Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Day 17: Receiving Love

This morning I’m with the words of Rumi: Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence.

Last night I lay in bed unable to sleep because I felt the truth of Rumi’s words.  All is Love. It’s my very existence.

My mother used to say.  “All is love”, and my father, “All is play.”

I’m with that now balancing grief and my to-do list on love and play.  

When I went through my Rosen training, Frank Ottiwell, an Alexander Technique teacher, came to lead and teach.  People in the Rosen community have been reminiscing about him. I remember watching him lengthen his fingers. He allowed and gave space between the bones.  

An Alexander imagery technique is to imagine your sacrum has lungs and let your sacrum breathe.  I do that now as I look at my list of things to do and honor the privilege of doing them one by one.

In doing so, I’m with the words of Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor. He writes of one way he survived a concentration camp. Obviously I’m not comparing my life to his, but sometimes grief can be a heavy load to lift. We need a fulcrum; we need tools.

Viktor Frankl: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet” — and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

I feel support knowing my brother is here, in the light, the birds, the sky, the trees.  

Morning Light from my deck

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Day 16: Tender

I woke this morning thinking of the power of hugs, deep, meaningful, heart-to-heart hugs.  Yesterday my Sensory Awareness group met at Fort Mason. I received hugs that moved through me, and reverberate now.  

As we gathered and sensed, I began to cough and cough.  Since I couldn’t stop, I left the room to get some water and when I returned I still coughed.   I couldn’t stop and because I knew I didn’t have a cold, I could feel how my throat had tightened to “stuff down” my feelings of grief.  Though I’d cried buckets and received hugs, still there was something coming up from my heart that was caught by a clasp at the throat. Slowly, my throat began to release which is not to say there isn’t still a clamp but it’s softer now, more accepting.  Shaking pours tenderness through pain and grief.

I was sitting with all this at seven this morning when my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, called. She wanted to share that she’d received a message from a high school best friend of my brother, Bill Belt. He and my brother had spoken in December and Gar made no mention of his illness.  Therefore, Bill was in shock to learn of his death. Gar was best man at Bill’s wedding and still he protected his friend from what he was going through. My brother was clear to the end that he was not a whiner and didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. I honor and respect that and I honor and respect that I was raised in the same way, and  …

What is it now I wish to say?

We no longer live in tribes where men come together to hunt mastodons and women gather berries.  We can share our vulnerability, transition, and fear.

My brother lived a good life and knew it. He had come to accept his death.  He also knew the pain we, our mother, brother and I, endured when our father died in a motorcycle accident in 1969.  My brother’s concern was for those of us still here, and so he and his wife have planned a lovely memorial where we will gather together and comfort each other in the circle of love he leaves behind.

When my sister-in-law called this morning, she sobbed, “Everyone says I am so strong.”  And she is strong and she can honor her softness too.  We can be tender with ourselves. It is okay.

In the book I’m bringing forth I look at the stoicism with which I was raised and which I’ve worked hard to poke a few holes in so more energy and support can pour through.

I’m grateful I have a place to feel the clamp on my throat that is unconscious but is still there, a clamp of protection so I don’t appear weak, but I know now I am both strong and weak, and weak, what a word, no, I am tender. Tenderly, I allow the fullness of feeling both joy and sorrow at one time, the tender place in the heart where both come together to hug and comfort as they meet.

Like a fern frond uncoiling, a snail shell moving, cell by cell, my throat releases and becomes a fountain flowing.

Fern frond unfolding

Vision of Hildegard of Bingen


Yesterday, my beloved friend Anna spoke of and demonstrated what she calls “celestial gravity”. She allowed her arms to rise over her head, in a prayer of reception, connection, openness, and grace.  

This morning these words of David Whyte come my way.

But for now, you are alone

with the transfiguration

and ask no healing for your self,

but look down as if looking through time,

as if looking through a rent veil from the other

side of the question you’ve refused to ask.

And you remember now, that clear stream

of generosity from which you drank,

how as a child your arms could rise,

and your palms turn out to take

the blessing of the world.

…

From Tobar Phodraic

In RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

The leaf supported from above and below

I’m also with a little book my dear friend Sandy gave me last week How to Love by  Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. He suggests using hugs as meditation.

He writes, “When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings.”  He continues, “Hugging is a deep practice: you need to be totally present to do it correctly.  When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You can train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.”

“Before hugging, stand facing each other as you follow your breathing and establish your true presence. Then open your arms and hug your loved one. During the first in-breath and out-breath, become aware that you and your beloved are both alive; with the second in-breath and out-breath, think of where you will both three three-hundred years from now, and with the third in-breath and out-breath be aware of how precious it is that you are both still alive.”

Yesterday I sat by the water of the bay and a gull sat with me. Well, he stood and stayed. I asked if I could take his or her picture, and clearly he/she said yes.

View of Angel Island from Fort Mason

My gull friend and support

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Day 15: Wind Chimes

I wake to the sound of wind chimes. They sound like church bells but I don’t live near a church.  I open the door to the outside. They still sound like church bells. I don’t recall hearing them sound like that before.  My brother passed away two weeks ago on this day, Sunday. I received the call at five AM. It’s not yet 5 and I hear bells.  

I go back to bed and lie there, listening, feeling my eyes adjust inside my head.  My brother had better than 20/20 vision. Near-sighted, I wonder if I’m being called to a wider vision, a different tuning within my ability to see and hear, live and be.

I consider the buck who used to stand below a windchime in our lower yard and use his antlers to play a tune.  Perhaps he was simply scratching his head but it looked intentional, seemed a conscious awareness of working with, playing with metal bars to make notes pleasing to a deer’s ears.  I felt empowered when I watched him responding to and enhancing the environment we shared.

I wonder what bars my brother plays with now.  What is this passage for him as it reverberates in me?   

What is the strength of my being as I move through air?  How am I changed?

A shelf has been placed in my heart on which I contain the pain of his passing, but perhaps I can view it as a step, a threshold over which I peer to more clearly swing air through my own windchimes.  Perhaps I can more clearly tune my moment to moment passing before that passage that seems final but is only change.

The sky begins to light, the softest gray comes, and with it, a bird chirps and chirps from a branch of a tree outside my window.

Is he or she opening leaves in spring, fertilizing them with sound?

Opening responds in me. I unfurl, unfold, and play windchimes with the air of my song.  It’s fifteen days since he passed; it’s time. Lips lift and smile.

Moving grace,

day unfolds

Origami in reverse,

Life patterns let go –

Wind chimes,

touch, touched.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Day 14: Origami in Reverse

I’m opened like the morning sky.  I walk out on the deck and fog and sun are in a dance of light.  I feel the same. I have nothing that “needs” doing today, no place I have to be.  My speech for the memorial is written. I’ll offer it in a week but this day nests and rests.

My brother is with me, ancestry.  I’m a dance. I’ve never felt like this before.  Well, of course, I’ve never felt like this before.  Moments don’t repeat. Each moment unfolds, evolves new ways to receive.  

I’m lovingly informed I’m held in tenderness,  I feel held, newly born, held in the support of a nest I’ve built over years, perhaps lifetimes.  I am a dance, a river, an ocean, a pond. I am vibration rising up and down, in and out, held in love and trust.

Years ago I wrote a poem, Origami in Reverse.  I do that now. Gently, tenderly, open what folds to birth.

Morning Sky in Tam Valley
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Day 13: The Nest

Where I live, birds have hatched and are in the process of testing their wings and leaving the nest.  I consider the work and play of making a nest, the gathering of materials, twigs, hair, fur, and then, the laying of eggs, perhaps a full nest,  crowded even, and then testing leading to flight, and the nest is empty perhaps to be used again or maybe to fall apart.

Each of us is given an opportunity to be the twig gathered, the fur, the hair, the coming together to make a nest, the couple, the egg, the hatching, the flight, and then, a a space, a place for something new to come.

A friend sent me a card with these words:

There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the marks of weakness,

but of power.

They are the messengers of our unspeakable love.

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

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Day 12 – The Weight of Grief

The fog has come in. There’s a gray embrace, a clasp of wetness.

I am heavy with grief, weighted down as though pregnant with new birth, though I’m not bringing forth a child into the world, but the weight of myself, a knowing in the cells there is a wider birth of earth than just this collection of cells I am right now. It is my energy that animates, and that energy halts now as it rearranges the knowing with which I connect. My umbilical cord is stretched and will snap back.

I open John O’Donohue’s wonderful book, To Bless the Space Between Us. I open to his poem “For Grief”.

For Grief

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time. 

John O’Donohue

Two rocks – One from Monhegan Island – the other from the Ganges
Healing abides
Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Day 11: A Well of Compassion

I wake and see the moon, a light in the sky, not whole now, or full as we say, full of light, but still whole, still knowing itself as full, round, whole.

When people I meet  in daily tasks, people for whom there isn’t time for the story, ask how I am, I say, “I am well,” and those who know me look at me more closely as though there’s something not quite right in that response, so this morning I sit with it, sit with how one responds in daily life.  I know the eyes are a giveaway and my energy, too, and yet, I also feel the truth of it realizing I can internally modify it for myself. Though I say “I am well”, I can know that I am a well. I may be empty or full, offering, receiving, or simply still.

I am a well, and this morning my heart is heavy, so I stay with that and feel myself as an island, perhaps Japan or Monhegan, perhaps formed from a volcano.  Yes, this passing of my brother is a volcano, and I am an island forming, and islands connect with other islands.

I need a moat around my castle right now, a drawbridge. I venture out and return to feeling.  I’m working on a “speech” for my brother’s memorial. I poured my heart out last night, memories flowing like lava, now ash.

Then I checked the word count.  I offered to speak for three minutes, figuring five was fine, so at 125 to 150 words a minute, I had the freedom of between 600 and 700 words.  I was way over that, so I cut and cut again, and now I sit with how one defines 65 years of sibling love and connection in a number of words. No wonder I wake thinking of islands, and look up at a moon not full, and yet, in that I can feel the well I am, a well sometimes full and other times dry.  

Today, the pain is tender, soft tapping within, as though the moon reaches into the well, and says look up, keep looking up and hear the birds sing, and see that the limbs on the Maple tree that were bare a month ago, are full, luxuriant, and harbingers of life. They are foundational fountains; they monitor and hold; they move and offer newly formed leaves like fingers as they stir sun, rain, light, and shade.

I am well, well with compassion, well with understanding the phases of the moon, the phases of life. I know that even when empty, I’m full, and even when still, I offer. I am a well, a well of compassion, for you and for me, for being and doing, for living and dying, all held and shared as one.

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Day 10: Sweetness

My college roommate Robyn Anzelon was a bridesmaid at my wedding. She comments on the photo of my brother and me coming down the aisle with “so glad the sweetness is wrapping around you,” and yes, that is the word, the feeling: sweetness.  

Sweetness wraps around me, stepping stones in grief.  My brother’s eyes, and he always had better than 20/20 vision while I, not so much, are now expanded out.  He draws me to stars and sky even as I more clearly feel the ground beneath my feet. Aliveness. I feel him augmenting sky and soil inside.  I’m tenderized with sweetness, wrapped in love.

I’m reminded of my mother’s sweet smile as she said over and over again, “All is love.”  My parents, our parents, lived as though rolled in tenderness, bathed in it from birth, many births. They saw a wider view. They were Holy Beings, as are we all, and yet sometimes we need to be touched again and again with the sweetness we share in living here.  We need to touch each cell inside with the recognition and acknowledgment of the sweet power and joy-filled frequency of love. There, is support.

In fourth grade, I was the fairy who gave kindness in the play Sleeping Beauty.  I stepped forward and touched my wand to the baby and said four powerful words, “I give you kindness.”  I often say the words to myself. “I give you kindness, Cathy.” I do that today, give myself the sweet fruit of kindness, as it ripens in sun and rain, fulfilling its purpose with the growth, care, and protection of seeds, generations of seeds. We are here for more than ourselves. We seed with sweetness our future as we honor our shared needs.


The heart of St. Francis fills baskets then and now with Love

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Day 9 – Earth Day

I wake and rise. The moon shining along the wood floors invites me to receive its beams outside.  I come back in and sit as light streams into the room and the moon appears to move across the sky.

When I was going through chemotherapy and radiation my friend Jane and I spoke every morning and then wrote.  The book Breast Strokes came from our talks and my posts on my Live Journal blog.

Because Jane spent the first three months of this year at Tassajara Zen Center, today was the first time we touched voices in almost four months. Handwriting back and forth was our form of touch. When we spoke at 6 this morning, we watched the movement of the moon from different sides of the bay. We spoke of touch, the ground of being, touch, an honoring, each day, earth day.

I’ve been going through photos for my brother’s memorial.  My tears are sweeter now, softer. There is sadness at times, a piercing, but the piercing is a puncturing as though my heart will one day be completely open to flow, no blocks or rocks in the stream, though Carl Perkins says the rocks in the stream make the song. Perhaps my song will come to silence, vibration so widely spread, it will be a blanket of calm.

This photo in particular strikes me because though we thought, at the time, we were adults, we were young with so much before us, and that continues for me, and I believe for him too.  He has simply changed form but perhaps he is more accessible this way. I feel him close as though I’m absorbing his essence, and in doing so, augmenting my own.

I continue to feel a deepening, widening, more substantial connection to what I call Source, and some call Nature, and others call God.

I was married in 1971.  My brother walked me down the aisle because our father died in 1969.  I was 21 and my brother not yet 18. Perhaps we walk a different aisle now, or maybe all aisles are one.

My brother walking me down the aisle in 1971
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Day 8 – Resurrecting

We each have a different tradition on this day. I look out as sun strikes the ridge with light and birds sing and squirrels chirp.  I read about the explosions, blood and killings in Sri Lanka. I’m tempted to leave this page blank, feeling there are no words to express what I might say, and I resolved to post each day after my brother’s passing as my homage to him who was my greatest cheerleader.  As older sister, I could do no wrong.

My family is gathering today.  I look forward to the sanctity in that while knowing there is death for others, pain.

I feel my brother coming through in various ways, allowing me to know he is here in different form.  Spirit speaks. I feel love in my being, peace.

St. Francis and Froggie Buddha together today!