Dear Mom,
It has been four and a half months (and change) since you died.  I still miss you daily; hear your gentle voice in my mind and heart. I hope that when my children remember my voice, it is not the yelling voice, but the calm, loving, reasonable one.
Maybe you've heard; Dad's getting married again. He told me the day before my birthday, which of course was his birthday, too. He says he did his mourning while you were dying. He is quite proud of himself, you see; he picked someone he claims you were close to. They have all sorts of plans to redecorate your house; that is fine, and that is necessary, but Mama. . .I wasn't ready to go back yet, and I wanted it to be just like you left it when I am ready.
I will have your wedding set, the one that sat on your finger for so long. I will have that, and some of your owls, and a set of your mixing bowls, and some assorted odds and ends. I already have your morphine, the two bottles left from the two days I used it to ease your pain. I have it hidden away; it feels dangerous, like a weapon. But it also feels safe, like an escape route I'll never use but take comfort in the knowing that it's there.
Today, I drive back to your house; the 7 hour trip from my home to the place you called home. This trip feels momentous, like a walkabout; like a discovery; like saying goodbye. I don't think that I will be returning there much after this last journey. I will spend my days there remembering, walking, soul-searching, and letting go. You were what held me to that place, Mama, and you are gone.

this body: from temple to meat sack to beautiful, strong, imperfect self

One of my nieces visited recently, and in the course of one of many discussions, we started talking about our upbringing and how that upbringing taught us to view our bodies. She mentioned that she had difficulty reconciling what she'd internalized with what she currently believed, and asked how I'd managed it.
The truth is, I still struggle with it. Twenty six years out (I've now been out of the church a decade longer than I was in it), and I still view my body on occasion with shame. We were taught our bodies were temples for our souls, and as such, should be thought of as god's house; so really, not ours at all. No piercings, no tattoos, no tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or dirty sex. Definitely no cleavage.
I have piercings, I have tattoos, I smoked cigarettes for a looooong time. I drink. Rarely will I smoke pot, but it happens. Sex? None of your business, but our bodies were built for pleasure, and both god and the devil can kiss my ass about that one. (Growing up, I asked why girls had a clitoris. I was informed that it was a tool for temptation. What. The. Fuck.) Oh, and I'm a woman. I have cleavage, people. At least I do when I squeeze my arms against my chest really hard. But I digress.
So. I went from a desecrated Jesus temple to the opposite end of the spectrum--just a bag of skin and bones to carry my brain around in. But that really didn't give me any peace or freedom; I would see these curves, these freckles, these amazing hands, this ridiculous ass in the mirror and think, "that is lovely." But I'd also see the stretch marks and cellulite and dry skin and varicose veins, and think, "ugly." Mind you, this was in spite of working as a massage therapist, seeing and appreciating all shapes and sizes daily, encouraging women and reminding each of them that their bodies were beautiful.
Niece and I climbed an absolutely stunning place the day she was here. Shevlin Park is, for me, what New Mexico was for Georgia O'Keeffe. Truly. And niece commented how amazing it was to feel her body move and work, how fantastic the sun felt. I started thinking about that, and realizing that this body of mine may not be perfect, or completely toned, or even as strong as I would like it to be, but even at 42 it has potential. I can recognize the beauty even in the cellulite, the arm hair, the dry skin, the flabby belly. But recognizing and internalizing are two completely different things.
On what, initially, appears to be a completely different note, I've been working to deepen my yoga practice. I found this amazing book, Wanderlust, by Jeff Krasno. It is beautiful, and visually pleasing, and has so many different perspectives. It traces the lineage of all the different styles of yoga, and--finally!--talks about more than the asanas, the physical part, of yoga. Today, I learned about the 8 limbs of yoga, and after meditating on the Yamas and Niyamas, picked one to meditate on for thirty days in concurrence with my 30 day yoga practice for baby grasshopper pose.
Yoga brings me peace. The asanas always have, and I am so grateful to learn of these other 7 limbs that take the place in my soul of the god I've left behind.  And this is why this fits into that body acceptance bit:
Yoga is a practice. Constantly in progress. I am meditating on ONE WORD and ONE POSE for 30 whole days. I love this. I love that yoga understands progress, not perfection, and that I will be able to see, without comparing myself to anyone else, my body's amazing work and development. And after these 30 days, there will be a new word, and a new pose. And on.
My body is not a temple. It is a sexy beautiful amazing imperfect home, and I fully plan to use it hard until the day it breaks and takes my heart and soul with it.

"Goddam I love being a human being. Even grief is beautiful."

Tell me how to get to that point. In the last two years, I've watched my mother and my mother in law die; I watched one of my favorite cats die; and in the years before that, so many friends and other animals. I have no fear of death, and have been able to find beauty in death and in dying. But the grief? That I cannot seem to ever find beautiful, or spacious. And I definitely do not love being a human being.
And then I read this amazing response about grief on Reddit (and the first reply to the response that the title of this post came from). I remember describing grief as waves in almost just this way, so I suppose that makes the feeling almost universal. I do know that the loss can be so overwhelming that sometimes, you want to stop fighting the feeling of drowning and just drown. But instead, you just hold on and float.
I feel like I have been floating for a very long time. I think I'm ready to get out of the water.

this is the love letter I read at my mother's funeral

Mom loved birds. All sorts. Some of the plainest and most common she called LBBs, or Little Brown Birds. I have always loved that she made something special and lovely out of the ordinary. That is what she always did—with birds, with her gardens, with people, with me. She taught me to bloom where I am planted, that I can learn something from any place or space that I find myself in. She taught me that when I felt too much, or became overwhelmed by all the bad and terrible things in the world, that all I needed to do was to make my own nest, and work on small things—in my home, with my people, in my community. She taught me that small changes, small things done with great care and love, had an impact on the world. She was an amazing woman, and she taught us well.

We had our tough times, Mom and I, but I’m fairly certain that one of the reasons I exasperated her so much is that she and I were of similar mind, and by that I mean stubborn and independent. She used to tell me, in my more trying moments, “I hope you have a child just like you!” and in 2003, when my second child was a year old, I asked her, “Is it possible I could have TWO children just like me?” There was a long pause, and then she said (with something like glee), “Oh, yes. Yes it is.” And she should know. Because she had five children, just like her.

But as infuriating as I may have been, she encouraged that independence. When I was in preschool, I decided I was old enough to walk the several blocks to school by myself. I do not remember if I snuck away or if she told me I could go, but I set off on my own. It was only as I went to cross the street and looked both ways that I realized she was following me. She left enough of a distance that I could feel independent, but was close enough that she could save me if she needed to. She has always been my safety net, always the one I’ve come home to, always the one to comfort. So it was a great honor for me, in her last days, to be able to help comfort her.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25^th, 2016, one day after her 58^th anniversary of marriage to Dad, Mom quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, my sister Cheryl tells me, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of homemade pudding and strawberry and saltine cracker. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother’s rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, loving, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, “I love you,” or “Oh, for fun!” with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things I wish I’d realized were for the last time, and I find myself mildly insulted that her garden hadn’t violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she’d rather we not have gone—and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Last Friday morning didn’t feel special. We all ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. She had visitors in and out, and the hospice nurse, and then the bath aide came, for a “spit and polish.” They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries and tulips.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother’s daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I hold my children close, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread. I am my mother’s daughter, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I do not share the same beliefs as most of the members of my family, but I do know that my mother lives on—in her progeny, in her gardens, in her teachings; in the love she shared with my father. And I have found great comfort in the words of writer and performer Aaron Freeman, who states,

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point, you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue in the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you...that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound, and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly."

A little thing I found about yoga, and grieving, and goodbyes

This is How We Say Goodbye

by Bryonie Wise

via elephantjournal.com

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle.

You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin.

You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone, and marrow to the world.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

This is for you, my love. 

I’ve been sitting for days, it feels like—weeks, or years, even.
My mat, freshly powered by the full blue moon sits beside me as I work; every time I walk by, I can feel her whisper, It’s time to move. 

Tonight, I could hear her, loud and clear; despite the heavy of my body and the weight of lungs, full of grief and exhaustion—I knew she was right: now was the time to move. 
And so, this moment that I had been anticipating, this moment that I had been avoiding, down to the tear drops I knew would fall the moment I stepped onto her sacred surface, was happening.
I stripped myself bare, down to my flesh and bones and beating heart, and unrolled my mat, turning up my latest musical love affair.

Here I go, I thought. Here I go, on my own, alone—me and my tears.

But they didn’t—the tears, which have been leaving little puddles everywhere I go, didn’t fall from my eyes and my body didn’t crumble to the ground.
Instead, I felt myself swell with strength—my body moved, my breath took over and I could feel myself shed the layers of grief and sorrow that had begun to weigh me down.
I took myself by surprise, of that, there is no doubt. I moved and moved and played with standing on my hands and standing on my head—I could smell my body and watch my rolls as I moved, my eye at first critical and then softening into my marks.
I took myself through backbend after backbend, spending longer and longer each time, begging my lungs to shake themselves free of the quicksand of grief that was clinging on as if it was the end of the world.
The truth of is this is the end of a chapter; the end of my world as I know it and everything is both an ending and a new beginning; it’s terrifying.
I thought that great love, real love, true love, was the kind that would sustain and hold us through every storm that would pass; I thought that what it meant to be in love was to hold on for dear life and to never let go, no matter how violent the waves.

But what I am learning is that even in the goodbye, we can love like the ocean.

And that maybe, this love, the love that starts the process of unwinding two lives, two beating hearts; the love that slowly starts to separate books that have hugged together for some time on the shelves, a thin layer of dust marrying them together; the love that stacks dishes and cutlery that have become the best of friends—the love that talks about where the four-legged beast that I jokingly-but-very-seriously call our kid is going to live, is the biggest love that there is.
Goodbyes, though full of sad nights relearning how to take a starfish shape in the bed at night, of awkward conversations and the random explosion of tears, are when our love shines through in its purest form.
The day I find a new place to lay my head, I will dream of the creak in the stairs and the dance of light through the windows in this old house; I will remember the weight of you sinking into bed beside me, late at night or early in the morning, our four-legged love carving a space for himself between us.
I will remember each moment, for they are imprinted in my heart, that beating, broken, bloody thing in my chest.
I will dream of you happy and free—of your hands in the dirt and your eyes shaped like a camera, a jungle of garden surrounding your silver-headed self.
I think of this all, as I move, slower now and sink deeper, now.
I settle my body into stillness but for a moment; the grief is not gone but the anxiety has lessened enough for me to stop moving and to feel this vibrate through my heart:

We will recover from this, I know; some day soon, I will laugh out loud at more than animals on trampolines—and light will bounce back into your eyes as we speak. Our story will always be ours, and we have learned, through this surreal, foreign land, what love truly is. 

For now, I will learn how to say goodbye in these sweet and sorrowful days, and continue to love as fiercely as the sea.

 

I am my mother's daughter.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25th, 2016, one day after her 58th anniversary of marriage to my father, my mother quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of pudding and strawberry and saltine. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother's rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, "I love you," or "Oh, for fun!" with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things that I wish I'd realized were for the last time. I was mildly insulted that her garden hadn't violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she'd rather we not have gone- and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Friday morning didn't feel special. Uncle Bruce, Mom's oldest living brother, and his wife, Kathy, were visiting. We ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. The hospice nurse came, and then the bath aide, for a "spit and polish." They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother's daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I speak to my children, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread or hold my children close. I am my mother's daughter, and I can't imagine it any other way.

I did not cry on Wednesday.

I feel like I should have. And I didn't cry the week before that, or the first week of October, or any of the other times over the last year that we have lost multiple people to absolutely senseless violence.

I didn't cry because I am so very numb. Do you understand? There have been so many appalling crimes against humanity, the earth, and the inhabitants of it in my lifetime that I am just done. I am especially done when I think about the two biggest reasons for these crimes:

Religion and Profit.

Late last night, my children and I sat together around the island in the hub of our home--the kitchen. I'd probably had a little too much to drink; nothing like alcohol to numb the numbness, right? I apologized to their sweet and shining faces for the world they are inheriting. I charged them with saving the world, and do you know what they asked?

"How, Mama?"

I don't know. I don't know, dear ones. I do know that in the last twenty years, I have seen the rights of many taken away: rights that are inalienable, that shouldn't be taken away. I have seen blame placed. I have seen rampant fear fed and fueled by a media that hasn't been impartial for a very long time. I have seen so many people form opinions from sound bites and headlines without question or further investigation, without considering where the information is coming from.

I feel that I've failed you both; that this world, in the beginning of the sixth mass extinction (yes, really, and if you haven't read the research, I'd recommend pulling your head out of the sand), is no longer salvageable. But we can't think that way, or we might as well all just drown ourselves now. We have to try, for as long as we have this crazy beautiful world, we have to try to save it. And "thoughts and prayers" just aren't going to cut it.

So this morning, while I watched the sun come up and listened to the train and watched the crows converging to some distant, unknowable place, I thought about how. And this is what I came up with.

Find your passion. The world is too full of injustices to focus on all of it; you will find yourself overwhelmed. Find something that you are passionate about and fight. Work your ass off to be heard, to make it right. Environment, gun control, feminism, animal rights, ecology. . .whatever cause makes your heart ignite. Make your life about serving those people and causes who need a voice.

Don't waste yourself on silly pettiness. Don't stoop to talking shit about others, don't numb your brain with useless fodder. We are so over-inundated with media, unimportant creams and clothes and surgeries and diets and trolling, opinion pieces vomited from behind the anonymity of computer screens. Understand that you can choose what to let in to your brain, and you can choose what you think about it. And if you don't agree, or you don't like it, and you don't find it important enough to change it, leave it be and walk away.

Think critically. Always. Consider the source of everything. Who is profiting from the information? Where is the proof? Can the information be backed up from other, independent sources? Is the information or proof based on testimonials? Can the proof be reproduced? Are those spouting or selling the information being paid or benefiting in some way? Does the information mesh with what you already know to be true? Does it challenge your beliefs? Analyze your reaction to the information. What are questions you can ask about it?

Find common ground. It is so easy to stay safe in and among people and environments we are comfortable with, but nothing gets done when we are divisive and fighting, and as long as we are all taking sides, we will not find common ground. If we can agree on a few things- for example, that mass shootings shouldn't happen, and are definitely a problem in the U.S.- then we can start looking at what can be done about them. That is how this country is supposed to work. We learned it in preschool, watching Sesame Street- cooperation, and compromise. An awful lot of people in Washington have forgotten that.

Speak with integrity and honor. Follow your well-thought and researched words with action. Don't bother with lip service, and don't waste your time on those who do. And for fucksake, don't bother praying.