a bridge.

in a front yard in south carolina . march 2009

last night, i was thinking about how you asked your daughter to bring you the other picture. not the one sitting in your room from the mid-nineties; the one i love; the one where you two are sitting with your rounded middles, hats people in their seventies wear upon your heads, and the sun in your eyes as you look right at me as i snap. no. you wanted the other one. the one where you sit side by side on the cusp of a life together. the one where you look like movie stars to these eyes of mine that never knew you then. you wanted to look at the woman you fell in love with.

when your daughter would call daily to check in and ask what you had been up to, sometimes you would say, "oh i'm just talking to her again."

i think of you in that little room i never saw, the little room that became your whole life for your last few months. i think of you looking at that photo of her with her eyes a-twinkle with all that is to come. i think of you sharing words you never told her when you could have.

i hear you asking me to tell her how much you love her as though my saying it aloud on a day in april in 2005 before a small family grieving would make it more real. as though she would hear me when she couldn't perhaps wouldn't hear you.

i wonder about what photograph i will want next to me in a room that will be my last room. what photo will i want to talk to and sit in the quiet next to hoping for any whisper of a response.

*****

we are in the midst of this new bridge in the middle of spring. this bridge of a bit more than two weeks in length that walks from his death to hers. i think about this day five years ago when they said she was in the hospital but i shouldn't come just yet. even though the weekend i spent at my yoga training gifted me many insights then, the heart inside this chest wishes i could blink and find myself saying to my mother, "i think i will just move the ticket up to sunday. i am just going to go. i will meet you there." 

and i would rent a car at the little airport near their home and stop to get flowers and something to read aloud to her. and i would not worry about what i had packed or the training i was missing for a new freelance job or what was going to happen if she didn't make it or how annoyed she was going to be with me when i walked into her room. i would just drive to the hospital. i would just drive to the hospital and hold her hand. and she would still be breathing.

*****

i remember thinking spring was laughing at us as her outward flashy colors seemed to mock our grey, lost faces. but then i walked outside to the brick patio and remembered how much she loved this time of year. her favorite time, when mother nature unfurled her very best in the form of azaleas, dogwood, redbud, tulips, forsythia, and how the list goes on. when we drove to the funeral home, i looked out the window at all the colors arching toward the sun...knowing if she was here, she would not be able to stop herself from commenting on how they all seemed to bloom at once that year. 

and they did.

while my heart was breaking solidly in two, every shoot of green stood almost at attention in a way she would have loved.

and i am guessing, five years later, those reaching toward the sky blooms are doing it again in south carolina. although neither of them is there, although i am not there, to witness. spring is dancing with her arms outstretched toward all that is to come in the next minute, day, week.

*****

in my corner, spring continues her slower dance, each week unveiling a new bloom, a new bud, a new green shoot peeking out. and this quiet swaying brings another bridge toward the arrival of another soul who will change my life forever, break my heart, and mend it with every breath.

in this moment, how i wish you were here to witness all that is to come.

singing to remember.

 

south carolina spring . april 1, 2009

a year ago, when my grandfather died, i listened to alison krauss on my ipod on repeat throughout our trip to south carolina. something about her voice, the harmonizing, invites me to feel at home, invites me to feel safe.

the song "i'll fly away" makes me think of my grandfather now. i think about him saying his last words...drifting off to sleep while my mother and aunt sat beside him...and in the wee hours of the morning i believe he heard the sounds of the loons harmonizing as they called him home...

tonight, i found myself pulled to listen to alison krauss. i harmonized along with her and felt the space around my heart crack open just a bit so i could breathe a little easier on this day. as i sang so loud with my headphones on and my body moving to the music while working in the little room, i found myself remembering what i know to be true. and i found myself resting softly in this remembering.

the stories...

 

a new (whispered) soul mantra in my little shop

last sunday, a dear friend was visiting and we were talking about how much has changed for me during these last almost six years of living in the pacific northwest. she has known me since i was 14, and then we were colleagues in my job at the boarding school back in indiana. she knows that i was not my most happy, real self while in that job. she asked me about what changed when moving here.

being in a new place was a big piece as i tried to find my way...but part of this internal awakening came as i sifted through the grief that came into my life about nine months after we moved when my grandmother died on the heels of my first golden, Traveler, dying of cancer. my heart cracked open as it seemed to break in two when i found myself in a funeral home in south carolina facing the truth of this first walk into deep grief. last sunday, i said to my friend, "i learned what love really felt like in that moment." we talked about the relationship that i had with my grandmother and how she really did have such a challenge showing those she loved that she loved them, yet she found her way to show me. i know that her love shaped me so much as a person, yet i am saddened that, from my perspective...based on the stories shared with me, she did not often find her way to show this side of herself to others in her family.

i said something to my friend about now i find myself pulled to tell her story...to tell the stories of all the women who came before me. and, at this point at least, i don't mean the details of their stories...i don't mean the specifics of a family's journey. no. i mean that as i share my story...here, with my friends, at retreats, in my book, through the art i create...as i share my story i am telling their stories because they live in me. literally. they live within me. and as i walk in this life, i am the proof of their love...my mother's, my grandmother's, her mother's, and so on...i am the gift of the love they opened up to in their life...even if just for a moment. and i am here to tell their stories as i walk on this path.

today, this is what i know.

 

i heard your laughter today. it rang out inside me like a whisper from long ago. years now. the last time we talked has been almost half a decade ago. in this moment, i want to tell you all that has happened. i was so lost, searching my pockets constantly for a flashlight so i could find my way. and then, through that darkness, that grief, that fear, i suddenly looked up and saw all the lights around me. some were far far in the distance, but they stood there waiting. patiently. while i just kept going, even when i found myself back in the same place for a bit. i would tell you about how i one day realized that the lights were not only surrounding me with their guidance and truth and love, but that the light lived within me. within me. and i knew i would never again be alone. did you learn this truth when you were here? how i wish i could tell you. how i wish i could invite you to stand in your light and know. in this moment, i sit here with this truth within my heart while another light within me grows and twirls and beats each day, waiting. and when she arrives, i will teach her this truth. maybe i am already teaching her. i will teach her about the light within her. i will tell her about the light grief gifted me. i will teach her about the day i thought i was never going to find my way and then i looked up. i will tell her all that you teach me even now. even now when your laughter is...even now when you are...a memory.

a gift (found inside the missing and wishing)

backyard dogwood, south carolina . spring, 2009

for the first year, all i wanted was one more day, hour, breath, second. i just wanted to pick up the phone and hear her voice say, "hello" in that funny, "i'm so glad it's you" sort of way. as my brain tried to train itself to realize that i would never see her, hear her again, my cracked-open heart tried to remember to keep working.

this is a piece of what my first experience of the path of grief felt like.
the wishing. the missing.

*****

this march was the first time after her death and the last time that i would visit the home away from home that was my grandparents' home. trying to soak up everything while standing on another branch of the path of grief was difficult. i took a lot of photos, but i wish i would have taken more. i wish i would have written while sitting on the backporch. but when a family gathers for a funeral, there isn't much time to take it all in. and then, in the weeks that followed, the "settling of the estate" began. and as a grandchild, i did not have a role. which i understood intellectually...yet, this was my home away from home...a home filled with unconditional love that i had experienced...even if this might not have been the experience of everyone.

my mother would call and we would talk about "the list" of "stuff" and what we might want.

and as i would look at this list of "stuff," the feeling began again. i want one more minute. i just want to tell her all that i have learned. i want her to know this me, this me that grief has birthed. i want to ask her so many questions. i don't care about any of the stuff, i just want her. i just want her.

during this time, my mind kept turning around this phrase: all that they were became a list in a word document with a total at the end. all that they were. all that they were.

the missing became the drum of my heart yet again.

*****

weeks later, the boxes arrived at my mother's house. a lot of boxes. the journey she has been on to go through them...the journey that is not always about missing in the same way my journey is. a child's grief, so very different from a grandchild's or a friend's.

a few weeks ago, she sent two boxes full of some of the things from that house. being sick for several weeks, and some other things that have made life a bit fuller, made for the realization that i didn't quite have the energy to open the boxes. i didn't want to sift through the feelings again, and i didn't want to uncover new ones. i just walked around the boxes and stacked things on top of them.

*****

alone in the quiet saturday night, i found myself noticing those two white boxes and wondering. as i lifted out sewing supplies, linens, odds and ends, i began wishing i could ask her about the seven days-of-the-week embroidered towels and the odd beginnings to a pillow and the red "happy time" harmonica. 

the wishing. the missing.

in the second box, under a few other things, there was layer upon layer of bubble wrap around a box. as i began to unwrap it, the quiet mingled with the scent of her.

the jewelry box that had sat on her dresser for decades. the jewelry box that had sat there as she put on her makeup, sprayed her perfume, decided which pair of clip-on earrings to wear.

the jewelry box soaked up that perfume and makeup and pieces of a life; it soaked up the scents of that life, her life, and they settled in. as i opened that box, the scent swirled around me and i closed my eyes to remember.

the little girl visiting her favorite people and sleeping in that room. supposed to be napping, she peeks inside that box, lifts the lid of a compact, opens the bottle of perfume and breathes in deeply. the little girl sits on the stool in front of the dresser and looks in the mirror wondering what it might be like to be old enough to wear this perfume and use the pencils and brushes. the little girl who feels so at home in this room, who feels so loved in this room. the little girl who is the woman who remembers this love. this woman who takes a breath and deeply misses.

the jewelry box that was on a list that became part of a decision. the jewelry box that was wrapped up and put into a box and then another box now sits inside this home on another coast, part of another life. the jewelry box that became another step on the path as it became the gift of one more minute, one more second, one more breath.

the gift of one more breath.

(thank you)