I was raised not to cry in public.  When I came to Rosen Method, I attended a memorial, and I held my head straight, shoulders back, and tightened the muscles in my neck and jaw, and I didn’t cry.

The next day I couldn’t turn my head.  It just happened I had a Rosen session scheduled, and I pointed out I couldn’t turn my head.  What do you suppose happened when I got on the table? I cried and cried. Tears are lubrication.  They oil our fears and separation. They say, “We are the ocean. We’re one!”

The tide is going out – the beach is exposed.  Crying together and hugging, my brother’s wife and I learned we have each been trying to protect and care for the other.  Today we surrendered more clearly to the grief we both feel and share. The tide comes in; the tide goes out, and sometimes it’s gentle and other times fierce, but all is held by the ocean floor and the tender rise of sky.

I’m with this poem of Tennyson’s. The bar is so clear here by the sea and invites the salt of tears, the sweetness of shared grief.

Crossing the Bar

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Sunset and evening star,

     And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

     When I put out to sea,

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

     Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

     Turns again home.

 Twilight and evening bell,

     And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

     When I embark;

  For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

     The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

     When I have crost the bar.

And so my brother has, and when I’ve learned enough, so will I.

I’m grieving.  Yesterday I almost choked twice because my throat is so tight.  I sit and look at waves, watch birds fly. There are trumpet flowers outside the door.  This is the year I turn 70. I trumpet that I’m of an age to know and proclaim grief. If not now, when.  There’s nothing to ignore.

I text Jan, Gar’s wife, and she comes over and we cry and cry.

I’m looking out watching morning light come to the marsh, harbor, and ocean.  Yesterday was a perfect ash-releasing day. We each had our cup of ashes, Yankees cups, since Gar loved the Yankees and we each released in our own way.  Bob and I entered the waves and allowed our cup of ashes to release and be carried out on the perfect wave. It takes awareness and timing to ensure the dip into the water is when the waves are going out not in since they tend to intermingle but we did it and the water was warm, a warm embrace.  We enjoyed the bubbles waved by a mother to her young son and the surfers paddling out to catch the waves.

A Great Blue Heron stands guard in front of where we’re staying.  Pelicans abound.

Eleven of us enjoyed dinner at the Moss Beach Distillery and paused to savor the sun entering water and clouds.   The foghorn blows. Pelicans swarm. I’m still weighed with grief, but it’s lighter now, moving in and out with the waves.  In this moment, my heart is a halo embracing above and below. I’m grateful for life, family, and friends.

It’s 68 days since my brother passed and today I pause, slip between the seams.

It’s been a busy week.  Last night we attended a meeting of our local Tam Design Review Board.  We have local say on development in our area, and it felt comforting to gather with thirty or forty neighbors most of whom have lived here, as have we, for many years.  We moved here in 1978 when Chris wasn’t yet one, and Jeff just turned four. At the time, many of our neighbors had moved here after the end of WWII and literally built their own houses.  They’re gone now, passed in their homes, and now, here we are, attempting to hold the fort on greed and environmentally disastrous development. We live on a non-county maintained road without street lights and sidewalks in an area called Little City Farms.  All of this is obvious when people move in but then some want to change the character of what we oldsters love.

When I walked to my neighborhood book group Tuesday night, I spoke with a neighbor, Paris, as we looked down into her yard.  A doe looked up. Paris said there are two fawns and a bobcat who spotted looks similar to the fawns living there.  Harmony.

I sit here now balancing like a teeter-totter on that space between up and down, feeling a tender ache in my heart. We gather tomorrow to scatter the second half of the ashes of my brother.  Knowing that, feeling that, I pause and gather myself together and reflect. I wonder how one captures a pause in a photo, and there’s that word capture.  In this moment, I’m setting all photons free, and allowing them to wave my mind-body within the comfort and curtain of fog.

Yesterday my friend Marlene and I walked around Lake Lagunitas, a reservoir, to come to the bench she donated in her sister Bambi’s memory. We sat and talked. We talked most of the way, with some times of silence to listen for the Pileated Woodpecker and to honor the newt crossing, currently unnecessary.

We spoke of friendship and death, complexity and simplicity, when to hold on and when to let go. We examined our part in what happens in our lives.

This morning, I look out on summer fog, feeling light, lifted, as though I dipped into the lake like grebes and ducks, sang and flitted in the reeds like Red-winged blackbirds. We were accompanied by the landscape; we were the landscape. Healing happens. My brother passed sixty-seven days ago, and today, this moment, my heart sings.

I slept like a log which may have had a great deal to do with traipsing to different beaches yesterday, getting a sense of which one would be the place my brother would best like his ashes to float to sea.  I learned the high tide at Maverick’s is at 3:30 PM on Friday, the solstice, the longest day of the year. We will gather, and as the tide goes out, wade out into the water, and set or toss the ashes into the outgoing waves as though they are seals and otters released back into the wild.

I’m a bit volatile these days.  I know it’s about grief, the weight of grief which sinks and rises like a bird in flight. Happy, sad, happy, sad, as I look to balance like a log left on the beach by high tides and storms.

When I found Maverick’s Beach – not on the beaten path I learned – I looked for a sign it was the spot.  Three pelicans flew overhead – mother, father, brother. Then, I found a heart rock. I sat and learned it was a pelican conference center.  The tide was low. I felt the convergence of water and sand.

Then I went to a more private, local beach.  The sand was silk. A harbor seal floated along the coast.

I’m leaving Friday open as to plan.  I know I go to the airport and meet my niece Kate, flying in from Boston, and her mother, flying in from Hartford, through Chicago.  Then, we go over the hill to the ocean where we have a place to stay and will meet people coming from north, south, and east. Nobody is sailing in from the West, and that makes sense, since that’s where we go when we come to final rest, and for now, I’m still here.   Like Ram Dass, well, not quite like him, since he’s more evolved, but I am still here, open to change and waves, even as I appreciate the stillness of a driftwood log when it’s up above the reach of the waves for now.

My brother passed away at the age of 65 and this is the 65th day since he passed.  I wake at 3 and rise. The Strawberry moon is hidden in fog. I meditate and what comes is my own transition as we move from spring to summer, as I honor my own maturing process and ripen.

Today my friend Terry and I are meeting along the coast near Half Moon Bay.  We’re going to explore the beaches in the area. My brother was a surfer and loved the ocean as do I.  I brought back half of his ashes from CT. and on Friday a group of us are gathering to spread his ashes in the surf.  He was an East coast-West coast kind of guy, so ashes spread on both coasts feels right.

Yesterday I was talking to my son about the weight of grief I feel with my brother’s passing.  I know it’s related to him and also to all passings. It’s the weight of knowing life is finite.

I was lying in bed this morning listening to birds singing.  I don’t know if there are more this year or if I’m more aware of noticing as I’m grateful for the preciousness of blood moving, marrow living, breath swaying.

Lying there, I found myself doing inner pole-vaults, little ones, but powerful – running and jumping in my cells, or maybe it was imagination, but it was fun.  I felt the lift. I remember when my brother spoke of “rodeo snails”. I loved the image of snails on tiny bucking horses waving tiny hats in the air.  I felt the lift when he said it, and I feel the lift now, the lift of a horse on a carousel, the lift of a smile, as I rise and swing on inner pole-vaults.

We all know the Beatles song, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m sixty-four?  Ho!”

Well, here I am sixty-four days after his passing, still feeling grief, still needing to be fed, and so I remember when I was 15 and the Beatles were first on the Ed Sullivan show.  My best friend and family gathered around the TV in 1964 to watch four youngsters sing, and young girls scream.

My father always wanted to give me everything, so he went out the next day and returned home and proudly handed me an album he’d purchased. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the Beetles, and not the Beatles, and the difference was profound. The point is that intent counts, and I still carry that memory and lift it in the air, a gold medal for my heart, and I keep on jumping, my pole, a star.