONG:  It's OK by Imagine Dragons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClwtqeHF264 

BOOK:  Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith

POEM:  Dear World by Maya Stein

You are a big turtle. You are a violin bow and a ladder of backbones and a lettuce leaf. You are weeds and woodpeckers and a T-shirt with strawberries on it. You are the hint of a sunburn at the tips of noses. You are restaurant toothpicks and a bowl of pink-striped mints and bubble gum commercials and a crossword puzzle. You are the sound of the dryer going on Sunday nights, and the smell of erasers. You are dental floss and a roll of paper towels. You are a twist of Oreos with the icing licked clean off. You are pinky promises and video arcades. Dear world, you are also scratchy and full of tangles that no soap or comb can tease out. But you are also bright stadium lights and stovetop popcorn with real butter. You are a popsicle drip on bare skin. You are sprinklers, and drive-in movies, and fireflies in the middle of night. World, I am doing what I can to keep you here. I am growing my own tomatoes. I am pulling the weeds. I am writing a poem now and again. I am walking down to the rocky beach and wading in the water and I'm staying there, watching the crabs scuttle underneath, and I'm trying not to move. I'm looking up at the stars when they come out. I'm trying not to count them but instead, I'm holding them in my heart. Lightly, like a breeze. And then I try to imagine those stars like the squares on a turtle's back, and I wonder how many of them I could fit in my heart. How many squares. How many turtles. How many strawberries and Oreos and popsicles and fireflies. How many movies and lights. How many erasers and violins. And then, dear World, I start counting.

QUOTE:  “Here is one way to look at yourself through spiritual eyes: you are a message. When you wonder what existence is all about, when you ask about your purpose in life, or when you feel small in comparison to the troubles of the world: remember that you are a message sent by the Spirit into creation. What you say, what you do, how you think and feel: your whole life is a long and sustained message for others to encounter, experience and receive. You are a living message: sent to touch more lives than you can imagine.” ~ Steven Charleston

True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston)

Today is eight months since Eric's death, and I am depleted.  Others' words will have to suffice... 🤷

"Release tears, as many as you can. Gather them in a golden chalice. 

Draw out the salt and pour it in a circle around your feet, for protection. 

Let the water teach you how to spill.

Count the screams of rage that are resting in the back of your ribs. 

Notch each one that you release along your spine, from tailbone to skull. 

Add honey for your throat, each time the wailing is done.

Put your feet in some dirt and let the earth hold you. Run your fingers through the grass. Take counsel with the songbirds and listen to the poetry writing itself along the cracked edges of your broken heart. 

Find water. Leave an offering of sweetness and pray for the capacity to hold it all, then pray for the strength to release. Understand that we are all rivers flowing into the same ocean body.

More salt, this time with sugar and screens, to numb the pain. Alternate silence and sitcoms, crying and laughter. Don’t stay for too long, but also, stay as long as you need to.

Find moments of awe and joy. Orient towards people and places and experiences that allow you to feel free. Make this your True North. Go out, witness, listen, act, and come back to this place. Rest. Repeat.

Find your breath. Put one hand on your heart. Wait until you sink back into your body. Wait for instructions. Listen for the way love wants to move through you. Feel the way that grief is love." ~ Gina Puorro 

"It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. 

That’s the pact. 

Grief and love are forever intertwined. 

Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. 

There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. 

It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe.

Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist ; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. 

These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. 

They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness." ~ Nick Cave

"Grief is like the ocean — a constant surge of waves, a continual collection of salt and tears. Sometimes grief is loud, both tidal and tempestuous, an overwhelming pain that breaks you open and crashes against your heart. Other times it’s quiet, discreetly hiding beneath the surface, presenting itself as a steady hush of longing. Grief is full of unknowns that can only be discovered when swimming in its depths. Some days sorrow and joy will be intertwined, a delicate dance of dark and light — both deserve to be softly held, both belong in sight. When grief calls you to its edge, tread gently in its space — for no matter what you feel you are always held by grace. You cannot slow down the ocean, you cannot tame the sea, so ache, laugh, break, mend — let your emotions free. Driven by the tides, your pain will recede, but like a persistent undercurrent, a sense of longing may never leave. And that’s the art of living on but never letting go. If you're ever lost in the infinite sea, may you find peace in knowing that unending grief is also endless love. For grief may try and weigh you down, but your love for them will carry you. Always." ~ Bryan Anthonys

“An open letter to everyone in the before:

One day after Emma died, I wrote this: “There is no fix for this. There are just people sitting beside you in silence as you cry and your spirit groans.” 

There is no fix for this. 

It’s true. And I can’t speak for all of us in the after, but I never wanted a “fix.” Certainly not a quick one. Grief is a messy business. We don’t like messy anymore. We tuck and snip and suck and filter the messy out of our lives. So when we are confronted by it, it looks ugly. Painful. There’s another thing we don’t like: pain. So we look for a solution. A quick way out of it. A balm. A prayer. A pill. A fix. But there is no fix for this.

Grief is holy ground. It’s hallowed. There is something so beautiful in that. I don’t think you could understand unless you’ve been… through it? No. In it. Deep in it. It is sacred territory.

I never wanted my pain to go away. I only wanted her back. And since I knew that wasn’t possible, the pain was always necessary. It still is. The sadness. The loss. The soul-sucking weight of it. It has to be felt. It has to be lived.

If you don’t curl up with it, you’re a fraud. But we also know–those of us in the after–that you can’t stay there either. Holy ground must be visited. And carefully. If you try to camp out there, you might never come back.

I knew instinctively in those early days and months that she transitioned in an instant from the living to an occupier. She would occupy my thoughts and tears and regrets and love and I would be the keeper of her memory. But not just her memory. It is so much more than that. I would testify that she was here. That she was real. That she lived. That she loved. That she was beautiful–not perfect–and that she mattered. 

We are the keepers of the occupiers. It’s a deal that we in the after make willingly. I never wanted this to be fixed. How could it be fixed? It’s almost profane to even suggest it. And there is beauty in it. This is the hard part to describe.

The Bible says that God makes beauty from ashes. It’s a line in a popular worship song and I get pretty excited when I sing it. Because it's a bold-faced, audacious, obstinate-in-its-unbridled-confidence claim that Emma still lives and I will see her again. 

I believe that. 

But there is also–somehow–beauty in the ashes here, too. 

I don’t get it. I have struggled to understand it. And to explain it is even harder. It almost feels irreverent to try. But that is part of being the keeper. Explaining.

So, maybe. 

Maybe it’s this:

Maybe the love we keepers feel for the occupiers is stripped of all the temporal trappings that corrupt it. I don’t have to remind her to get up or do her homework or come home on time anymore. We don’t get bogged down in correction or confusion. Maybe the love we have in the after is as it always should have been: an unconditional love for the soul without any expectations, without any frustrations, without any suppositions. Just…love. 

Maybe that’s it.

I just know that when you’re stripped of the presence, and left only with the essence; when you have the hope that there is beauty from ashes; when the occupier and the keeper can hug it out and agree to move forward despite the pain and anger of the loss… that is a beautiful place that is holy and not only unfixable, but worthy of not being fixed. It’s as unique as the life was. It’s as perfect as the person. 

So next time you are face to face with ugly, messy grief, sit in silence as the spirit groans and consider it holy ground. The person who has been slammed with life in the after is now not only the keeper, but is now formally occupied as well. Know this. And know there is a sacred beauty there that cannot and should not be fixed.”

Sincerely,

Emma's mom

Sherry Bullock"

And this appeared in today's New York Times (gift article, long but beautifully worthwhile... 💖)

SONG:  True Love Will Find You in the End by Daniel Johnston

BOOK:  The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat

POEM:  Separation by W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

QUOTE(S):  "That’s the thing about pain; it demands to be felt." ~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ~ Shannon L. Adler

Yesterday (Ant, Atmosphere, and Slug)

Since Eric's death, Mother's Day was the holiday I've most dreaded.  My first instinct was to stay in bed and draw up the covers (a la Harold and The Purple Crayon)... but I am blessed to have two other dear children, a pip of a grandchild, and a very thoughtful husband... 💜

Thanks to all for the love Sunday, both on-list and off.  I embraced the glimmers and did my best to set aside the weepiness. Staying off my phone/Facebook plus hanging with Colin, Sarah, and Chico helped a lot. Plus the pool, jacuzzi, VitaminD, and pizza. Plus the beautiful Disney movie Soul. Wow... 💥

As I have shared here previously, I have regularly been doing one-card draws from a Tarot deck the medium used when Sarah and I went for a consultation about a month after Eric died.

This morning, my question was:  "Yesterday was Mother's Day.  How am *I* doing, almost eight months after Eric's death?"  Here's the card I pulled.  Wow.  

SONG:  Yesterday by Ant, Atmosphere, and Slug

BOOK:  My Son and the Afterlife: Conversations from the Other Side by Elisa Medhus

POEM:  Mother's Day by Rob Moss (my middle child)

I will never know what it means to be a mother.

The closest I'll get is being a Pawdre🐾

I know though, what it means to be a Son. And a Family member. Not great at both, but trying.

I do know facts though:

I was blessed to have a mother who never gave up on me.

A woman who taught me how to read. And understand what I was reading. 

Intelligence is knowing tomato is a fruit, Wisdom is knowing u don't put it in a fruit salad lol

My Mother shared her opinions and spoke to me kindly as youths were rebelling. "Go fly" 

My Mother wanted nothing else than to see her children soar. Hear these words. Travel them. Take them to the skies.

Mother is a word that is synonymous with the act of birth. 

But being a Mom is so much more.

Thank you Mom. For letting us have our wild and younger years.

Thank you Mom for the times we pushed each other to our boundaries. 

Thank you for being a Mom to all of my friends, and Sarah's, and Eric's.

Being a Mom never ends. Thank u for always being that special person. 

Happy Mother's  Day!

Blessing for the Brokenhearted by Jan Richardson

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree

for now

that we will not say

the breaking

makes us stronger

or that it is better

to have this pain

than to have done

without this love.

Let us promise

we will not

tell ourselves

time will heal

the wound,

when every day

our waking

opens it anew.

Perhaps for now

it can be enough

to simply marvel

at the mystery

of how a heart

so broken

can go on beating,

as if it were made

for precisely this—

as if it knows

the only cure for love

is more of it,

as if it sees

the heart’s sole remedy

for breaking

is to love still,

as if it trusts

that its own

persistent pulse

is the rhythm

of a blessing

we cannot

begin to fathom

but will save us

nonetheless.

QUOTE:  “In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, ‘When autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give us of the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?’ ” ~ Khalil Gibran