Hold me, for I am in grief.
Today I have a very deep delicate awe that I don't know how to express. I feel unsafe being held or being seen and my heart is a wildfire, my lungs are full of the ash of what was.
Today I am in grief.
I am pickled in a Deep delicate awe with a film of fearing being misunderstood on top, Making my experience difficult to see into from the outside. It's difficult to be with and so it's hard to share because I imagine it will be difficult for you to be with it, too (perhaps I am wrong)
But I'm not sure if it's okay for me to share. There is some primal "I have to be so careful" urge surrounding this precious weighty grief-awe. If I do share, it must be received in a certain way so that I may be seen in and allowed to have my experience. I value this grief experience like a lantern on a dark path.
I have a very specific desire and I don't know how to be or with who in order to fulfil that desire. My "shoulds" come up. I tell myself I really should reach out to this friend or go over here and have a walk or look at these flowers or write about my mother's life or go back to work or don't go back to work and take more time and don't rush but also the wheels do keep turning. All of that for some very specific and hard-to-nail-down desire.
All of that for the very simple desire to be with my mom.
At this moment, my nervous system is driving hard through rationalization and explanation to avoid the very hard truth that she's not here in the same way she was anymore so I can find other ways to nourish the parts of me that she would nourish.
Still,
The feeling is that I'm
Crying out for mom and there's no mom
crying out
crying out
crying out
"But Riley, there's love!"
How do I tell you I know this and still am in grief at the same time?
I sometimes share my heart and am told:
"At least at least at least"---NO
This is Hard
"Oh, it is hard? Welcome to the Club. The Life is Hard Club where you join when you run out of baby fat and all that is left is the truth that was there all along, which is that Life is Hard."
But please do not tell me it is Hard, either, do not welcome me to any kind of club, do not amass me to being a statistic, this is Real.
And yes, there is Love.
There is a very primal dance teacher in me
and learning this part of the dance of my life is difficult
It brings up things I've been avoiding and now I have to face all at once
Like do I turn the volume up a little louder and dance a little harder?
"No, turn it down, only the fools leave the volume knob turned up"
And I don't know how to express the ways I would hide, hide, hold, hide, swallow, hold, bury, away, away, away, I'm fine, fine, fine, it's okay.
And since I don't know how to express it, I hold it because it's easier to hold than to express wrongly and get the wrong thing back.
That's nasty to show my precious grief and be told "at least".
And there's so much of it
"At least at least at least"
There's so much "Doesn't-Quite-Understand-Ness". It's one thing to not understand and to offer that discomfort honestly, there's just all the Stuff that comes up for somebody who doesn't understand and wants to but doesn't know how but thinks they should so they just pretend. And I don't have the capacity to take care of that
And so I hold,
I hold
And what I have to offer is just an invitation to the very difficult dance within the self, to whoever hears my grief song, I'll turn my volume up, and that's good. Sometimes you and I will hear the same melody or beat and we will do two different dance moves but they will be in rhythm and that's Good.
Like in a "Makes it all worthwhile" kind of Good.
My shoulds come back up and I set them down and turn back to the grief.
I don't know, death itself isn't the thing. The death itself isn't that big of a deal, we all knew she was going to die. Maybe it goes without saying, but it's the little things surrounding the death, like the timing and the duration and the chores that she doesn't do anymore and the conversations she used to prompt that she doesn't prompt anymore and now there's this unprompted emotional burp within me that she used to know how to work out of my system but now it's stuck and I have to be fussy and learn what aches are really just burps. Stuff like that.
The death itself is just the contrasting color so that I can see the Thing Which Is a Big Deal.
And that Thing is
Lovely and is
everythingforeverywhere
And I'm in awe of that because I can see everythingforeverwhere lit up all so nicely by the bonfire of her death.
Today I have a very deep delicate awe that I don't know how to express.
And I feel the despair of a careful urgency pressed up against not knowing how to express or to whom or when,
And I see the Energy which is my beginning and my ending,
And I see all my little plans, efficiencies, stories, supposings, interpretations,
These stories are the quilt blanket of me,
They are insufficient and they are flimsy cotton fabric held against the vast expansive Void,
But they keep me warm tonight and are made of the place where I am
And in that place,
I am Held.
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| We ran out of paint while painting the ceiling so my mother did this texture herself. I realize now with her love of art, this is a vast mural which can only be seen when the viewer pauses to look up. She has a hidden beauty. |
