grief and loss

the petrified forest

May I find the Wisdom that silences the fortress of my mind’s discontent so I may hear with understanding teachings absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

forest4

I often feel as though I am an old blind woman walking through a petrified forest with only a staff to ensure that my steps find solid ground.  I remain ignorant, as I unconsciously look away from that which will break my heart and seek stability through the creation of and attachment to ideas, beliefs, principles, and concepts.  I yearn for certainty; anger erupts each time I stumble and fall and forges a dogmatic fortress that encircles my heart and mind. The desire to hear with understanding teachings absent of greed, anger, and ignorance speaks of an awareness of how this protective barrier deafens me to words of wisdom that shed light into the shrouded mysteries of life.  During those moments when I find myself attempting to engage the unknown, I ask of myself, “What energies would flow into a life emptied of greed, anger, and ignorance?”

As I reflect upon the fortress of my mind’s discontent, an imagined stained and scratched door opens before me as if to invite me into a dark and musty attic.  As my eyes scan beyond the entrance, I see streaks of yellowed sun beams, weakened by dust laden drapes; a scuffed wooden floor, covered by a bare-thread carpet of muted colors; and wall paper, grayed and yellowed, tugged away at the top most of a corner by the collected weight of long ago wisps of cigarette smoke.

My observing mind notices that there is no other furniture other than two rocking chairs placed facing each other in the center of the room.  Sitting in one is a slender child.  She seems to be no older than four years old.  A slight musty scent of aged vanilla greets me as I enter the room with a request that the child not be disturbed. The sound of her voice, which I first heard as a distant mumble, intensifies into an animated stream of words.  The words seem to rush from her with such passion that a focused listener would surrender to an impulse to talk over the justifying, rationalizing, point–counter-point, argumentative, single-person monologue.

I stand quietly at the edge of the room listening not to the words but to the power within her words and note to myself, “Her words are gushing out from a center of guilt, shame, remorse.”

I again return to her words and listen so deeply that a crinkle forms on my forehead as I wonder, “Is there anxiety about a deed so wrong it is punishable by banishment?”

I quiet my distracting thoughts and listen even more deeply and then I acknowledge a profound sadness in the threads of defensive anger that is begging to be heard and understood.

If one comes across a person who has been shot by an arrow, one does not spend time wondering about where the arrow came from, or the caste of the individual who shot it, or analyzing what type of wood the shaft is made of, or the manner in which the arrowhead was fashioned.  Rather, one should focus on immediately pulling out the arrow.  

~ The Buddha

My compassionate self moves to the young child.  As she embraces the young child, she begins to rock and whisper, gently, softly, “How long have you been here?”  The young child tells of wakening to this room after a night of hiding under blankets trying to be unseen, holding her breath trying to be unheard, swallowing her fear trying to be still as the sounds of distant shattering glass and disembodied voices crashed and stumbled upon and into each other.

My compassionate self hears of the homesickness that emerged with such intensity that it overflowed her soul and traveled across rivers, over mountains, and through valleys searching for someone to bring her home. The yearning returned from its fruitless travels and surrounded her as if it were the voice of an unseen other.  In a painfully frustrated response, anger roused within the child an intention to destroy this other’s yearning that come in the place of her heart’s desire.

My compassionate self awakens to the realization that this young child is ignorant of the fact that the chair opposite her is empty and that she is being persecuted by a phantom of her own creation. Slowly my compassionate self understands how this young child’s powerlessness created not a monologue but an internal dialogue between a phantom, lost within her homesickness, and a child, lost within her wounds.  My mind recalls the story of Narcissus who believed that the image in his reflection was a water spirit with the same characteristics as Apollo, and hears how this child’s unproductive attempts to be heard and understood by her own echo has condemned her to remain forever alone in this shadowy dust-filled room.   Narcissus clung to the image of his love; she clings to the sound of her anger.

Touching the present moment, we come to know the past created the present and together the future is being created.

“Shu-shu“, my compassionate self whispers as she rocks the small child with the sound of ancient mother’s loving-kindness. “Shu-shu, feel the sadness within you, hear its voice, be with it’s tone and texture, and release this caged discontent with the outward flow of my breath. Shu-shu. Silence your thoughts and listen only for the sounds within this room.”  And together, they rocked back and forth, listening to the sounds in the room.

My compassionate self moves to the empty chair opposite the small child. I begin the practice of ‘Giving and Taking’ by first resting my thoughts and opening myself to silence. I then imagine a small black cloud filled with the child’s aloneness, anger, sadness, and anxiety surround her heart.  I feel the inky dark cloud move away from her heart and leave her body as it rides upon the gentle wind of my in-breath.  It enters my body; it touches my heart, and a sudden sensation of wondrous energy spreads throughout my body.

forest2

A tiny silvery whisper emerges, “It is your wish to be released from this room so that you may walk with the summer sun and feel its warmth touch your face.  You wish to see the multiple colored leaves blanket the sidewalk and hear them crackle as their scent is released into the autumn air. You wish to feel the tingle of the first winter’s snow upon your tongue.  You wish to release all that is frozen as the spring wind awakens mother earth. You wish to look into the eyes of others and see the reflection of love.”

On my exhalation, I release to her those wishes on a white cloud knowing they will give her the courage to leave this room, to open her door to life.

Silently, the sun’s rays departed to the west and unveiled the moon’s spherical disk. A pause fills the room with stilled silence as if time paused to honor this universal transition. My compassionate self inquires, “Where in this moment is the voice of your phantom?   How will you allow yourself to hear the emptiness within this room and then know the other chair holds no one?  What will you do with this absence? When will you give yourself permission to greet this absence, acquaint yourself with it, feel it, know it in its entirety, and allow it to settle within? I wonder what will open your mind to see that what your words attempt to harm, silence, or destroy is but a memory and thus you are in a perpetual state of cyclical suffering.

“Your desire to be heard and understood can be heard and understood only by you, not this phantom of a memory.  I appeal to your imaginative skills to see and hear how you, as this phantom and small child, wish to be free from suffering, wish to be happy.

“Each time you become aware that you once again have entered this room and are engaged in a confrontation with your phantom, trust in the freedom that accompanies the awareness that both you and this transitory memory wish to be free from suffering.  Breathe in with your whole body an image of your phantom’s pain; on your out breath release to your memory the happiness, joy, and calmness of mind that will bring an end to it’s suffering. This practice of ‘Giving and Taking’ is the silver key that opens a door to a space of tranquil abiding.”

forest

The Buddha suggested that whatever it is that we reflect upon frequently becomes the inclination of our mind.  If one recurrently thinks greedy, hostile, or harmful thoughts, desire, ill will, and harmfulness shape the mind. If one repeatedly thinks in the opposite way, compassion, loving-kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity become the preference of the mind.  The direction we take always comes back to ourselves, to the intentions we generate moment by moment in the course of our lives.

Excerpts from B Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage

entrusted…

…the scent of mothballs signals the opening of a small steamboat trunk entrusted with long-forgotten memorabilia. Carefully placed upon a layer of women’s 1930 era clothing are three stacks of yellow ribbon-tied envelopes. Within each are hand-written letters reminiscent of second grade penmanship inquiring, “Dear Mother, how are you? Fine I hope.” brendamilyOn the left side is a stationery box filled with certificates of marriage, birth, baptism, and death intermingled with a child’s brilliantly colored drawings.

Beneath the box is a small silk sachet holding a solitary diamond engagement ring and an ivory locket. At the bottom of the trunk, children’s books and wooden blocks with carved letters surround a miniature wooden rocking chair and a one-button eyed velvety-patched teddy bear. I become distracted from the remaining contents as black and white photograph images softly held within the folds of a woman’s garnet silk dress glide in the air and scatter on the floor.
The photographic images are a visual memoir of a young family where trust once allowed two young sisters to roam free throughout a field of tall, yellowed grass. “How many dad3-copydays,” my questioning mind wonders, “how many days were left before the decline of my father’s health shifted the lights of a colorful present into the gray-shaded time of waiting?” Within this stillness of waiting, memory tells of a young child seeking solace through repetitive rocking behaviors and of a father’s fragile heart enduring a turbulent wait for a donated aorta.

I hear compassion speak to my heart and I begin to feel how my father intuitively knew of my inner turmoil and of the tranquil stillness within rhythmic repetition. His gift of a rocking chair tells me some fifty years after his death of the multiple emotional and physical sufferings within his suffering, the interconnectedness of the suffering within the family, and of his wish to ease our suffering.

As the fabric of the dress glides between my fingertips, the shadow of grief that holds the memories of my son emerges from a compartment hidden within the trunk. An old fear dustin20awakens as the image of grief’s blackened shadow looms over me with its death-filled abyss of intermingled condemnation, uncertainty, and emptiness. I feel the void that will consume me if I were to release the eternal care of my son to its embrace. I come to know that I hold no trust  that within death is compassionate loving-kindness. Awareness arises to tell me that as I run from grief with the anguish of powerlessness to protect the heart of my soul, like an addict running from her addiction, grief becomes even more insidious. In this undifferentiated chaos of anguish, fear, and mistrust there is hope [larger than a mustard seed] which seeks for the magical garment when donned will transform me into the Great Mother. It is childhood faith that clings to the belief that as God witnesses this transformation, absolution and reconciliation would simultaneously subdue this impenetrable monster and return my son, whole with the spirit of life, to…*

cited:  B Koeford, A Mediative Journey with Saldage

hidden stories

dad3-copy

Closed minds and hearts are the result of a failure of trust.

In response to a slight tugging at my shirtsleeve, my attention is redirected away from this search for answers within the words of others and into the eyes of a three-year-old child, who asks, “Find daddy?”…

My father’s death left my mother, a young woman deaf from infancy, with two daughters and pregnant with her first son. I do not recall whose idea it was to wander outside the house early that morning as my mother slept. I can, however, imagine my young self following my older sister as if an invisible thread that tied us together tugged me along as she, with her five-year-old world view, undertook an emotional duty to find our father. Did we believe we could find him fly fishing in the creek that ran alongside the house? Or was there something about the water that enticed us into abandoning our search? I can recall to this day the cessation of anxiety and arising rapture that coincided with my surrender to the inevitable. Two young men, I am told, rescued us both from this search for our father.

Shortly after this incident my mother remarried, and by the time I was seven years old, she was divorced and pregnant with her fifth child. Her fourth child, taken by his father in the dark of night, vanished within the tangled web of adults who regressed into childlike behaviors under incompetent custody laws.

My reflective mind recalls the unbound inquisitiveness that carried my six-year-old emotional self into the house from school knowing on that day my mother’s fifth child was to be born. I can still feel the internal rebound that coincides with walking into an unseen plate of glass as my being absorbed, not the tone of grief, but the intensity of frustration within my grandmother’s assertion, “The baby died!”

The Buddha’s recommendation to abstain from false speech is found in the position that people connect with one another within an atmosphere of mutual trust, where each draws upon the belief that the other will speak the truth. It is suggested therefore that families and societies will fall into chaos as one untruth shatters trust, as it is the nature of lies to proliferate through attempts to weave a harmonious tapestry of reality.

When I reflect upon those times in which I experience an intense urge to say other than what I believe is true, I know it is fed by the anxiety intrinsic to uncertainty, and inherent with the aloneness of expulsion. At other times, the drive seems to come from a sense of nothingness that seeks validation through inclusion with others or continuity within mangled and haphazard memories. It feels as though it is an act that preserves or ensures a sense of control, power, or protection.

What this force blinds me to is the powerlessness that coincides with the telling of an untruth, as well as the emotional separation that overlaps the fear of discovery. It also creates the need for another story to support the one prior. Therefore, the beliefs that compel me to lie are but a layer of lies within a lie.

The intensity of my grandmother’s words served to erect an unbreakable barrier: “This is not to be spoken of,” and thus a door of understanding remained closed between us throughout the remainder of her life. It is her handwriting within a book authored by one of her older sisters that gives me a glimpse into her private struggles: …

When I read these words, I come to an understanding of a woman who suffered less at the hands of others and more from an unforgiving ego fettered to her own grief, shame, remorse, and guilt. Therefore, I have become acquainted with a woman whose own suffering blinded her to the threads of grief and loss my three-year-old self had previously woven into a tapestry of death and to the subsequent re-weaving of the incongruence between my father’s going to heaven, my brother’s disappearance, the baby’s death, and the near-drowning of my older sister and I.

Two weeks after my grandmother declared the baby dead, my infant sister–but not my father or my brother–returned to the family.

~B. Catherine Koeford, Meditative Journey with Saldage

With this history in mind, Thich Nhat Hanh opens a door to compassionate healing.

life…manifesting again and again

do you also miss

your mother?

cicada ~Issa*

mom

Tulip

In Thich Nhat Hanh”s book, No Death No Fear,  he shares a personal experience associated with the passing away of his mother.

“The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, ‘A  serious misfortune of my life has arrived.’  I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam … I dreamed of my mother. …When I woke up…I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. …Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet…wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is a manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation.

…If you can stop and look deeply, you will be able to recognize your beloved one manifesting again and again in many forms. You will again embrace the joy of life.” (pp. 4-5)

In remembrance of my mother’s birthday…who passed away April 19, 2016.

*cited: http://www.haikuguy

100 days…epilogue

After receiving great news I often experience a desire to reach out to someone, anyone with whom to share, to celebrate. When life’s sorrows come to my door there is a yearning for someone…something with whom to connect with…to find a shared understanding that eases the confusion that wraps around grief; yet, a bit of courage is needed…to silence anxiety’s voice, “to speak of death is lose the listener you seek.”

My mother, Elberta, passed away on the 19th of April, 2016…6 days after her 89th birthday.  brendakofford_flowersSince her passing, a number of popular culture icons also left this world…and I found myself, in response to the exhausting news coverage, whispering, “my mother died” as if this utterance would bring about a global moment of silence in which to honor both her life and death and to ease the aloneness that dwells within grief’s shadow.

One belief I have that has sustained me for many years is that to honor the lives of those who have gone is to keep them in the heart and be with others in such a way as to honor them. In an odd way…it’s like a unspoken desire to bring about…yes, a small bit of immortality.

I have read that one way (out of many) to walk alongside the grief and memories that come unbidden is found in the perspective that “in the days and weeks that follow a death especially for the first 49 days one can help the deceased’s mind/body by avoiding harming others, generating love and compassion, doing kind actions, making charity and specific centerblossomprayers and practices that their spiritual teachers recommend and dedicating this positive energy to the mind/spirit of the loved one, wishing only peace and happiness for them and rebirth in the presence of their God or Buddha.”

With this way of being with grief and loss in mind, I undertook a 100 day-blog project to honor my mother’s life. She loved photography, poetry, nature, needlepoint, and teaching others sign language.  It is my hope that the images and words within this project reached out and touched the lives of others with a similar sense of awe that she often expressed as she witnessed the beauty and mystery of the world about us.

My work as a psychotherapist taught me about the healing components of art, especially its means of communicating what words alone cannot convey. Also, during a difficult period of time in my life, a co-worker would100dayspoppy send emails that included attached images of “aweness” and beauty. I came to realize that during those moments when I allowed myself to be opened to amazement my emotional self shifted from a negative state of mind to a place of equanimity…as if these images offered a safe harbor sheltering self from an emotional storm.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of 100 days…I hope you were gifted with a moment or two of “aweness”, contemplation, and/or equanimity as you wandered through the gallery of these writings and images.

you left,

I remained…

two springs.

From this day forward, I will be…

may we find peace.

100 days…100th day

…the scent of mothballs signals the opening of a small steamboat trunk entrusted with long-forgotten memorabilia. Carefully placed upon a layer of women’s 1930 era clothing are three stacks of yellow ribbon-tied envelopes. Within each are hand-written letters reminiscent of second grade penmanship inquiring, “Dear Mother, how are you? Fine I hope.” brendamilyOn the left side is a stationery box filled with certificates of marriage, birth, baptism, and death intermingled with a child’s brilliantly colored drawings.

Beneath the box is a small silk sachet holding a solitary diamond engagement ring and an ivory locket. At the bottom of the trunk, children’s books and wooden blocks with carved letters surround a miniature wooden rocking chair and a one-button eyed velvety-patched teddy bear. I become distracted from the remaining contents as black and white photograph images softly held within the folds of a woman’s garnet silk dress glide in the air and scatter on the floor.
The photographic images are a visual memoir of a young family where trust once allowed two young sisters to roam free throughout a field of tall, yellowed grass. “How many dad3-copydays,” my questioning mind wonders, “how many days were left before the decline of my father’s health shifted the lights of a colorful present into the gray-shaded time of waiting?” Within this stillness of waiting, memory tells of a young child seeking solace through repetitive rocking behaviors and of a father’s fragile heart enduring a turbulent wait for a donated aorta.

I hear compassion speak to my heart and I begin to feel how my father intuitively knew of my inner turmoil and of the tranquil stillness within rhythmic repetition. His gift of a rocking chair tells me some fifty years after his death of the multiple emotional and physical sufferings within his suffering, the interconnectedness of the suffering within the family, and of his wish to ease our suffering.

As the fabric of the dress glides between my fingertips, the shadow of grief that holds the memories of my son emerges from a compartment hidden within the trunk. An old fear dustin20awakens as the image of grief’s blackened shadow looms over me with its death-filled abyss of intermingled condemnation, uncertainty, and emptiness. I feel the void that will consume me if I were to release the eternal care of my son to its embrace. I come to know that I hold no trust  that within death is compassionate loving-kindness. Awareness arises to tell me that as I run from grief with the anguish of powerlessness to protect the heart of my soul, like an addict running from her addiction, grief becomes even more insidious. In this undifferentiated chaos of anguish, fear, and mistrust there is hope [larger than a mustard seed] which seeks for the magical garment when donned will transform me into the Great Mother. It is childhood faith that clings to the belief that as God witnesses this transformation, absolution and reconciliation would simultaneously subdue this impenetrable monster and return my son, whole with the spirit of life, to…*

 

*cited:

A Mediative Journey with Saldage

B Catherine Koeford

 

100 days…95th day

Song of Chugen

My parents departed long ago.

How often I grieve in sadness!

I had only two aunts left:

…

100days95Last year I went to Kyoto and sobbed.

This year I moved to the shore of a lake and river.

My grief multiplies as I move through space and seasons.

…

Monks perform an urabon ceremony* after cleaning the temple.

The chanting of sad voices resounds to the red banners.

Then a cool breeze arrives;

cleansing and darkening showers merge with the dust.

Rain over, plantain shadow under the leaning sun-

the spirit of my father appears before me.

100daysbutterfjlydoubleexposure

After the ceremony I return to the monks’ quarters,

making a silent dedication for his liberation:

“Spirit, do not stay sunk forever.

Quickly prepare a boat and cross to the other shore.”

~Ryokan**

*Since the early days of Buddhism,

the Urabon Ceremony is a time set aside

for people to pray for the

peace and happiness of the deceased.

**cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Trans: K Tanahashi