It’s the fourth day since my brother passed. This morning the grief is different like I’ve been hit by a truck. If I were a car, I would be towed to the body shop and repaired. I’m not a car. How will the pain of grief manifest today?
I’m reminded of these words by John Squadra from his poem “Circle of the Goddess” in the book This Ecstasy.
When you love,
you complete a circle.
When you die,
the circle remains.
The circle remains because my brother loved and it takes time for the surrounding sprouts to rise in this new exposure to sun. When the Mother redwood tree dies, a circle forms around the space. It’s not immediate even though the roots are already twined. The rise take time.
I open to the loving support I’m receiving and nest inside my own circle like a cat curled.
I’m a fan furled and unfurled wondering what reaches in to caress me now.
It’s evening. It’s been a day of connection, love, and peace. I feel different, changed, as though massaged from above. My brother is here and I miss him, reach toward his light like the leaves of a Maple tree.
I have some idea that I’ll share as I did in the last blog post and then move on. When my daughter-in-love Frieda called to console, I quickly moved the conversation back to her, and she just as quickly took it back to me. She’s clever, that girl/woman, a female embodiment of love and compassion, a wisdom gong, as is my other daughter-in-love, Jan.
I rejoice in the grace of wisdom gongs in my life.
Sometimes I find it hard to receive and yet here you are, all of you, so many beautiful messages and offers of support and I feel myself broken apart, as though if I let the bedrock go, the mountain that rises from that bedrock will break it into little pieces and the pain will be less. Is there less pain, or more, when a mountain lets go and little rocks fall and flow, perhaps gathering with avalanche strength and force?
And now I learn that Notre Dame, Our Lady, has burned.
I pause, caught on, and in, the elements today, broken apart – earth, air fire, water.
Yesterday I was above the waves as I sat on the ground at Pierce Point. I watched, mesmerized, as the waves below seemed to be moving slowly and methodically, their white tops clearly defined. Sitting above, I saw an orchestrated rhythm. If I’d been on the beach below, the waves might have seemed random, and violent perhaps, as they blew apart with a crash.
Sitting above, my whole being slowed to the pace of viewing from a distance, a distance stretching time to a curve, a healing to embrace.
And now, today I am earth, crumbling, and fire, passion, perhaps at first, as I had to mobilize to align, and now today, ashes as the structure of my being sinks to change. I woke this morning feeling my face malleable as if it was curious to found and birth new form. I could view it as death to the old but transformation has a more inviting bite and taste.
I’ve recently learned that some people choose to have ashes from those they love mixed into the ink of a tattoo. I don’t need to do that. My being is opened and opening to receive the ashes of my brother, the essence, as I integrate a wider being of knowing, reception, and trust. Though painful, I rejoice in new form. I am a leaf unleashed.
I was away from my home four days this week, and never looked outside on the fifth, and yesterday, I saw that my Maple trees had released themselves into full leaf, now weighted with morning rain.
There is a type of bird one sees at the beach. Mrs. Terwilliger, the teacher who inspired me to become a nature guide used to say about a flock of these little birds: “Now you see them. Now you don’t”, and it was true. Now you see them and now you don’t. It’s like with the golden swing of Aspen leaves in the fall. Now you see them and now you don’t.
So it is with grief. Yesterday morning I woke with my heart area, front, back, and all the way through in such pain I thought I might be having a heart attack. This morning I feel my heart pinned to the bed. I don’t want to rise ever again, and yet I do.
And yet, I’m not always in pain. Sometimes I’m light. My son Jeff came immediately upon receiving the news of my brother’s passing, and spent the night and we rose early to go to Pierce Point in Point Reyes where I go when someone I love dies.
I went there every week for six months after my mother passed. I walked out on a piece of land that separates Tomales Bay from the ocean. One can view both at the same time, bay and ocean. One stands between. Jeff and I walked two miles out along the land, then, sat, and after a time, walked back.
My mother, after she passed, came to me as a Cardinal. It was February in CT. and a cardinal sat outside the glass door looking in, beckoning out. Then, when I returned home, I was drawn to Pierce Point where I felt her holding a portal open for me so that I could see that what I perceived as a three-dimensional world was in other scenarios a matte painting and flat. I could open to more.
Yesterday, as I sat there, leaning against a rock, looking out at the ocean, a Great Blue Heron flew right by. There’s nothing like seeing a Great Blue Heron, especially in flight, especially right before one’s eyes. We got in the car, and were driving along, when another, or the same one, came and paralleled our car. There is a landscape where all is one heart.
I’ve known this place before, this place where grief rises and falls, becomes heavy and light, wings stroking and lifted, this place where the heart uses the weight of grief, uses it like air, to rise and fall, and live.
My baby brother passed away this morning at 12:20. He was sixty-five. His wife called and we sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Grief, a tsunami flooding the body with pain.
I’m in Berkeley involved in four days of Sensory Awareness. For two days, the leaders of Sensory Awareness gather to connect, sense, and discuss the details that allow its continuation and spread. Most of us were “hit”, as I was twenty-six years ago. with “this is it”. It’s like a thunderbolt, a lightning strike. Saturday and Sunday a workshop is offered opening sensing to others.
In sensing, a leader offers experiments, suggestions, ways to come more fully into ourselves. Enric Bruguera began yesterday, leading us in “knocking at the door of our senses”. We did different experiments with a ball or rock. One time, when I lay on the ground with the ball under my sacrum, I found it painful, but I stayed with it, and felt myself melt into the ball, or the ball melted into me. Awareness, simple as that.
Sara Bragin led us in tasting. One dried berry absorbed our interest, mouth, tongue, teeth for who knows how long before the first bite. Mine was a shock of sourness, a wake-up burst as saliva and chewing prepared a pulpy mass to flow.
Eugene Tashima led us in “experiencing deep stability”. It was a meditation of support and ease and I felt myself being breathed with no awareness of in and out though I saw and felt my abdomen rise and fall.
Jill Harris led us in embracing this living moment as we came to standing, came to crawling, came to lying, standing, walking. Then, partnered we tapped another all over and were tapped all over, giving and receiving as one. Awake, we gathered, connected. People shared their experience; memories return in the presence of awareness and touch.
For me, sensory awareness has been a touchstone, a savior, again and again. It carried me through chemotherapy and radiation, allowed me to come to myself again and again. It’s part of my book, “Airing Out the Fairy Tale”, cleansing myself, airing myself out, to meet myself new. After Eugene led his meditation he said it was as though we’d showered. I felt showered again in Jill’s workshop, cleansed.
I sit here now knowing I need to stop crying so I can see to drive myself home. I know my brother is here. I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard to live. For two and a half years, he and all of us who love him have suffered as he fought to live. A year and a half ago we gathered to say good-bye, to say it was okay if he let go, but he kept fighting, and now today, I sit here aware that it happened when I’m immersed in the support of friends and breath. I woke in the night, felt an umbilical cord of connection with Source. I was being breathed. I am being breathed. I’m connected to source, to Mother, to womb. I know this.
May we remember we live embraced in love and peace, life and death, one hand, two hands, all hands, love and peace.
The sunrise today as I look through the Golden Gate
This morning I rose, fed kitties, sat down to meditate. Bella came and sat down on her blanket next to me. For her, meditation means petting and kissing and she returns the gift by licking me. Bella sees living as reciprocal; she always gives back.
Finally we settle, Bella and I, and come to rest. I feel how deeply in this moment I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. That settling falls through me. I rise in response, a spring, motion, movement, process, though I appear still as a mountain, or do I? Thoughts pop in – are mountains still?
My lids close over my eyes, gently, tenderly. After awhile, still covered, the balls of the eyes shift, gently, tenderly, right, then, left. I’m by the window and feel the coming of light.
I allow the lids of my eyes, the center of my head, to rest and rise as gently and tenderly as the coming of the light. All is ease. Might I keep this as I move through the day?
My teacher of Sensory Awareness, Charlotte Selver, would bring us to a state of bliss, and then, say, “Forget it!” I didn’t want to forget it, wanted to hold on, but now, I’ve learned, release, and something new comes, so I release as the light meets the sky, meeting me, touching, digesting, through and through.
Today I read an article asking a writer to explore what their book is about, what was going on in their life when they wrote it, and why the reader would be interested.
I reflected on this and recognized that my book is about trusting that the universe answers when we ask. It’s a beacon, an offering.
Request; receive.
Airing Out the Fairy Tale is about touch, touching our own knowing, our own path, and winding it in and out of the landscape we inhabit and share like thread.
It’s a hand-held invitation to trust.
I thought my life was calm when I wrote the book, that this calmness was an invitation to look back but I, like others, am involved in a pattern of relationships that creates waves in the flow, so it was a dance of in and out, of then and now, all wrapped together in a gift of presence, a knowing there is only “now”.
Each moment is a request. How do I receive what comes? How do I respond in this moment and the next?
Why do I suggest you read my book? I’ve learned empathy expands through reading. We step into the life and experience of another, then differentiate and choose.
My intention is to wave a blanket over a fire sending smoke signals that communicate that you, too, can receive and fulfill what you desire.
I desire to inspire!
Honoring our interdependence, I understand that your change is mine! We intertwine.
Therefore, join me as we dive, rise, jump, and spread our wings in a circle of delight. It’s Spring, a time of birth and light.
Yesterday at Baker Beach I sat and leaned against a log as I looked out at the ocean. Immediately I saw whale spouts and breeching and felt my heart rise and fall in sync with something more than a little self.
My friend Elaine Chan-Scherer planned part of her 60th birthday celebration as a gathering of friends to clean up the beach.
The beach looked immaculate but we set out with bags in a group that soon settled into units of two or three for deeper conversation and intimacy. Doing so, we began to look more closely at the sand. Yes, there were little pieces of plastic and cigarette butts.
With each bending down to pick something up was a realization and satisfaction that here was something that would not go into the digestive system of sea life. Up and down I went like a sandpiper on the beach pecking not for goodies but for the joy of being part of an ecosystem shared. Try it. It’s fun!!
I’ve been immersed in the practice of Sensory Awareness for over twenty-five years. I came to it when I was forty-three and knew immediately I was home. If you live in the San Francisco bay area, there’s a workshop coming up April 13 and 14. It offers an opportunity to taste more deeply and expansively this lovely world we share.
Here’s a photo of me and others touching a Gingko tree at Vallombrosa in Menlo Park. This year the workshop will be at the Shambhala Center in Berkeley to make it easier to access.
The practice of Sensory Awareness is a gift in my life.
Today a close friend is sixty and another is seventy and I wake to feel I’m living in the Wonder Years. The phrase pops to mind though I never saw the show aired in the 80’s and focused on the 60’s, but now I realize it fits this time of my life
It is a time of wonder. There’s a pause in the breath, a time to wonder with a rainbow spread of awe: what comes next?
I wake in the morning grateful for the immersed touch of life, cells popping, and breath moving in and out, tracing paths of wonder. What is being now?
Yesterday I watched a Ted Talk by David Eagleman. Can We Create New Senses for Humans? Yes, we can. Watch this and feel possibility and perception expand. In a world of wonder, each day is a celebration of birth and death, expansion and contraction, youth and age.
Last week I participated in an improv workshop. Me? I know, and I had fun.
We laughed and bonded, bonded and laughed. We began with a “Yes, and …” exercise.
Partnered, one person spoke and then the other would say, “Yes, and” and would augment a response. Back and forth it went. It’s very different from saying simply, yes, or no, and a yes does not mean agreement but it does allow the sharing to expand. My partner and I solved the problems of the world in our back and forth.
Then, Saturday, I attended a “celebration of life” for my neighbor Louise Jenkins, a magnificent woman, who passed easily and gently in the home she and her husband built together after World War II. Louise was 91 and her children will keep the home and land as it is, property fragrant and vibrant with a lifetime of care, laughter, block parties, bread making, knitting, gardening, connecting, sharing, and fun.
Her children shared that they’d never heard their mother say anything mean about another. Oh, and then, one chimed in, “except for her grandmother”. She said her grandmother was mean. I’ve been sitting with that, seeing how quickly we may rush to condemn or judge another.
Perhaps, as a child, watching her grandmother, Louise saw the power of words to hurt and divide and she chose not to do that. I’m not saying she was a saint because Louise wouldn’t want that, but I saw photos of her when she was young and she was beautiful, but truly those photos of her as she aged simply glowed. Her whole face and being was radiant, a light.
Louise Jenkins philosophy of life is my intention for my remaining years. That, and “Yes, and ….”
Peace!
And here again is Jeanine Aguerre’s photos of two hawks, monogamous and ready to mate again this year in our “hood”.
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