Whole

I've changed Ian.

That's probably not a happy development for the people in my life. In fact, close friends pull away every day. I used to be a certain way, but I look out at them with different eyes and all the colors have changed. People can see it and and I feel it, and it is no use trying to stop. 

I don't want to stop. The flow of my river has been altered and I am out of my banks, pulling trees and soil and earth along with me. Who knows what this flood will do. 

On one level, I feel cold and robotic. I don't very much care about my people's losses, daily grinds, needs, desires, loves, hates.....I sit and listen and generally pretend to be nice; pretend to care; ask the right questions, cough up enough words to keep some sense of personal connection alive. I still feel love for them, I think, just so little depth or connection to what was.

But I really don't care. Not that I really wish anyone harm, I don't.....but the compassion and effort I used to put into friendships and family seems spent, lost, void. This is especially true of my oldest friends. I just stare from inside dead eyes, at whatever they want to vent about and feel numbness. And I know they know. I know they sense it. Even that doesn't bother me. If I am dead honest, I guess I think most of their life problems are their own damned fault and are so terribly trivial. It is exhausting to listen and to try to kindle giving a shit. When their chatter turns, as it always does to their kids, grand kids, family issues, I feel a now familiar clinching inside; as if I am holding on as the roller coaster goes over another hill;  then I drop, and my stomach flips and wait for the feeling to pass and to be OK again. 

I stop myself from yelling, "Shut the fuck up", but I do think it. A lot.

It is not everyone, funny thing is that some of my new friends who didn't even know you seem to understand how to listen and they still stir compassion and love in me. Chris, Kenzie, my clients, and a couple of my family are still immune from my wrath, too. I still love and care how they are doing. I don't know why.  

Now that I have offered you that terrible, heartless confession, I want to say this is not what I really want to talk about. Either these people will hang on,  help carry the weight of this for a while or they will not. The river will wash away what and who should not be in my life and I am not really worried about it. I wait with fascination.

I want to tell you what the new course of my river has found. I want to talk about you and about WHOLENESS. As sure as my heart has dimmed toward these old, familiar humans, a  different fire is being stoked. I am being pulled toward this with such a fury. 

Lisa Duncan told me one night over some beer that you were the most WHOLE person she had ever known. She was talking about how confident you were in being yourself; how singular you were in your passions; how steady and true you were to that which you loved. Loyal, fearless, (over confident), and clear. You could not suffer fools, bless you. I loved that she choose that word. I felt the truth of it. You were not always nice or polite, you were not the absolute smartest person I've ever met, you weren't even the easiest kid to raise....We both know this is true, but it doesn't matter, because, by God, you were WHOLE.

You were skin, fruit, seeds, pit and thorns all at once, and all the time. Complete, real, total. You were WHOLE.

I loved that about you then, and I love it about you now. I knew what you believed and you wore your attitudes and convictions like armor. Like your very own skin.

The Wholeness of you resonates in me....

It was everywhere in your eyes, and determined purse of your lips.

Remember when you dove into a pile of 5th grade boys when you were 4 years old to protect a frog from their stoning it to death? I feel like that....Or the time you rescued the field mouse from the river, or got into a fight over some stupid kid killing a lizard?  Like the way you laid your entire 7 year old body across Bailey's grave and wept into the earth and yelled at heaven in sadness and rage......Yep.....

I don't give a shit if I hurt someone's feelings by telling them the truth, but I will chase a fly around my house an hour to liberate it outside. More than ever I seem obsessed and focused on the tiniest beauties of God's creation; intricate and little. I want them all to have at least a shot at life and I spend a (possibly irrational) amount of time preoccupied with advocating for bugs and bees, and dogs, skunks, and spiders...even plants and weeds and little webby whatevers. 

I am more like you; becoming less patient, more brave, more honest, and devoted to the natural world with a fierceness that surprises even me. Some doors are closing as this door swings erratically toward who the hell knows what.......

Small lives have stolen my heart, and they fill the hole you left gaping.

It is such a comfort. 

I mean, I could not save you, but I can still save some of the other small ones that you loved. A few more of them can have a shot.

And I know you see and smile and maybe shoot your middle finger up at people who don't understand that this is holy work.

loving life on the macro level.

Someone said on TV this morning that all we can do is continue to love the things you loved, and do the things you wanted to do. I believe it.

If this God you and I shared and loved and believed in is real, then all those moments of you being brave and real and imperfectly perfect, live on in the ether of this place. I smell it like ozone in our yard and on the river. It gives me such comfort. 

Biggun, please, oh please keep sending me signs that fuel this fire in me. I promise to keep my eyes open and carry on your passions, especially those that the fucking drugs muted in you. I promise to keep trying to be more WHOLE.   

Love you,

Momma