how he resisted learning
to tie his own shoes,
how I cheered
when he learned
to pinch the laces
between his fingers,
knotting and looping
and pulling them tight,
making a bow
that would stay.
How I encouraged
the very thing
that allowed him
to walk away.
Oh, sweet woman
I was then,
beginning to learn
letting go.
Now that he’s gone,
I’m a student
of being loosened,
untied, undone,
still practicing
how to let him go.
Posts Tagged ‘loss’
Tonight I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, letting go, loss, memory, shoes on November 16, 2023| 18 Comments »
Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, grief, loss, presence on October 7, 2023| 11 Comments »
On the highway, an empty space
where you are not driving. At the college,
a chair where you don’t learn.
In this room, a tall and slender empty space
where you are not. Not whistling,
not closing your eyes and humming,
not eating noodles, not reading the news.
Everywhere I am, this space you will never be.
Not in Ohio. Not in the woods with walnuts falling.
Not laughing with these new friends.
Not in these hands and not in these arms
and not in these words where you are
because you are not.
I would not fill these emptinesses
with anything else is. They are anything
but empty, these spaces of you.
True Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, generosity, graveyard, kindness, labor day, loss, tears on September 16, 2023| 9 Comments »
with enormous thanks to Kristen
In this story, the grave keeper
is a woman named Kristen.
She plants grass seed
where soils have been disturbed.
She pulls weeds by the roots
instead of poisoning them.
She learns the birthdays of the dead.
When a mother comes to sit
by her child’s tombstone,
the grave keeper gives her space,
but as the mother leaves,
she offers her a quiet smile, a hug.
Kristen knows the name of the child.
In this story, when the mother
leaves the graveyard,
dead flowers in her hands,
she is filled with no less grief,
but there is something generous
alive in her now, too,
soft as the new grass that thrives
around her son’s headstone,
loving as the grave keeper’s voice
when she whispered, Happy Birthday.
When the mother tells this story,
she weeps every time.
It’s not for sorrow
tears slip from her eyes.
In the Days Leading Up to His Death Anniversary
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death anniversary, grief, loss, memory, sensuousness, thisness on August 12, 2023| 17 Comments »
Strange how the body remembers
everything about this time of year—
the angle of light, the hue of sky,
the scent of almost rain,
the shape of the green beans
twisting on the vine. It remembers
the cool of the basement,
the curl of my hand as it slid
into his hand, remembers
the tilt of the hill where we drove,
the droning of bees in the sunflowers,
the brief blaze of fireflies.
It’s as if the shock of his death
opened every door of every sense
so I was flooded with life,
imprinted with the thisness of everything.
In these days leading up to his death,
life rings me, bell-like, again and again,
and I chime, charged with memory,
amazed how my own emptiness
is what allows for the world
to make in me such music,
so vital, so clear, so raw.
Standing Beside the River with Lulu
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, paradox, river, rocks on August 9, 2023| 9 Comments »
Within minutes of weeping,
we are tossing rocks
into the river, the bigger
the splash, the larger
our laugh, and we toss
and we toss in a sweet
and urgent ritual of loss.
Slipping in the mud,
it feels right we should
lose our balance. What is
this life, after all, but a constant
slipping, a constant recalibrating,
a constant learning to find
new paths toward each other?
This life, it turns out,
is likely to pick us up
and throw us into the deep
to see what happens next.
But on this night,
we pick up more stones
and toss and toss and toss.
Not one of them floats.
But we do.
At City Market
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, gratefulness, grief, grocery store, loss on July 9, 2023| 6 Comments »
From across the stack of bottled water
the man who lost his beloved wife
and the woman who lost her beloved son
recognized each other and stopped.
Can I hug you? he said. And they met
in the center of the aisle.
They stood there long moments,
heart to heart, while all around them
the carts continued to roll
and the shoppers shopped
and the checkers checked
and the strawberries were ripe and on sale.
And though no one took their picture,
no one noticed them at all,
in that moment their hearts,
already expanded by grief,
expanded even more.
They became their hearts.
Walking Again in Rome, Georgia, at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged georgia, loss, love, not knowing, south, walking on June 20, 2023| 7 Comments »
When the night is warm
and the magnolia blossoms
twine sweetness into the humid dark
and the summer-loud frogs
fill the night with strange song,
I notice you are not here.
I notice the silence
that walks beside me.
There is comfort in it,
the space where your body
might have been.
Perhaps the connection
is something I’ve fashioned
out of longing for connection.
Does that make it any less real?
I speak to you, ask you questions.
I don’t expect answers.
I get none.
All around me, the fireflies
charge the world
with their beautiful,
fleeting light.
Sacred Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, family, grief, loss, pain, paradox, sunflower on June 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
In the mural, the field of sunflowers
is always in bloom, always golden,
always opening to face the world.
How could I, tonight, not remember
another evening two summers ago
when the light was honeyed
and I stood in this very spot with my son,
two daughters and husband,
and we smiled wide as sunflowers,
our stems tall, the petals of my heart
unfurling. The image still sits in a frame
on my shelf—the last photo I have
of my son. Tonight, when I stood before
all that blooming, I broke. God, it hurt,
but I did not resist the breaking.
I stood in the middle of all that beauty,
the beauty as real as the pain,
the pain as real as any beauty,
stood in the middle of all those flowers
and cried, I cried and broke and
felt myself opening, unfolding like a flower,
my petals doing what petals do.
A Letter to the Graduates
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, grief, joy, loss, paradox, suicide on June 2, 2023| 12 Comments »
Delivered at the Telluride High School Graduation, June 2, 2023 I don’t know how to make sense of the story of how Finn is here, although he is not. How he lives in the deep soil of memory— still running with you through the playground your bodies bright streaks of joy, cartwheeling across the green valley floor and tap dancing on this stage, traveling with you to Mesa Verde and Ecuador and building computers and graphing equations and writing code, swinging golf clubs and debating politics and dressing as a skyscraper in the Halloween parade. Laughing in the hall and crying in his room. I don’t know how it is we can crumple with grief and still rise with hope, love, celebration. And yet we do. At the same time he is missed, you, friends, grow more fully into yourselves each one of you a sapling reaching not only toward light but also reaching with your roots through the dark, the necessary dark that anchors us, keeps us rooted in what’s real. I don’t know how it is we come to know our own lives better because he took his, but we do. We learn to trust that despite a great wound, we can thrive, the way a tree grows around a gash, trunk still strong, though a scar remains, leaves still unfurling to gather sun. I don’t know how we speak of sadness and joy in the same breath, but we do. Joy in coming together. Joy in knowing heartbreak invites us to become more spacious, more kind. Joy in forging new dreams. Joy in remembering the world as it was and at the same time growing so bravely, so beautifully into the world that is. |
Momentary Altar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, loss, pause, remember on May 23, 2023| 12 Comments »
On the altar of sunset,
I place the scent of lilacs
we used to pick every year
to give your teachers
on the last day of school.
I place the sound of the river
where we used to stand on the banks
and throw rocks for the joy of the splash.
I place the wild and vibrant
green of spring
and the new paths your father
has mowed in the field.
I place the ponderosa tree
now taller than you were when you died
and the golden light at the end of the valley.
I place my own naked heart.
Everywhere is an altar,
a place to remember you.
The pond. The driveway. The field.
Everywhere a place to pause,
to wish you well, to tell you
I remember. I remember.
You were here. You are here.
I remember.