Grief

I was blog bouncing when I came to this post. I don't know Carol, but I know what it feels like to lose a beloved family pet. So I added my condolences with the others:

Dear Carol,
I bounced to your blog from somewhere else & couldn't leave with out saying how sorry I am for your loss.

Anatole France said:
"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."

I really believe that. My two died within 6 weeks of one another and even the death of family members & friends did not compare to what I felt with Barkley & Remi.

The homeopathic remedy for grief is Ignatia. I ate it like candy and it did help. I won't say any cliches like "it gets better with time" blah blah blah. It gets different.

The depth of your pain is proportionate to how much you love. That's a BIG LOVE. Be gentle with yourself. I wish you peace in your heart as you move through this difficult transition. Hali

As I wrote this, and as I'm finding the Barkley & Remi links on my blog, I'm a bit teary. I am grateful for having had them in my life; and forever in my heart. And then I thought, Oh, dear. If she pops over to my blog from hers, the first thing she's going to see is that "Namaste Asshole" picture. Talk about first impressions. Oh well!

Divine Midlife Chrysalis

What the caterpillar calls death, the master calls a butterfly.

Death is the greatest illusion AND the most real. It has been almost a month since Remi’s passing, and things are back to normal. Except they’re not. I am in uncharted territory and having to create a new normal. I am at a loss as to how to do that. I realize I am grieving more than Remi, but all the other little deaths from this past year: my home, my marriage, my idea of who I thought I was. All dead.

I go between wanting to DO something—anything, to wanting to be conscious about creating the next part of my life. “It shouldn’t be this way,” is a sure recipe for discomfort and it creates an illusion that things will be better IF:

If fill-in-the-blank didn’t die
If I had a fill-in-the-blank relationship with so-and-so
If I had a such-and-such job
If I lived wherever with whomever doing whatever
If I were still a caterpillar

This is where I am now. When I remember to accept that, I find peace. The struggle comes when I’m focused on how I think things ought to be or lament that they are not what they were.

Divine Midlife Chrysalis is the title of the book I’m not writing. I think it’s more of a chapter, now. It is what I have been experiencing over the past year. There are all sorts of cute euphemisms coming out to replace “midlife crisis;” Marianne Williamson says it’s a process, Tony Robbins says celebration. I think it’s a bit…messier. If you were to open up a cocoon, the caterpillar is no longer recognizable as a caterpillar. Nor is it in its future form as butterfly. It’s evolving from where it was to where it’s going. There is no going back, and there is no speeding up of the process. Nature has its own schedule. There was a farmer once who watched a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and decided to help it out by cutting the sides of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged but couldn’t fly and died. It was the work of breaking out of the cocoon that brought energy to its legs and wings and gave it the strength it needed to fly.

This is my Eat, Pray, Love version without having to leave the country. I have been so blessed to be out here in nature. The birds are singing and the mountains are greening and there is this lovely trilling coming from the trees down by the river. Tree frogs, perhaps? I will consult with Fisherman Willie. In the meantime, life goes on . . . .

LOVE from the Road

I've been traveling with John Morgan this week in WV for his seminars. I was walking down to breakfast in our hotel and there was a sleepy man making his way back to his room holding a danish and coffee. For a moment I saw him as a little boy shuffling into the kitchen in crumpled jammies and his mother asking him if he wanted jelly on his toast. What a sweet little boy you were, I thought as I passed him. And here he is, middle-aged. How quickly life happens.

I have a dear friend whose mother has passed away. Even though it was expected after an illness, and she has a v. strong spiritual foundation, there's something so permanent about death. It's inevitable, we're all going to do it one day. Still. It makes me think about the intangibles and the lovelies and the sweetnesses. Someone once said that you don't lose anyone or anything, they are being returned to where they came from. From that perspective, all we can really say is thank you for however much time we were given for the priviledge of having them in our lives.

A couple years ago I was waiting for a friend on a bench outside the tea room in Shepherdstown. It was a perfect spring day; clear and sunny but not too warm. At the time I was reading Bruce Lipton's Biology of Belief. He was explaining how our souls are broadcasting a signal like a TV station, and our bodies are like a TV. When the TV dies, we are still broadcasting our signal, we just don't have the physical vehicle to express it. As I was reading this, I thought about my friend Dar who had cancer, and whom I just adored. Just then a breeze blew through the pear tree above me, and showered me with pear blossoms. It was the most GLORIOUS sensation. So sweet. I felt a love for her wrap around me and time stopped and eternity was a second. But I knew. I knew she was going to die, and soon. That experience of absolute presence overwhelmed my grief and sadness. My heart was so full of gratitude for all that she meant to me and still does. Because after everything, what's left is the LOVE. And when we allow that to expand and fill our hearts, there is room for nothing else.

The picture above is from a hardware store across the street from where I stayed in Huntington. We get reminders everywhere. LOVE, :-) H.