Honoring Grief – Cathy's Blog!

I went to Rodeo Beach this morning. My friend Elaine’s best friend for many, many years was cremated this morning. I wanted to honor her passage. I returned home to learn that Annie Dillard passed at the age of 81. I’ve read all of her books, some of them many times.

There were two dead sea lions on Rodeo beach when I was there on Saturday. I thought the high tide might have taken them or The Marine Mammal Center but they were still there as offerings. There is now a third one. I read that The Marine Mammal Center has seen an increase in sea lion strandings with signs of domoic acid poisonings. Domoic acid is produced during certain harmful algal bloom events. The neurotoxin accumulates in small fish, like sardines and anchovies, which are then eaten by marine mammals like sea lions in large quantities.

I don’t know if that’s why these sea lions died but they’re decomposing naturally on the beach. We humans do it differently but then there are many more of us.

At one point, I walked through two rows of upright feathers, carefully placed and spaced. Walking through felt like being part of a procession at a wedding or a funeral, celebratory in an honoring of joy and grief.

A carefully placed rock balances atop bigger ones as though set to savor the view.

A still-life with a crab, feathers, sand, and rocks.

There is freedom in letting go, in surrender to the moments as they unfold, knowing and trusting there is a timetable beyond what we may understand.

This morning I felt the truth of tears as liquid love, the fullness, as though moisture was dew within me, drops of rain, flowing me to fluidity, a river to the sea. When we feel the light within, prisms form, rainbows we cross along the way.

I was reminded of Stanley Kunitz’s wonderful poem, “The Snakes of September”. He’s writing about summer and how he hears snakes in the shrubbery, sees shadows in the thickets. In September, he thinks they may be gone but then –

In the deceptive balm

of noon, as if defiant of the curse

that spoiled another garden,

these two appear on show

through a narrow slit

in the dense green brocade

of a north-country spruce,

dangling head-down, entwined

in a brazen love-knot.

I put out my hand and stroke

the fine dry grit of their skins.

After all,

we are partners on this land,

co-signers of a covenant.

At my touch the wild

braid of creation

trembles.

And so, for now, the portal is open.

Cathy's Blog!

Tag: Honoring Grief

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