Offering Solace

This space, as you all know, has saved me more than once. Helped me find myself when I was lost, sat with me in the muck when all I could do is sit. Helped me by letting me know I am not alone. A lot has changed, the blog based community has shifted, and I know so many of those with whom I was journeying have left the land of blogs and moved into other spaces, online or in real life.  But for me, this is home. When I think of where I found myself it is here. And when I think of you all, I think of friends who know the inner workings of what it means to struggle, with identity and challenging bodies, and plans that don't work, and many that go sideways.  Today I want to share a story that is not mine, because it sliced down into the raw in a way that I had not allowed in a long long time. And I wanted to share, for those who can listen. If you have resources and current blogs or facebook groups where Katie can find community please share with me in the comments or with her on her facebook feed (link below).  This is a candid video she shared, live, on facebook after her ectopic pregnancy burst her tube. And I want her to find the support I had. The love I've felt.  The not aloneness you all have offered me.  

*** 

So.

Life - as we all know-- is filled with the soft and the hard, the sweet and the bitter, the lost and the finding. And sometimes someone's story cracks me open in a way that reminds me of the power of telling our stories, raw and beautiful and true. So that others can heal, so that maybe we can too, so that we can speak the unspeakable, and we refuse to be held down by the weight of the untold or maybe even untellable secret wounds.

Saying that we are hurting when we are hurting is one of the most powerful ways to remind ALL of us of our humanity. Our compassion. Our fragility and grace and strength and resilience, all at once, breath by breath, miraculous.

I found Katie Lasky on facebook not so long ago and I am not sure how. But she is a gift and a voice to be heard. And shares a story to be honored.

I warn all of you, that this video is hard. And those of us who have experienced pregnancy loss, tread lightly in your own spaces and make good choices for your own hearts. 

And there are now fundraising links for Katie and her family on her FB feed. 

https://www.facebook.com/katie.lasky.92/videos/10158941679880080/?pnref=story

My real books just came.

My books, my real books just came. Not the proofs. Not proof #2 or #3 or #4.
Holy shit people, my book is on Amazon.

This, for me, is beyond huge. Getting this work out into the world feels crucial, and yet, getting it out into the world means telling my story out loud.
Funny thing about this: folks say YAY! what's your book about?
and I choke.
I am happy. I am sad. I am complicated and complex. This is a heart wrenching and yet cathartic and healing thing to do, to offer, to expose.

So. I am being gentle with myself, and hoping that the book finds its way into the hands that need it, and that my words, my journey, somehow offer solace to someone else.


***

A Field Guide to Grief: If you’ve lost your partner to suicide

Available now in paperback, or Kindle
by Kate Johnson
Link:http://amzn.com/1511433442

 

Losing a partner or spouse to suicide is shattering. This small book speaks directly to the survivor, starting from the beginning of the grief journey. Offering compassion and acknowledgment, survival tools and suggestions, these are kind and wise words from someone who’s been there.

 “if you have lost a partner to suicide, you will find a new friend named kate in these pages. out of the hard-won wisdom of her own loss, she offers you this field guide. a field guide, truly, as the pages feel like a field… breathable, open, + paradoxically peaceful. the rhythm of it all works beautifully between the ebb of uncluttered white space + flow of helpful words… a needed + good book for anyone walking through this heart-rending loss.” –rachel awes, psychologist, author, + art playgroundist rachelawes.com

“…a lovely resource for folks who are fresh into big pain. I’ll be happy to recommend this [book] to my clients.” –Dr. Martha Jo Atkins honors the deeply spiritual experience of death by providing compassionate witness to the dying, and support for healing transformation to the bereaved. marthaatkins.com

My note to you: This is a difficult book. A sad book. A real book informed by love and understanding that in grief, there is no time to sift through case studies and anecdotes. I get right down to the core. It is about acute grief and navigating the immediate experience of loss. It is about living with grief and living with loss and the loss of identity. It is about self protection and permission. It is about survival. My own experience was one of breath-by-breath choices, to keep moving forward, to not lose myself, to choose to heal and go on, over and over and over again. If you need this book, I am so sorry. But if you need this book, I am so glad you have found your way here,  and I hope beyond hope that my words offer you solace.

 

If you are not in grief and want to support me by buying a book, please do (and thank you!). Please consider donating it to an organization or individual who works with folks in acute grief. A funeral home, for example… I could have used this book the second day if not the first. Someone else may too.

the space in between

where have I been
busy, yes,
moving, yes
and being
yes
and trying to find my way.
minimal childcare and the new old house and art shows and client work and managing my own ongoing grief work and anxiety.

i asked my new therapist about the grief, the why now, the what the hell, the why, the why, the why
and she said that grief does not have a time table.
it is not about calendars
it is about when you are strong enough

strong enough to come apart
strong enough to weather the storms, I guess. bend, not break. or break and mend. or break and make patterns with the pieces and call it art.

so this has been hard, strangely and unexpectedly.

grief and shame and oh
wow
just so much of that.

and a vulnerability, raw, perpetual, just below the joy.

so I find myself laughing
I find myself
I am painting a little but not as much as I need to (4 shows in 2015!)
not as much as I need to for me

still finding my way into my new identity as  Kate.
not Engineer.
or Director.
or Scientist.
or Professional.

just, Kate.

I told my sister today, light can't get in if there are no cracks.
I hold my hands open, a bowl, to welcome the light.

wishing on you all, and us all, peace and fullness and hope and laughter, health and wellness and humor and moments of bliss. i send you big love.

like a window

grief opens grief like a window

like a can opener

stirs silt from the bottom

shakes loose parts newly or incompletely mended

rattles around, making noisy messes, reminding me acutely of things that hurt to remember.

As I think about the brilliance lost in Robin William's heartbreaking choice, I think too about the losses we all share, those who have loved someone who has made this nearly unthinkable decision. And while I am so very sad for Robin, that this felt like the only choice he had left, I am more sad for his family, those who loved him, all of us who felt somehow connected to his wry smile, his tenderness, his humanness.  It exposes our collective vulnerability somehow.

After losing a beloved to suicide, 11 years ago this past weekend, I have finally gained solace of a sort during hard work this past year... a hard won healing. Tender always, but a new sense of something like peace, I guess... a still point of understanding I did not have before-- before, suicide was simply unthinkable, unimaginable, and my loss, the world's loss of my beloved, was totally beyond my comprehension.

Now, after experiencing being taken down by anxiety into an underworld of desperation-- I understand things I did not understand before.

I sought help, took it, take it, seek it. And thanks to this intervention I have returned home to myself.

But I understand now, desperation, in a way I did not.

I understand just wanting to make the pain stop. And simply not being able to stand it. Feeling lost, taken over, alone.

And I wish for all who feel lost, to reach out, get help, allow help in. Please.

In this moment, I sit with this sadness, with the echos of my own loss, my own grief, and let it (as best I can) move in and through... knowing, after all this time, that it will move like water, downstream, if I allow it to pass through my knowing, my heart, my memories, and not try to hold on for the sake of having something to hold on to.

Anxiety, you may bite me.

Usually there is a rush, first. A whoosh as adrenaline bolts from the solar plexis gate and the race begins-- down arms, and legs, up along my jaw, into the top of my head, and neck, and into an emotional whatthefuckness of total hijacked badness.

under threat
in danger

in this land of no lions, the dangers the threats are ghosts. ghosts of old wounds, rubbed new by navigating grief.
ghosts are reminders of vulnerability, true vulnerability, true threat, true aloneness without resources, without backup, without the ability to keep anyone safe.
ghosts haunt with memories of insufficiency, of true inadequacy, faced with problems that I could not solve, were not solvable, about which I felt responsible even if I was not truly responsible, and ended in the ultimate failure of loss of a loved one.

this cocktail is a potent one,
the pin is pulled, the trigger, touchy, everything good feels temporary, and the anxiety, when it comes, feels like it will never leave.

I have so many tools at my disposal.  Yoga, breathing, nature, love. Meditation, mindfulness, awareness, curiosity.  I have art and friends and family and doctors. I am lucky beyond measure. And yet, with all of my tools, all of my resources, I am failing.  (don't worry, I KNOW better, but that is what it feels like).

beyond the triggery rushes, there is a low lying fog of it too-- potent in its own insidious ways: the fear of fear. a cloud-headed cool tingly feeling of waiting and sadness.
the grief of losing what felt like my own unconscious but oh now i know how sweet it was sovereignty
the grief of losing the innocence of life without this brand of Fear.
This is Anxiety plus Grief.

The timing and the emotional depth suggest the triggering may have started as I truly began to face the grief associated with Jeff's death after avoiding it for so long. But it is cleverly mixed with triggers embedded in things that every parent of a toddler faces. Often.

To get a handle on it at all, I asked for medication about a month ago.
I felt better knowing I had something to take, but I also felt more and more there is some sort of emotional scope creep where I was feeling fear more and more often. So, with my doctor's blessing I am doing an ativan boot camp-- medicating before physical responses as much as I can. This, I thought, would allow me to address the mental and emotional parts more directly without having to cope with the physical manifestations.
But in the 7 days since my plan was implemented, I have had two big triggers, two floods, two chunks of time washed away into the foreign and unpleasant land, and countless hours tinged or awash in fear of fear and grief about the fear.

today, the morning after the second trigger...I am so tired, bone tired. but also trying to revel in the good feelings that the lack of anxiety-in-this-moment means.
when it is not here, my ordinary, spectacularly ordinary life is so rich with good feelings, with openness with unclenched body.. but even with the relief, I am now on watch
and I hate that.

aware, alert for any change that may mean It's Coming Back.

constant vigilance.  vigilance does nothing but sap me. it does not keep it back. hold it at bay. make me more effective. it does not make me a better parent, a better person, a better artist (oh, maybe it will actually, who knows?), it does make me more compassionate to all who suffer from this bullshit.
but
man alive. I am just so tired.

this month marks one year of this dance.
and I toast it, with irony and  a quarter of an ativan.
I am working this, hard. and also trying my hand at allowing. at listening. at believing there are messages in this for me that are important.  I have a care team, I have Doug, I have my own stubborn tired self.
there are gifts in this, I am sure. and I say I am open to finding them. but in this moment, knowing there must be gifts is not the same as feeling it to be true.

Journeys: the day after

waking to a flat cloudy sky

the long dark morning of late fall, the slowest dawn

a stillness

it hits me that it was not a dream

my grandparents used to live on long island sound, on a bluff with a view out over the water. one cold winter, the sound froze.

and where there had been motion, there was suddenly a jarring stillness.

yesterday when I came home, alone, my eyes moved to all of his places-- seeking a glimpse

the kitchen under the highchair

the strange spot on the shoes by the door

the closet

the bed

the bathroom rug

the tub

all night my eyes kept vigil, seeking the tell tale slink or flicker of him.

"I see his tail" Della said once. And then said she was just pretending. But in that moment before she confessed, my heart leapt, as if.

as if.

today, I am busy and grateful for the busy. but my eyes seek the motion that has always been. the quiet company. My friend Lorraine reminds me that he is here differently now, and "here" has expanded into everywhere. But my eyes and heart ache for the familiar, the furry presence, the small reassuring movements of breath and tail and whisker.

Journeys: Tenderness

Being with a being who is dying is profound.

I have dealt with life.

I have dealt, on some level, with the aftermath of death.

But I have never dealt with, been with, allowed myself to contemplate the process, the fact of dying.

I am tender in the tenderest ways. Teary and broken open. Wanting to not fuck this up, wait too long to intervene, not wanting to intervene if intervention is not necessary.

I want to honor this creature's innate wisdom and cathood.

I want to honor our relationship and the vast love I feel and have received.

I want to honor ALL of this, the being and now, the transition into whatever is next.

He feels more and more internal now, quiet and often sleeping. He has stopped eating. I have stopped forcing him to try. I feel he is spending more time on whatever is next, and less time here, on being here, staying here. But he is still here, still jumping up onto the bed, still drinking water, still looking at me in a way that shows he is still here with me in those moments.

I know everyone would make different choices, but I am trying to make the right ones here and now for this person (me) and this amazing creature (Finn), and navigating this feels like the most awesome space of not knowing, wishful thinking, and something like intermittent acceptance. This sucks. But this is what it is. In this moment, he is curled up, not too tightly-- I can see the fluff of his surprisingly white belly, and the stripes that curl down his sides that are the deepest black. I can see the white line down the bridge of his nose, his white whiskers, how his breath moves his sides so slightly I can barely see it.
He seems peaceful, in this moment. In this moment, I am not. I feel all tied up, knotted with grief, and so very unsettled since I am allowing myself to be present in a way I would not have expected.

I am astonished at the depth of what I feel, the complexity one moment, the simplicity the next. LOVE< I keep telling myself, move from there. Witness from there. Choose from there.

And sometimes it means running in circles wailing. And sometimes it means sitting and not poking him, but enjoying his quiet companionship, even just in this moment. Even if it is just for this moment.

Stay

day 3 of our homeopathic hail mary for Finn and

we are holding even as far as I can see from out here.

I have journeyed to explore in there, and the innerspace is respectfully held off limits, and so I stay, out here, witnessing only what I can witness

which is stasis.

now that I type that, I realize that is not the case. There is moment by moment motion-- my waves of hopefulness and despair. He eats a bit and then does not eat again for hours. then eats again. he is moving morning and night but then, during the day, does his best impression of a sick cat who is very, very sick.

The new-to-me vet said that his numbers mean he should be much sicker.

Since he's not sicker, well.., maybe his numbers are not telling the whole story.

HEAR ME SELF: the measurables, the quantifiables, do not tell the whole story.

so, we are doing *something*-- homeopathy for nausea and organ support and detox and circulation. Kidney function supplement. Reiki.

I have turned into a frustrated pesterer. This reminds me of watching my daughter sleep as a baby, I would panic between breaths.

I have started to call Finn by my last cat's name, as he has aged 10 years in one month. Now he walks and moves and looks like Paco. He seems ancient.

But today, a purr (he is not a purring cat). A tiny vibration in there when I was scratching his neck.

And when he is up and about, I pick up him and put him by his bowl and put my hands on his sides with healing intention. And he eats.

And then, after 10 seconds or 100 he walks away.

And then, later, I do it again.

I am pestering,  yes. But not in every moment.

And in this moment, it feels like a temporary stay of execution of uncertain duration.

Hopefulness and despair. Bite by tiny bite.

Losing Finn

I am losing Finn.

Advanced kidney failure, and rapid decline.

My heart is breaking, broken. He is only 7, barely mature for a cat... and I am stunned by this news, nearly breathless with it.  A day with a bite of food makes my hopes soar. And then, today, a quiet day, where he looks at his food then walks away, over and over and over. I can feel myself coming apart.

Grief, grief. Yeah. I get it. I will drown in you slowly and quickly and over and over and over.

But there are shifts this time. I am not doing the frantic avoidance dance. I am feeling horrid and allowing myself, at least sometimes, to fully be with my horrible sadness.

I also have a child, who declares, Finn, you are DYING, many times over and over in a way that is both funny and not funny at all, but reminds me that this time, I guess this time is about the anti-avoidance. It is about witnessing and being present and holding space and being compassionate as I flail about wanting to do anything possible to change what is.

Losing Finn. Unimaginable. My relationship with him opened my heart to risking true connection, true relationships. My choice to first seek him out at the shelter, and then bring him home as a companion... a companion who spent the first year torturing me with nights of fierce attacks on my feet and head, of knocking things off, of being almost entirely nocturnal and naughty.

My ordered life needed to be knocked about, broken open. I needed randomness, chaos, Finn. I needed this once enormous now skin and bones being.

And now, here I am, facing the loss of his amazing companionship. days maybe, or maybe weeks. It is just so raw.

Journeys: buddha and ammo boxes

Driving up route 145 north out of colebrook, you'd pass Dostie's furniture on the right.  A long low building sided in vertical boards of a medium blue. Tune up shops, trailers and homes fall away quickly as the road heads uphill faster than you can downshift. 

The drive takes you up one of the most beautiful winding drives in New Hampshire, up and up and up. Up through Stewartstown to Clarksville toward Pittsburg.

For the past half hour, before I lost signal, I'd been listening to NPR, coming in tiny aggravating bits, a TED show on storytelling. I hear enough that affirms what I know, how stories inform us, connect us, express our humanness... and even though the sporadic signal is long since gone, an npr-ish narrator remains.

Driving up route 145 out of colebrook...

but it is me,

I am driving,

and I am driving to the cemetery.

This story was supposed to begin like this:

3 ammo boxes, a buddha and some bells.

An empty bag from Dunkin Donuts.

An empty car seat.

A baggie of stale cheerios.

A small painting of a winter sky.

A well-past prime brown eyed susan.

I am in good company I guess, confused company. Bit and pieces that express my life in this instant. This journey today has been a long one, and it has been a long one, and it will be a long one. I realized a while back that grief is a long term partner. It is patient enough to wait out any amount of denial and diversion. It comes up, coughs politely into its hand, just often enough to not forget. Occasionally it moves a doorway so you slam into a wall that was not there the day before, but that, these many years later, just happens sometimes.

I am here with two boxes of Jeff's things. Things I could not throw away but cannot keep. Things that were personal, intimate. Things that were his. I've added some symbolic things too, a fountain pen, an abacus, 3 fly fishing flies (a wooly bugger, blue winged olive and a royal wulff). I've added a knot of keys from an old truck. 3 stones. And a note I wrote with a very shaky hand the night before.

The things are in two ammo boxes, a momentary act of brilliance on my part, waterproof,  compact, and speaking directly to Jeff's love of old military equipment, and utilitarian design. He used to have one in his truck for change and the notebook where he fastidiously recorded every gallon of gas purchased, every oil change, every mile driven.

The third box came with my ebay purchase, and I will give it to Peter, the Sexton, whose history in the armed forces has just been revealed to me.

The buddha is in place of a marker I cannot afford.

And the bells, I am not sure what they are for. Movement maybe, movement. Change. 

And the flower, if all goes well, will come up again and again and again, spreading its pot bound roots deep into the nearly impenetrable soil that has been loosened, in this moment, by 2 and a half hours of Peter's patient digging.

Peter is a farmer and an angel. He has dug a million holes. Fence posts and grave markers. The hole where we stand is just one of those million, but the angel in him says that this is the only one that matters, the only one that matters this way, today.

We put the boxes in the bottom and slowly fill the hole with handfuls of soil and rocks while we fill the air with conversation that stretches nearly as far as the sky.

We talk of town politics and god and vietnam, of guns and hospitals, of his wife, and love, and hope.

We talk of things we agree on and things about which we disagree, but I can see how he sees it, if I were standing in his shoes.

He raises heritage chickens and I am raising a spirited child, and his kids are long grown.

We place the buddha and the plant. He places the carefully cut sod.  I arrange rocks to hold the bells which do not meet with my hopes for either clear ringing movement or of heavy-bottomed groundedness. Oh well. There are a million things, I know, that are better in theory than in practice.

And then, my nose fully burned, and my hair blown wild by a wind that has kept up with our conversation, we make our way back up the hill. He finds and hands me a turkey feather. We talk about skunks and the divots they've left everywhere in the grass.

With a hug, we part, and I walk to my car, stinking of the stale beer I spilled from a can I picked up as trash when I first arrived...my eyes seeking sign of cousins of the bees that flew in fast, as soon as my doors opened, and would not get out until ignored fully, with all the doors open, while I moved boxes and buddha and bells to the site.

It has been an hour and a half. And it has been much longer than that. And I am still 4 hours from home.

The light has changed, and now the hillsides show more glorious color-- the air has cleared maybe, and the wind is no longer tossing every leaf upside down.

145 is more beautiful north to south and I creep along, happy that no one is behind me, as I look out over acres of mountain sides, flush with fall color, and the black spears of some sort of evergreen.

I drive home through rain in franconia, hard enough to look like dark coming on.

The down and down and toward home.

Just as it is truly dark, I get out of the car to throw out my donut bag,  and my legs are wobbly from the journey.

It feels like so much longer than  a day.

I look up at the windows of our apartment, the twinkle lights strung perfectly imperfectly across the glass. It is like coming back from the moon, I imagine, welcoming and strange. And I am both lighter and heavier than I was when I left.

august anniversary

10 years ago and the memory is both sharp and muddled

I have a story my self tells myself. the moon was near full, but the day was rainy

and it was years before I was ok on sundays or mondays or on nights with a big moon. I could not even look at it.

today is saturday, and it is not rainy, and the moon is thin and waxing. my life’s a million leagues away from that life, but I am still the same kate. this is still the same heart.

I sometimes talk about my “past lives”, seasons from this lifetime that feel nearly separate, like chapters. But the truth is, this is my mosaic. This is my tangle. This is my weft and weave. There is no metaphor that captures the dimensions of this kind of human evolution, the one that is in each one of us, in heartbreak and success, in growing up and into and out of and beyond. There are things that keep us grounded, but there is the urge to keep seeking; the feelings of nesting and those of setting out. Achievement and beginners mind. All that we know informing us, humbling us, with all that we don’t yet know and all that is unknowable.

the thing about grief, for me, is that the loss is still a loss. It did not happen today. but today it is still lost. and there is all this space for whatiffing. all this space for the wild thicket of guilt and horror, of astonishment, of disbelief.

so yes, I mark this day with a heavy heart. no matter that my life is filled with wonderful things. no matter that my heart is filled with love. i hold both, the full and the empty.

there is an ancient japanese art of mending, Kintsugi, that believes that mending can be as beautiful (if not more so) than the original vessel.

today, i hold this image cupped in my hands.

broken, yes, but mended and mending with a thousand golden seams.

Losing Papa

Doug's grandpa died early this morning.
He was grandpa and father and friend. He was bedrock. It is hard knowing that this loss brings every other kind of shift away from all that could be counted on, a house that was home will be gone most likely, and all the history that it contains.
But memories, those will last if we're lucky.
The smell of caramel cake, and a deep throated laugh, the world's most horrendous teeth...
I will always remember our visit in March, he met our amazing Della, and I rubbed lotion into his hands. And I confess, I took longer than I needed to, imagining all those hands had touched.

non weaning, yes, another update

after that shitstorm of emotion, that instantaneous shift that I was clearly not ready for...
well,

she's nursing again.

so.
what does it mean? it means I got a front-row preview of my actual process, and while it does suck, I will live.
tears don't kill us, thank god/goddess/all-that-is
but oh! there is grief
and gosh darn, how much I don't want to slog through that.... but I will, and I will live, even if it is astonishing in its complexity

but since i am in the habit of looking for hidden gifts, it also means I got a glimpse into what it might be like to sleep without the weight of my not-so-little-one slung across me, and, well, in some ways that will be nice. hello deep breath, I remember you.

it also means that I am aware of the fact of my own complexity, and at least I can practice (and practice and practice) self compassion...

thank you for your kind support while I struggle my way through this

where I've been

I know I have been somewhat absent here comparatively speaking-- I've been "on assignment", posting daily over at heartwork. I've spilled a lot of content over there, things i would have said here about my grief stuff. I am consolidating, sort of, as I think the grief work I am doing is somehow tied in with the Workwork I am supposed to be doing.

These past few weeks have been chock filled with stressors-- I have been sick for several weeks, first with a nasty cold, then with a sinus infection that laid me out. Just finished the hallucinatory antibiotics last night and hope I am done. It was about 3 or 4 weeks start to finish.

I've also been working very hard at moving my own personal grief work forward, and well, I over did it.  Too many long trips in real time/space, too many long trips in memory space, and too many complications because of financial and emotional needs and those various conflicts, and well, shit.
Breaking point.

Two nights ago I had a panic attack, my first ever. And let me say this to all of you who have had them:
DAMN. I have never experienced anything like it, where I felt so hijacked for so long, so powerless, and so horrid.

Doug is now up in Maine for the summer, and we were to visit today. But daycare has a new barfing flu thingy going around, so I am staying home since I do not want to get sick there, on the way there, or on the way back or bring it to a summer camp (Opening day bonus gift!!! sick staff!, um, no).

So last night I slept some with the help of Rescue Remedy and a lot of safety nets in place.
I am totally exhausted, insanely so.
Will be home today with Della, praying that the barf gods pass us by.

Once safely on the other side of the barf zone, having flown over or slogged through, I think this will be a time of reconsidering- I cannot continue to ignore my stress signals, clearly, but am not sure how to give myself permission for better self care. I am a world-class-should-er and it is really hard to decide not to use such a well honed skill.

Just wanted to let you know where I've been.

Journeys: the way this has gone

Driving up north on Route 3 is a slow rewind through spring.

Back to buds and near bare branches

back to just the gentlest haze of color on the hillsides

snow in the shadows

last week I drove up, 4 hours each way through fog that broke open into ragged-bottomed clouds, the bluest sky, then the hardest rain.

I was looking for a cemetery that I did not find.

Instead I found myself pulling off the road without choosing to, into a gravel parking lot, taking a right turn at the bottom down a dirt road.  Into a smaller space, where my fingers turned the key, opened the door and then I was walking thorugh the woods on a path from my memory

through it, I guess

drawn by it

to turn down a path obscured by a fallen log

through the scent of lemony evergreens (hemlock?) 

the first time I ever walked those paths without a fishing pole, without Jeff.

down to the river, down the bank,

hands into the cold water by the falls.

A large water bird flew down the river, fast and low. Black and white and silent.

The day pulled me apart in ways and places I did not expect, and had me laughing, and swearing, as I went down each of a hundred roads, over a bridge (YES), up a hill that turned just so and opened up (YES, said my body, HERE) only to find that no, it was not the right place. the lump in my throat gathering so much unexpressed and inexpressible

sadness

frustration

loss, and lostness

I drove and drove and drove. I drove for two and a half hours, down roads, up roads, across bridges.

Rain so hard I could barely see.

Rain so hard it turned the dirt roads to muddy slides

I felt my tires slip a million times and each time felt a very different depth of alone-- I was not anywhere that anyone would find me and my signal had been lost 2 hours south.

Then I simply ran out of time.

Drove home.

Could not have been more exhausted.

***

Yesterday, I drove up again. Armed, this time, with different information. My first trip triggered memories, memories of a specific stone, one that was insanely easy to search for on google.

I went with a map, with a plan.

Back through the craggy mountains at franconia notch

back by the old man in the mountain, who fell the year Jeff died.

back up and through and beyond into the strange wide open that is the great northern woods.

I drove to the cemetery on the map. 

Found the stone of memory.

Left the twig of hemlock taken from the fishing spot. Left the pinecone. The stone is of Mettalak, the last of a tribe.

But it was not the cemetery. It is not the one, all those many winters ago, where I stood by the side of the road and threw snowballs laced with ashes over a snowbank too high to climb.

It wasn't. 

So said my body that felt no sign of him, did not feel him in the way the road had been worn down below the grade of the stones. 

So said the sign that noted the road is closed December-May 10th. 

I could not have driven that road.

It was february and the road would have been impassable.

There has been no simplicity in this journey. And that moment, there was an opening back into curiosity.

The wind was howling and the amazingly bright clouds were moving so fast their shadows felt almost tangible.

I got back in my car, and decided to drive back in a different direction, taking different roads, wondering if I would trigger more body memories that could help me navigate. 

Eventually I turned back onto pavement, and I immediately realized I'd turned the wrong way, and I heard, no it isn't. So I drove a mile at most, back to a cemetery I had found last week. One that said yes in every way except the lack of the stone that I had remembered.

But this time, I knew it was the right one. 

I got out and walked.

I looked on the ground, for what, fragments of bone? my wedding ring? I put a stone in my pocket.

I got back in my car, and turned toward home. 

It is high there, and the mountains fall away in all directions, and the light and shadows were moving so quickly with that wild wind, there was more than I could see.

Dark pines are nearly black against the spring green of new buds,

and the hillsides, that amount of open, 

I pulled off to let a truck pass, and to my complete surprise, cried a different way than I usually do about this. It was about the beauty, I guess, and my luck at the gift of just being able to witness.

Witnessing the shadows moving so fast, the light, on that hillside, that one. The one with the bright spring buds, the ones with the dark pines.

light, in three parts

Am sitting with sun coming in
tea warming me after an unexpectedly COLD shower (ug)
and just am trying to gather myself together.

I was going to be taking a goal oriented trip today, a solo trip. A long-ass drive trip. An all-day-in-the-car trip.  An at least one-part-shitty, one-part-maybe-healing kind of trip. But then I realized I was not ready, not really, and I am trying to be ok with that.  I try not to dwell here on shitty history, but sometimes it just is what I am dealing with. This year will be the 10 year anniversary of Jeff's death, and I realized, somewhat to my own surprise, that I was maybe ready to do some things I was not even able to think about a short while ago. One is to find a place to have a marker. A touchstone in the most literal sense. And this must be in the upper reaches of the state, in a place I know he loved. And I was going to go today to meet with a cemetery sexton to talk plot selection, etc. And it turns out, not surprisingly, that the place I picked from the map, upon further reflection, is not the right place. And yes, there is a right place. I have been there before, just long ago and far away. I will remember it when I see it. But I need to go, first. I need to go and look and feel my way toward the place I am remembering. And that will suck differently. Then I can talk plot and narrative arc and denouement. I was to leave well before dawn today to get there for a meeting time, then home again I hoped by dinner. Instead, I am here.

Here.

My beloveds are off eating pancakes, and I am needing to work since I can (I cannot when Della is here, our place is too small, and we are too interactive), and instead of diving into work I just played a bit with something I've been wanting to learn to do-- text along a curve

And I am stoked since it just simply worked.
Yes, I am an engineer by training, but I know no one more persistently thwarted by technology. So when I have success, it is like the biggest surprising YES ever, since my view of technology is that it should either be completely transparent (JUST WORK), or delight me. And this view persists, oh how it persists, in spite of my repeated experiences to the contrary.

So while I gather my expectations for the day while practicing more than a bit of self compassion, I wanted to write since I have been missing words here for a while. Sharing lovely images of Della is wonderful, (see below where Doug helps her look little for just a little longer), but words heal me differently and sometimes I forget that it is important not to hold it all back and down and hope it just magically resolves. There is healing when I let the light in.

another from easter

an open letter to the internet and the universe

Ah internet.

I sometimes hate you. I hate you when I accidentally stumble upon someone's tragedy, and it rips me deeply instantly viscerally and there is nothing I can do but offer love, and stand in the midst of the sadness/grief that erupts from me, and the panic that comes up too, the selfish panic that says that could be me.

I wish loss on no one.

No one should lose a baby, a child, a beloved. No one should have to wonder if each day is the last one. I feel as if there is such an inherent unfairness in that. Such torture. 

Ironically, I was going to write about my baby dreams, the ones where Bad Things happen. I was going to complain about it. Whine. Feel bad for myself publicly. I was going to ask the universe for those dreams to stop.

When here I am, the luckiest person in the whole world, having bad dreams.

Yes, bad, bad dreams where bad things happen.

But right now, someone across the world is living that.

And I am not.

So universe, I ask you, as the luckiest person in the world,

let me keep my luck

but send healing, however possible to that mother, that grief stricken heart, 

send compassion, love

bypass my powerlessness and do something good.

Just for now, not for always

snow and stillness
motion now just snow falling off of wires and branches
drips dripping from icicles
otherwise, it is the kind of still that feels nearly unnerving, like looking at a frozen ocean. It reminds me of the million tiny movements that we get accustomed to... movement of trees, sky, grasses....even light.
This milky sky and shadowless ground.... so     very     still

***

thank you all for your great recommendations for Della's hair-- coconut oil! Frizz 'Fro indeed-- what a perfect description!
for your support about reading/videos/longing.... the one thing I know is that whatever I know today may or may not have any bearing on tomorrow... Della changes, and changes and changes, and it is for me to be sensitive, aware, and adjust.  Re-offer the food re-offer the book and activity that may not have been right yesterday. The ruts are often mine based on concluding rather than just resting in the moment.  This is our truth right now, I need to remind myself. Just for now. Not for always.

We memorialized my grandmother this weekend. And I swear, I feel as if she is just in the next room. I keep waiting for her to pop in and see if we need anything, tea or cookies... her voice is so present in my heart. My favorite moment from the service-- ok, there are three:  Della, in her big voice, pointing at the minister saying Who's that man? And then calling him a superhero (standing up high, wearing a cape-like-object, he really did look like a super hero);  a sudden loud organ chord that had us all levitate and then laugh....;  and the most beautiful bells.  I had never heard anyone play the bells, not alone, not christmasy, and wow... it was totally hauntingly lovely and emotionally right on.

Doug's beloved grandpa is suddenly failing, so Doug is off on a plane today after deciding, scheduling, getting more phone calls, and changing the flight to be much sooner...  This is such a sad season of transitions and losses I don't like it one bit.  Papa (Doug's grandpa) is a real character, I mean it, the kind if I wrote him everyone would think I'd gone too far, was too extreme...  I will always think of his laugh, head thrown back, full throated, joyful.... as he recounted how he met Doug's grandma.
We were all going to go in April. At least, that was the plan. Plans, shplans... we will change what we need to change, knowing the whole time that those things are not at all the things we would change right now if we could...

I-me

Flurries today, little snowflakes flying in all directions, sunshine one moment, clouds the next... but it is warmer all of a sudden, and there is just the faintest breath of wind.

I feel like I have my feet more underneath me today- feel more gathered up than broken down.

I know so many of us have written about this, how new grief so often brings up old grief, and sadness begets sadness. It is easy to get lost in it. Undertow.

Instead of resisting this time, or pathologically searching around for pockets of unhealed hurt to poke, I just leaned into it with compassion, yes, I said, yes, I know, I know. This *does* suck. That did suck. There is pain and there was pain.

And for once, the knots loosened instead of tightening.

I am an avoider of pain. I hate pain. I know, most of us are.
I am an avoider of things I do not want to be true.
I have no peace with the fact of loss. Except, maybe, this time. This time there was something to feel peaceful about, a bigger loving over arching something that said, no more suffering.
And this is as true as I can know it to be.

***

Now I want to write about Della for a moment, how she refers to herself as I-me.

I-me
I-me do it.

Covers a lot of bases.

She is into big time possession mode-- things are hers, not to be shared, and sadly missed when gone. These things include things at daycare so it is more than awkward.

She is dreaming now, and tells us her dreams sometimes.

When she wakes, she often says things about the previous day as if we are in mid-conversation.

Yes, we are still co sleeping.

Yes we are still nursing. Weaning will happen when we're ready, or when one of us is. And right now, we just aren't.

She is magnificent.  She is fierce and determined and funny and bossy and tender.
Nice boots mom!
Good job dad!
She pats me and my heart melts.

I cannot believe her immensity ever wasn't here, being, visible.

Today in my new groundedness, I am able to look up and see the snow falling down, in no way linear, back and forth, crisscrossing, meandering, no rush....
and am trying very hard to imagine embodying that kind of non-effort, even for a little while.

tetris

there is a kind of leveling up that happens when we work hard, persevere, earn it some how...
and then there is the uncomfortable kind. the kind that happens when a generation passes, dropping away, thrusting us up to the next level whether we like it or not.

We lost our sweet Mimi this weekend. My grandmother. My mother's mother. An amazing woman, strong, buoyant.  She scared me shitless when I was little. And even when I was not so little anymore, I always felt I was disappointing her. Or doing things wrong. Or being wrong. And I hated that. I never felt like she liked me very much.

Jeff died the same month as Poppy, my grandfather, 10 years ago this coming August. And in those first months of nearly insane grief, we bonded in a way we never had before. Jeff also shared a birthday with Poppy.

Suddenly, she became so much less scary-- so much more tender and loving toward me.  Each birthday anniversary we would reach out, specially and specifically.  Each death anniversary.  It was so hard to have this shared grief be the subject of our new relationship, and I felt so torn. So relieved that we were on new footing, so very sad about why.
But no matter how complicated the "why", the past 10 years have been a different kind of gift. A gift of connection, and a totally new way of relating.  I still disappointed her.  Getting pregnant before getting married-- a cardinal sin in her playbook. But I felt we truly had a connection in a way we had not.

And now here we are.
leveling up in spite of what any of us wanted.

I will think of her red painted toes.
Her ability to float like driftwood. Truly, a freakish thing.
I will think of her laugh, and her sly grin.
I will think of the tiny pickles in a silver dish, her swedish meatballs, her mac and cheese.
I will think of the gatherings at her house, smelling of sea salt and cedar.
I will think of jean nate and dove soap.
I will think of the time she dried my hair, hard, with a towel on the deck of a large sail boat off the coast of maine, and how i cried at her sudden tenderness.
I will think of the acrid smell of Ammens powder-- when we were very little, she would have us lie on towels on her bed, and spread powder on our backs after swimming.
I will think of the slippery-soled ill-fitting sneakers she would make us wear to swim off the rocky beach.
I will think of red geraniums, and spectator pumps, and her crooked front tooth.
And I will think of how her hand felt, under mine, the last time I held it.