eleven.
This newsletter is here to connect you to your five senses and your grief at times when life and death make no sense. Consider it an imperfect “grounding exercise” for the month.
I was nearly halfway through the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco when I was told to turn back. I’d prepared for things to not be easy: difficult rounds of treatment, hard memories, family tensions. I hadn’t prepared for this.
For a flu to nearly kill my sturdy, unfussy, tough-but-tender aunt.
I remembered, in an instant, as easily as I’d forgotten, cancer’s needless cruelty, its unsparing nature, its torture. Pain came. Then anger, fierce and clear eyed. Rage, ire, wrath, and fury, too. I was tired and indignant and fed up.
I decried the unfairness of her illness, that it happened twice and the first I heard of it was on the day of my childhood friend’s funeral and the second was on my dead mother’s birthday, and couldn’t stall the question, why?
Then, is it me? Was I bringing cancer close — closer to the people I love, closer to myself? Was I cursed? Was I a curse?
Unnerved, thoughts thrumming, I called a friend. He knew something was not right, and simply said “tell me.” I spat out every ugly, selfish, indulgent, fearful thought and feeling. I knew I was centering myself in a larger, unruly narrative, but I had no choice but to feel. It was the way through, not under.
He listened kindly, and agreed, knowingly. It was too much. He said, it needed to be. He’d had similar thoughts — they’d pass, they’d change, but he insisted I needed to have them out. He told me how after his mother died, both of his best friends lost a parent. How he still sometimes feels the pall of responsibility. But death is random, life, too. It’s awful. He told me to get off the road, and walk.
I did. I stopped at the dog friendly beach, so my girl could have a run. It was overcast, so there were no shadows, no play of light, no color in the ocean. Still, my dog ran, joyously undeterred. Chasing the tide, and the tide after it. A blunt, damp taste passed over my lips. Tears. I called for the dog. But she was either too far off, or too content to be obedient.
A crow sidled up. Another bad omen, I thought, and walked on, faster. It followed. Dread pressed in, then let up. The crow was my company. It met my solemnity and vehemence with shrewd grace. I was not alone.
Meaning came by an unwelcome messenger like life grows from grief and knowing death.
I see life in the big and small things. I smell ocean. I taste it, too. I hear my thoughts, and for once, I don’t need to share them to make them real. Not this time. I feel close to an ending. I grieve but I can’t explain it today. I just am.
SEE - Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein
HEAR - Little Ten Minute Light
Sitting for meditation with this gently paced, ten minute album, lets me imagine myself walking into a body of water: how the water laps at and ascends my body before I submerge and float with the ruby-hued sun on my closed eyelids, finding light growing within and through.
FEEL - On Grave Gardening
Tending to the seasons of the departed.
GRIEVE - In Older Age, Living for the Unremarkable Moments
Life as an evolving plot. Kind, simple, unpretentious. A lesson learned, and comfort taken.