I've written three books, each a part of my journey to elderhood. Now with this blog my intention is to give a moment to moment accounting of my life as it is now, and now, and now. I'm a leader and student of Sensory Awareness, and a practitioner of Rosen Method. I believe in the connective and collective power of Love.
I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It rained the whole time we were gone and I look out on vibrancy, growth, and green.
I return to a sympathy card that brings tears. I feel like today is the first day since my brother passed that I have a whole day to sit and cry. Yes, there is laundry and grocery procurement, and checking plants, but kitties are cuddled, and as I respond to emails, I look up and my feathered friend sits on a branch outside the window. She waits for me to get my camera and take a photo through the slats of the blind and another through the glass door. She sits with me, a comfort in the weight of grief.
I feel molted, tender before new growth and skin form. I feel fragile and tears continue to pour forth, harbingers seasoning what comes.
Outside my window – comfort through the slats Honoring a Cosanti bell of celebration
I’m honoring the passing of my brother and what comes as I move up and down in space as NYC definitely requires stair, elevator, and escalator transport, and I’m up and down in mood. Showered and after coffee and a blueberry muffin, I invite myself more thoroughly into a new day.
I didn’t take a picture of the “bubbles” I saw the first night we were here, and when I went back yesterday, they were gone. Maybe I imagined them, or maybe they were an exhibit meant to show impermanence. My plan has been to post on grief for 49 days in honor of my brother’s passing/passage. 49 days is the time Buddhists believe it takes for one who has passed to more thoroughly move on. Today I wonder if 49 days will be enough for me to move on, and today is today.
Here is a poem by David Whyte.
The Well of Grief David Whyte
Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief,
turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe,
will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering,
the small round coins, thrown by those who wished for something else.
Artwork outside Rockefeller Center Listen; receive!
After I interpreted the above sculpture as hand to heart and listening, I read about the artwork currently displayed at Rockefeller Center. It is a “raised fist that morphs into a gramophone”. Perhaps it says something about what I need to believe. Read about what’s represented in the sculptures here.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/arts/sculpture-frieze-new-york-.html
As Steve and I walk the streets of NYC, he points out the buildings my brother worked on. My brother is here as he is everywhere of course, and today is the first day to settle more deeply into my grief at his passing.
Yesterday we went to Top of the Rock to see the sunset. We, and a capacity load of people though I learn from Steve they are trying to figure out how to cram more people up there, had the same idea. We realize we are of a different generation as to our need for quiet and space. People in NYC are friendly as can be and yet I am on overload. I’m ready to go home, and we leave today.
On the other hand, the view from Top of the Rock is spectacular, and the energy of the people enjoying a warm evening outside is lovely and I’m missing home.
My friend Stefan is leading Sensory Awareness at a Zen retreat center in the Black Forest. He posts photos, one of a snail, another of of a flower, another of a bell and there is a gate. I settle there.
Yesterday was graduation day in NYC. We passed one group of women in purple graduation gowns and hats, and another group in blue. We saw huge bouquets of flowers carried in the hands of gratitude and joy. Picture taking was essential of course. It’s all beautiful and excitement fills the air, and we return to our room grateful for quiet and ease, knowing that wherever we go, there we are. Presence is a gift and there is no reason or need to escape from grateful beings living in interdependence and reciprocity.Joy is captured and spread in a multitude of forms. Creativity reigns and rains. Paused now on the island of Manhattan, I revel in the gift.
Perhaps enough as we wait to rise to the top of Rockefeller Center 15,000 crystals shimmering with light A waterfall crystallized One of many views from Top of the Rock
Traveling with Steve allows me to see the grit below the glamour. Today we got permission for me to go below the cellar of a project on Fifth Avenue. Maybe you can guess where and what it is.
I’m balancing the green calm and New England beauty of CT with the noise and high rise buildings of NYC.
I’m balancing grief at my brother’s passing and joy at sharing hugs and connection with family and friends.
I’m balancing inner and outer as I trust in renewal and resilience. The month of May has been filled with tears and laughter, and warm hugs of love. I honor grace as I pause in a busy place, grateful to know all of this is part of me, is me. I embrace, embraced.
On walking around in the early evening last night, we passed some hanging clear beach balls that from a distance looked like bubbles. On closer inspection, they contained tiny lights. I sit with symbolism as moments pop passing the light.
Yesterday we enjoyed lunch with Jan, my sister-in-love, at Stone’s Throw, a restaurant on the Housatonic River. It was a perfect beginning to a day of perfection.
She is able now to read a poem on grief by John O’Donohue I sent her after my brother Gary, her husband, passed five weeks ago today.
View from Stone’s Throw restaurant
We then attended a beautiful wedding at Laurelton Hall Chapel. The newly, now formally united couple, met in high school and have been best friends and soulmates ever since. It was a wedding made in heaven and both families already spend holidays together so it’s a uniting truly blessed.
The reception was at Aria high upon a hill. Appetizers were served outdoors. We could have been in Tuscany or Napa but we were in CT. A windfall from an attic search after grandparents passed provided a surprise display of fireworks worthy of the Fourth of July.
I sit here now, a cauldron brewing experiences of love, trust, healing, and beauty. The father of the bride kept speaking of his love of Michael and his trust in giving his “little girl” to Michael, and still how hard it was to do. Yes, and now there is what comes. Tears, love, and joy, and fireworks lit the night, and this morning I sit here calmly, beaconed in peace.
Aria though there’s no way to capture the size and extent of the view
The sun is shining in Shelton, CT for the first time it seems since my brother passed thirty-five days ago. The rehearsal dinner we attended last night was beautiful and now today a wedding but first, we’ll meet with Jan, my brother’s wife. The intention had been that we’d meet with her and my brother but now it is just her and so we balance life and death, love and its accompaniment, as the more we love, the more deeply we are carved, formed, birthed, and fertilized by pain, and yes, we mix our metaphors because we are abundant with our evolving maze of curves.
Yesterday I read Mingyur Rinpoche’s discovery when he recovered from a near-death experience. When you love, the world loves you back. His book comforts me as I feel my brother here in a way I don’t need to comprehend. I only need to know that he is the butterfly and I the caterpillar, and one day I, too, will fill out my wings.
Yesterday I was in a car, on a plane, in a car, and then walking in NYC. Today has been walking in NYC, a train, and a car. Now, I’m softly settled looking out on trees. Travel emphasizes that wherever we go, there we are, and it also shows that there’s momentum in traversing distances, and it’s wonderful to stop. I’m a champion of the pause. Where is grief in all this? Bella says, “Why aren’t you home?”
And now I see squirrels running up and down the trees just like at home, and a cat that looks like Bella just walked by.
“Little Sweetie” Squirrels love trees and everywhere is home!
I’m a lark, and yet, in the morning I feel wise, so I must wake to the sound of the owl asking me this day, “Who, who, who,” and I wonder how the answers will come today.
It’s raining. My cat Bella and I are together on the couch watching the rain, listening. It’s enough, breath like a bellows moving in and out.
Though flights have been cancelled, our plan is to fly from SFO to JFK tomorrow morning. This time we fly for a wedding, not a memorial, as we did two weeks ago, and yet, the lift for me is fragile. I feel the weight of grief even as I balance on the coming together of two people in marriage, commitment, love, and trust.
As I receive compliments on “Airing Out the Fairy Tale”, I remember back.
About six months after I returned home from Nepal, I received an airmail envelope, weight of a feather, from Kathmandu, with a poem from Sonam, the sixteen year old son of the Sherpa who led us on the trek in Nepal.
“Mountain can’t fly,
We can die.
I waiting to you.
You must try.”
At the time, I knew it was impossible to return, and I sit with that now, as I’m heavy with grief, yet knowing renewal is at hand with each breath.
When my mother passed, I wrote this poem.
Lungs
Two leaves on our chest
Sweeping grief with every breath.
Lungs and breath
Later I wrote:
There’s nothing binary in grief,
No on-off switch, no separation of yin and yang,
Good and evil, male and female, punishment and revenge,
Joy and sorrow.
Grief holds all.
I sit with this now as I consider what it is to get on a plane, the magic and majesty of flying from one place to another, one group of friends to another, while still being true to the organism harvesting beats, trusting rhythm and reverberations inside and out. Petals unfold for sun and for rain, knowing the skin-filled caress and blossom of dew.
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