What I’m Supposed to Say

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  • I’m taking time to heal.
  • I’m taking care of my own needs.
  • I’m letting go of the past.
  • I’m learning to love myself.
  • I’m focusing on the future.
  • I’m making sure I get out.
  • I’m leaning on my friends.
  • I’m taking up new hobbies.
  • I’m finding out who I am now.
  • I’m allowing myself to be sad.
  • I’m getting outside my comfort zone.
  • I’m learning to let go.
  • I’m finding ways to make myself happy.
  • I’m taking responsibility for my part in the breakup.
  • I’m creating who I want to be in the next phase of my life.

And these are all true.

What I Am Not Supposed to Say

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Twenty-four years ago, three months before my mother died, I put my grandmother into a nursing home. It was the one of the two things she never wanted. The other was to have cancer.  Instead, it was my mother, her daughter, who would die of it. My grandmother died simply, of old age.

After leaving my grandmother at what was, I assured myself, a nice home, I went to my sister’s house. I had no sooner arrived, no sooner taken two steps onto her lawn, when I fell to my hands and knees, sobbing. “I want her back,” I said. “I want her back.”

For months now, I have been, to my surprise, comfortable living on my own. No longer scared, as I always would be when he was away traveling, of sleeping in the house alone. No longer confined to bed, if I woke in the night. If I must have insomnia at 3 a.m., I told myself, at least I can make tea. Nor have I felt particularly lonely. Now it is the cat that nestles into the hollow of my back at night.

But suddenly, on a recent day – which, admittedly, was our 32nd wedding anniversary, the last anniversary, most likely, I would spend as married woman – suddenly that day, the house felt empty. Missing that burst of energy that always accompanied him whenever he came home.

“I want him back. I want him back.” I fell to my hands and knees again, rocking back and forth, keening, even as, underneath, I knew that this was not a choice I was being offered.

“I want him back. I want him back.” I wanted to rip, split, tear into myself, refuse this awful knowledge.

“I want him back. I want him back.” Please, dear God, don’t make me give him up.

This is not the change I asked for.

No. No. No. No. No.

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Yesterday was one of my really “bad” days. Sorrow without end. A mental attempt to undo, like the aftermath of a car accident. Why didn’t I take another route? Stop for gas? Postpone the trip?

No. No. No. No. No. This can’t be happening.

But it is. And the enormity of my loss staggers me. I lose my balance. My appetite. And why, exactly, I need to go on breathing.

But breathe I do. Deep and slow. Rhythmic as the ocean. Like the tides, pulled by forces I only dimly grasp.

Dear Mother of God, hear my plea and send me succor for my grief.

On the Way Home

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I was nearly to the turning point of my daily walk, the park which marks the end of the trip away and the beginning of the way home, when I realized I had not been paying attention to my surroundings. More mindful now, I stopped to look at a nearby tree. Stripped of its protective bark, the inner core stood naked and vulnerable. Like me, I thought to myself.

As I left the park, I came out from the shade of a tall pine and there in the grass before me, backlit by the rising sun, was a field of diamonds. A cricket announced his presence but fell silent as I approached. Across the street, yesterday’s rain had dampened the skeleton of two houses in mid-construction, muffling, to my disappointment, the smell of freshly cut wood.

Sometimes making our way home is about finding the right path.

Salty

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You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men.

There are days when I struggle to maintain a sense of purpose. Of utility. To myself, and others. When I feel cast out and carelessly trodden underfoot. Days when I despair of regaining any saltiness, any means with which to flavor this life. Days when I am “poor in spirit”.

It is at times like these when the angels arrive. People, I believe, sent by God to remind me not only of my innate worthiness, but of His loving presence. Everything I see, I tell myself, is an expression of God. This morning I found a carpet of tiny white flowers amid an expanse of grass. One long blade bent under the burden of three drops of water. I feel both joy in the perfection of the miniature blossoms, and bowed myself by a great weight.

Baal Shem Tov says ” In God’s palace, there are many doors, each with its own key. But there is one key that opens all the doors. That key is the broken heart.”

It is the salt of my tears which restores my ability to savor.

Quiet Endless Seeking

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For this, the third of a series reflecting on a meditation podcast, I set out on my walk with the intention of paying particular attention to discoveries made along my path. Be Here Now.

Yesterday’s rain encouraged mushrooms to sprout overnight. In the gravel of my neighbor’s driveway, stood two yellow mushrooms. Caps rounded, the distance between them was that of two children on a playground, far enough apart to bounce a ball between them. One, hearing its name called, had turned away.

On my way back, I spy in the grass a tiny and delicate mushroom, the height of my thumb, with translucent stem and an upturned cap, pale gray and streaked with inky lines. Nearby nestles a single down feather. Three drops of rain rest on a single blade of grass.

Every step is part of the journey.

Embracing the Journey

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Yesterday it was pouring rain when I left a friend’s house. I got drenched again running from the car to my front door. Once inside, I stripped off wet clothes, lit candles in every room, put on the tea kettle, and ran a hot bath.

After a luxurious soak, I tied my bathrobe around my waist, put spaghetti on to cook, and poured myself a glass of wine.

Outside, rain drummed on the windowpane. Inside, a flickering candle illuminated the cheery yellow of chrysanthemums, highlighting them against the jewel purple of the hand towel hanging nearby.

This, I thought to myself. This moment of happiness, this tiny joy. This.

All I Need Is All I Have

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Cooler air this morning heralds not the arrival of fall but its impending arrival.

A house undergoing renovation still wears a white-on-white wicker porch swing. Twisted balusters and the siding – with the rounded bottom edge traditional to original houses in this neighborhood – gently flake milk-white paint. Whorls of bare wood, its DNA, peek through a foamy veil.

Out front, a limb of a century-old live oak reaches out to cradle the air above the street, graceful as a dancer’s arm.

On the next street over, on my way home, a Red Bird of Paradise bush, its blossoms aflame, claims my attention and I stop for a moment, paying homage.

All I have is all I need.

To a friend, also in mourning

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From the depths of my grief, I can only imagine yours. Lives so deeply entwined suddenly ripped asunder. I sleepwalk through my days, alternately numb and racked with pain. But I create for myself small joys, like fresh flowers in my bathroom. A small cap worn rakishly askew on my head.

So I think it is with you.

I make the drinks you post the recipes for and listen to the music you mention. I read “Consolations.” Then I cry as friends hold me in their arms.

So I hope it is with you.

I wear a bright color on my toenails – one I would NEVER would have chosen “before” – so that I smile when I catch a glimpse of them. I make a list of things that make me happy and choose one whenever I grow too apathetic, too overflowing with sadness.

So I trust it is with you.

I remind myself of the story of the man who has fallen into a deep hole. Someone hears his cries for help and jumps in. “What have you done? Now we’re both down here.” “Yes,” says the second man. “But I’ve been here before and I know the way out.” I’ve been deep in grief before, I remind myself. And I know the way out. It is long and filled with intense suffering. But through is the way out. Through is the way out.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

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Yesterday I went for a Christmas morning walk. The “kids,” one about to leave his twenties and the other halfway through, could not make it home. COVID restrictions.  I met a couple pushing a stroller and stopped them briefly, learning it was their daughter’s second Christmas.  I talked longer to a neighbor whose two sons, three and five, remind me so much of my own boys at that age.

Those things combined to make me nostalgic. Perhaps empty nest syndrome comes in waves. The first wave when they go away to college. The next when they get jobs and more permanent living arrangements. Home both is and is no longer “home.”

So I set out my mother’s ceramic Santa and decorate the tree with paper ornaments the boys made at preschool.  I make a pot of tea and sit with my memories, both warm and bittersweet.