grief and loss

life’s passages … 59

June brings to mind the summer between the fifth and six grades when a family move felt like an earthquake…an unexpected event that shattered my pre-adolescent footing.

Life seems to be filled with those moments…those moments when the phone or doorbell rings and in the summoned steps between here and there we are, unknowingly, moving towards a voice…a presence that messages the unimagined without a return to the life we embraced. These life changing moments occur throughout our lives…some of them are, in hindsight, minor losses that resolve through a period of resistance, anger, tears, and sleep. Then, there are those losses and deaths that first numb us and then leave us so shaken that our life view…our life scape is forever altered.

On Monday, of last week, once again a shattering moment as I walked from there to here. A cancer diagnosis, accompanied with many discussions of the potentiality of death…its meaning, its resolution, its fear, its expectations, its imprisonment, its choice, its loss of consciousness…but never, ever its actual moment of being.

In the past, I found that the resistance to these moments has the potential to open doors to new understandings that will, in time, bring an acceptance to or intensify the various elements of grief and loss. These sacred journeys also have the potential to inspire creative endeavor that gives voice to loss that is heard and felt by others and begins to ease an unimagined loneliness.

But, not today…not today as my body trembles with grief-driven anxiety. My mind is shaken with a constant flow of unanswerable questions. My total being is pushed again and again by the expectations of others and an undercurrent sense of denial pleading that this is another navel deployment.

Life’s passage … 57

The storm at the window

has escalated its roaring,

the sounds of children

muffled in the dim,

tells us night is far from gone ~ Unknown

I have found myself slipping and sliding along a fragile thread of feelings, anger at one end and at the opposite…oddly enough…moments of joy. Within anger, the sensations of this unpleasant state of being, finds itself standing at a crevice throwing curses into the wind. Curses that rise from the politicans’ and medias’ detached words of intimate stories of war and victims of war, hunger, homeless, negation of human rights, grief and loss. The reported justification of words and actions my head cannot get around.

Standing there looking into this great void of leadership, compassion, and truth tellers brings forth a powerlessness that forms an expanding curse that repeats again and again — resisting a call to return to the flow of the in-breath and out-breath, blocking an invitation to return to the present. It screams, louder and louder, despite the knowing that no one hears,

“As the night settles within your home, may the nightmares begin with a silence, a silence that only the dead know, that invites eyes – pair of eyes … eyes empty of life and filled with despair, fear, betrayal, anger, confusion intermixed with increasing variations of the voices, the human beings (mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews) filling your inescapable nights with the depths of their grief and loss. And may it come to be that these nightmares sit upon the graves of all that come after you.”

Mindful of the flow of the in-breath and out-breath…the duration of the breath’s movement…like the movement of ocean waves…absorbing and releasing. Mother Earth, our true healer, absorbing these physically unpleasant feelings I’ve identified as anger and releasing me from anger’s tension and pain. Tears…tears…silent tears that emerge from my soul…my own acquaintance with grief, powerlessness, despair, confusion, loss of trust.

Yes, loss of trust. Yearning for those days of innocence…of ignorance of the shadow within humans…of faith in those of position of trust. Crumbling, fragmented trust…as I hear the unspoken dispassionate words, “Let the market rule.”

Returning to the breath…to the present…to the belief that my empowerment comes from the choice to seek solitude, to connect with family/friends, to welcome the morning sun, to appreciate the beauty of the seasons in their transition, to find expression through the arts, to silence this horrid reality as I escape inhumanity, to have deep gratification for all first responders who witness human anguish, to smile with the joy that arises when I hear from family and friends, to express gratitude to the many unknown subers whose translations open the door to escape through foreign dramas, to open myself to the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh as I find refuge within the teachings of the dharma and the sharing and listening to the hearts within sangha.

Joy…the positive sensations of joy.

Anger…joy. One unpleasant, one pleasant, connected together by a thread of life. I do hope that my shadow…the hidden aspect of me finds comfort with the flow of my in-breath and out-breath and is embraced by the warmth of human compassion, loving-kindness, and inclusiveness.

May this curse find solace and fade…fade…fade.

May the thread connecting, suffering and joy, two diverse sensations never be severed.

May I continue to find peace and joy within the movements of the in-breath and out-breath.

May the trust I place within compassion and loving-kindness guide me through these uncertain times.

May you know peace and joy.

May you be embraced by the warmth of trust and peace

May you find inclusiveness within these times of solitude.

life’s passages … 52

life is a never-ending river…sudden moments of a stilled pond, languishing through time; riding whitewater rapids; falling waterfalls, bubbling creeks; uniting raindrops on a windowpane. Passing through life, seeking to rejoin with a vast unknown, and then again, evaporating into clouds that release into another stream of searching…searching…searching.

Are you in the waves of vast oceans?

Are you in the scent of flowers?

Are you in the spring’s early morning?

Are you in the touch of the afternoon’s sun rays?

Are you in the ever-changing clouds that tells stories of old?

Are you in the sound of melting snow?

Are you in the rustling movement of tumble weeds?

Are you in the colors of a brand new box of 72 Crayons? Or an old one?

Are you in the season of Autumn? Spring? Summer? Winter?

Are you in the wings of butterflies?

Are you in the vibrations of honey bees?

Are you in these questions?

Are you in the morning chanting sangha?

Are you in the scent of sun-warmed pine needles?

Are you in the uniting of water drops?

Are you in my searching, searching, searching?

life’s passages … 23 

Looking backward ... I cannot see the ancients of days.
Looking forward ... I cannot see ages yet to come.
Only heaven and earth have remained,
And will remain forever ...
I am alone, I grieve, I drop tears into the dust ~Chen Tzu-ang

(cited: Trans: Anonymous, The Jade Flute Chinese Poems in Prose. The Project Gutenberg

Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/400s 300mm 






					

	
	



			
				


			
				


			
				


			
				


			
				



			
	
	
	
	

		

			awakened memories
		

	


			

			

chasing memories





awakened by spring’s breezes





melting icicles

















“Outside my window the world is dove gray…a late spring snow … powdered snow covering tree branches like the powdered sugar she sprinkled on the top of one layered cakes.  





The silence of snow gently interrupted, ‘Why was I sent to that school with Donna?’  Donna, her first born.  A black and white framed photograph reminds me of the softness of her permanent like curls crowning her head and the same unabashed joy of our mother…our mother before she was our mother.  The photograph belies her strawberry blond curls…golden tipped curls.  





‘“So she would not be alone.’  Alone…the same aloneness that accompanied her during those years she was separated from her family…sent away to school?  





“Me, the second born…given a purpose at birth, A playmate… a barrier, a protector against being alone.  





“There were those nights when darkness became like a blanket that settled the house into a quiet silence.  A silence that opens a door to a private passage to a realm where thoughts and images become ethereal and reality is colored by the imaginings of self free to roam.  And then…unexpectedly, consciousness shifts to a gentle voice, “ring ring” responded to with, “hello.”  Uninterrupted exchanges between sisters, separated by darkness—confiding, sharing, questioning—creating private night time stories lulling us into sleep.  





…





“My mother’s grief  … her felt emptiness … her loss of her first born child and first born grandson…together in one grave…not alone. Her emptiness hidden within a Sanskrit word, Vilomah…against the natural order…a parent whose child has died.  A Vilomah who, in later years, would also be a parent whose two sons had died.”*

















*cited:  b c kofford, My Mother came to Visit

					

	
	



			
				



			
	
	
	
	

		

			rain drops
		

	


			

			

Hidden among the roots





of grass I hear





a cuckoo ~ Otsuin*





Today my memory invites me to that time…the time my grandparents invited me to go with them to visit family.  Sitting in Great Aunt Ida’s living room with her siblings and their spouses listening to shared stories of unknown family and friends, a adolescent’s sudden insight, “that is what being old is….sharing stores of those who died in one’s yesterdays.” 










Today as a great grandmother, I find myself wandering through recalled memories with yearnings to visit past times colored by gratitude and secret desires to resolve moments of disconnect.  





Seeking moments of my mom and dad, sisters and brothers, friends, extended family, and teachers and imagining us all sitting together around a table of trust, the trust that evaporates caution, sharing yesterday’s stories of being. 





*cited in Y Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems