On the fifty-fourth day of my brother’s passing, I look out on a morning, still, quiet. Overhead, in the distance a jet streams by in the blue. I picture people traveling from Asia getting ready to land. Sometimes I find it hard to hold in my head all the lifestyles on this planet, all those who travel and those who stay still.
A friend just spent five weeks on the island of Sardinia. She said the people there consider themselves a family, and families spend their days together. It’s hard to imagine where I live when there’s so much distance between families and ages. There, she said, you see children helping grandparents up and down steps. It’s not a duty; it is.
Families gather quietly together during the day, eat dinner around eight, and are all together in the market squares until eleven. How is it to live like that?
I don’t know but I do know we are on this earth as a family. How do we then more clearly honor and cultivate all the stages of life? As we explore the possibilities, perhaps we better understand what appears to be separation, as exchange, as we bind and unbind the passages and transformations that clasp and unclasp life and death.
I look at a rose, the grip of petals before they let go, feel the beat harvest gratitude in my chest.
Yesterday my friend Elaine who is a sports fan, specifically a Warriors fan, taught me something new, a sports term, GOAT, Greatest of All Time.
I considered how I’ve never had a desire to be the greatest of all time, and I came up with my own: JOBM – Joy of Being Me.
As she took delight in JOBM, I came up with another: JOBU – Joy of Being Us, because, after all, we are intertwined.
This morning I woke from a vivid dream. I was holding a baby boy, a beautiful baby boy, and then, he was a toddler, and we were learning together. Then, we ate sushi. I don’t know how to interpret the sushi part though I do love sushi, but what I felt at first, and what I’ve been feeling is that my grandson, who is still in the womb of his mother, communicates with me though dreams. This is not the first, but then, I thought, perhaps it is my brother reborn, but it is only the 53th day since his passing and that would be a quick transition, so then, I remembered we’re everyone in our dream. The baby is me. Each day, each moment, we reincarnate; we are reborn.
I lay in bed this morning feeling like phyllo dough, folded and coated with butter, and folded and coated over and over again.
My heart is huge with JOBB – Joy of Being Born, knowing that though my brother was born in 1953, and I in 1949, we’re continually being born.
Yesterday I saw a hummingbird hovering amongst branches of a tree. A closer look revealed her tiny nest. I assured her I meant no harm and walked on.
I saw five baby goats snuggling together at Slide Ranch. The two mothers stood nearby watching. Two months ago one birthed twins and the other triplets, but the little ones cuddled as one.
There are places of peace. Watching children with goats is one of these.
Overseeing the ocean is another.
My brother passed fifty-two days ago and I find ease.
It’s Steve’s birthday. He’s 71. We wake at 4:30, grateful for our lives.
I snuggle in, lie flat on my back in bed, feel myself as a garden, feel myself as soil. My brother’s passing 51 days ago is fertilizer, liquid fertilizer, liquid love, seeping into the soil of my being, blood and bone, circulating. Plants hold roots as we hold hands. Life and death do the same.
I lie in bed allowing the space in my head to open. Eyeballs breathe, nourish on roundness. Legs part like legs of a frog. The soles of my feet touch.
I lie there receiving. My legs make a heart with soul, pelvis a cauldron receiving what comes now.
An owl calls who, who, who, and insides reply, “all here”, and outside fog holds a veil of mist, and ridge and ocean, though unseen, are here.Gratitude completes.
Though I’d intended to hibernate on the 49th day of my brother’s passing, I walked down to the end of our street and then another street to attend an outdoor neighborhood meeting. We live on a county non-maintained road, and 100 years ago a map was drawn up of “paper streets”. Now, living in different times, we navigate the issues of overcrowding, drainage, fire danger, and unethical developers. The silver lining is we meet our neighbors. The downside is it can be unsettling.
As I walked back the woman who organized the meeting invited me into the magic that is her garden. They have an acre of land, and as do I, she feels the vibration of the Native people, the Coast Miwok, coming through. She wants to honor the creatures who live here with us, the plants and microorganisms in the soil.
She has done all the gardening work herself, and I see how it fuels her energy to fight development that would take away even more land from the creatures with whom we share this land: deer, possums, raccoons, skunks, coyotes, and even a mountain lion at times.
I walked through a tunnel of flowers and a fairy garden paradise. Pictures can’t capture the magic, but I offer a few.
I post the above and see it as enough but as I read a book on grief called The Grief Recovery Handbook by James and Friedman, I see I left out where I was most touched. It felt too tender perhaps but I look at that word compassion and realize it’s important I share a little more.Lee pointed out an amaryllis that hadn’t been blooming at 8:45 and yet there it was at 9:45, like this.
Love Light
Then after an hour or so of winding paths, she showed me where a redwood tree was cut and where it now comes back. Renewal speaks.
Young redwood tree
Hearts form where the trunk of the redwood tree was cut. Spread Wings – Trust!
Today is the 49th day since my brother passed. I’ve been wondering how this day would feel as the Buddhists honor this day as the one who has passed makes a choice as to whether to return or move on.
Yesterday I felt my brother on a boat tossing a rope to a dock on which I stood. I woke this morning knowing that’s not it at all.
First, I noticed my breath was/is everywhere. I’m being breathed.
There’s no inhale, pause, exhale, pause. Breath is everywhere, in all the cells, and expanding out. I’m breathing through my whole head, allowing separation between my eyes and throughout my head and heart, and I realize all this with the 49th day isn’t related to him or me. It’s like when I was at the Everest Memorial only in this case rather than feeling impersonal, and grounded in cold, this is a feeling of warmth and knowing. I am the boat, the dock, the water, the earth, the universe. There never was, and is not now any separation between my brother and me, between life and death.
Perhaps that is what people risk at altitude; it’s one reason they keep climbing. They want to touch this knowing, Less air and less oxygen allow one to live knowing an expansiveness that can’t be found at sea level, and then, this morning, it’s here. I’m here. I am.
People are dying wanting to get to the top of Mount Everest. People wonder why. Perhaps I give a taste in my book, Airing Out the Fairy Tale: Trekking through Nepal & Midlife.
In my book, I write about stepping into the circle of stones, the sacred site where those who’ve died on Everest are honored, the Everest Memorial.
“Celeste, Sante, and I separated, each drawn to explore different sections within the circle, each needing to find our own way to honor and grieve. The wind blew icy cold. Something new entered my bones. Not fear or even grief. I stepped out – or was brought out – of humanness, into something more elemental.”
I say more in the book and then come to say: It’s as though those who’ve died “were winging there way through stars, as though the expansiveness of death was impersonal. I could believe we sing the universe into being as we tune into the vibrations between the cells. We are tuning forks.”
We continued to walk outside the circle of stones and continued along and up. and as we did so, I felt my “steps were elemental like candle flames, ignition for prayer”.
In this moment, sitting here in my chair as the day is softly lit I feel my breath elemental and rich. I know all is one and my brother is here.
The word healing is about wholeness, feeling whole. In this moment, I am whole: tree, seed, root, air, water, soil.
My brother passed 48 days ago, and today, I sink into honoring his passage, honoring the eve of the 49th day. The fog is in and I can’t see the ridge. I’m wrapped in movement as the fog passes slowly along, a flag of ease in the most gentle of parades.
I wake today feeling a shift, an honoring of knowing enough, of knowing more clearly how to nourish this world we share, honoring with gratitude my little piece and place.
Meanwhile chainsaws start up at 8 AM, one to the left and one to the right. Two neighbors below have chosen this day to prune.
I wonder what is mine to prune this day as I open my eyes wide enough to feel their origin in my skull, two balls round like the earth, open to see all sides and points of view.
This morning I wake aware of my sacrum, the triangular bone at the base of the spine.
I wiggle around, rippling the muscles that hold it, imagining breath moving through the sacrum like butterfly wings lifting the bow of my lungs.
Perhaps this desire for movement is because I spent time with a gopher snake yesterday as it crossed the path I was on. I wanted to ensure it made it all the way across so I enjoyed its sinuous movement and the constant flicking of its tongue as it tasted its way to the other side and slipped into the grasses to camouflage, food, and safety.
It’s the 47th day since my brother passed. I feel him here, as though his essence is sprinkling down and through me like flakes of gold. I feel caught in balancing like a bird flying into the wind, caught on receiving a horizon moving in and out of time and space.
Friend Gopher Snake traversing what may be his or her view of climbing Everest
I’ve been honoring the days since my brother’s passing, preparing myself for the 49th day when the Buddhists believe a choice is made by the one departed.
I’m flooded with memories of all we shared and my heart breaks and comes back together over and over again. It’s like the tides slowly wearing away and piling up sand.
I plan to honor my brother on Saturday, the 49th day. I prepare.
Today I wash and touch with tender fingers and soft heart a feminine figure he gave to me years ago when I felt a bit stuck. Her lap is a cauldron, a heart, a bowl, a place to hold wishes and incubate desire and need for fulfillment and creativity. He used it to manifest his art and the next stage of his life. I use it now to manifest what is meant to come. How can I know?I trust that the universe brings me more than I can imagine. I trust what comes to me now.
Trust what comes
The creek in Mill Valley yesterday, soft, gentle, and tender in flow
It’s the forty-fifth day since my brother passed and I feel him here. He was a cheerleader for me in life, and now in death, I feel him pushing me to speak. I’m uncomfortable with that, at times, and even as I type this, a crow flies to the railing of my deck and peers in. Crow symbolizes shape-shifting and now friend crow flies past my window to land on the roof and tap, tap, tap, over my head.
This morning I’m with John Lennon’s song: “You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one.”
I was inspired this morning to send an op-ed submission to the NY Times, and then, I realized a letter to the editor might be more appropriate so I applied to both. My husband said that Nepal needs the money generated from climbing permits, that I need to recognize income disparity. The people of Nepal need to make a living. Yes, I agree, and so I wonder if my proposal is outlandish, but isn’t that what it’s about?
I’m requesting we step out of the outer landscape into an inner landscape, so we can honor even more the landscape of which we’re part.
Submission to the NY Times:
In my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale: Trekking through Nepal & Midlife, I explore my experience in 1993 in the Everest region of Nepal, Khumbu. I focus on death because I almost died there. Ego and the belief system in which I’d been raised, mind over matter, led me to keep stepping up Kala Patthar, even though it was obvious I was pushing beyond what made sense.
With mixed feelings, I read the news of overcrowding and lax permits leading to people dying on Everest. I suggest, like Jan Morris before me, that we cut off climbing and “conquering” this mountain. We change her name to mean the “peak of kindness” in whatever language is being spoken.
I have personally experienced that there’s something about the region that leads one to lose boundaries around life and death. Perhaps it’s because it’s said all souls circle Everest when they die. It can be tempting to circle right there but I believe we can have the same exploration by turning within, and exploring the landscape we are, the mountains climbing and rivers running in each of us.
I understand Nepal needs the money the permits bring to the country, but perhaps as we more thoroughly meet what circulates within us, we could donate to this land that inspires, that leads us to look upward and meet in the clasp where mountain touches sky.
Perhaps then we can allow Everest to represent a landscape we humans leave untouched.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Let’s Dream!
Elaine’s photo of the Imagine Mosaic in Strawberry Fields in NYC
Cathy's Blog! 