The Waking

Waking

 Ian,

     Cold winter morning. From her perch on the foot of my bed Phoebe saw someone outside move in the lavender glow of the early morning. Maybe a deer or raccoon; feral cat or just a shadow. She grumbles and wakes me up, and I open the sliding glass door. She shoots out like an arrow into the near-darkness, down the stairs and gone. Brave, she is, to dart into the unknown like that, without a thought of what might be waiting for her.  I watched the white streak of her beautiful coat move back and forth, zig zagging, nose to the ground following the scent. Completely caught up. 

Unburdened by what was

what is

and what will be.

Every moment is the only moment.

Or so her brown eyes say.

     Cold is still cold, and as the winter tells her so, she comes back in and is back on my bed again. Deep sigh, and she is quickly asleep again, as if all of this was just some dream sequence. She is a lucky girl; not to wake up every day and heave into a cloak of remembrances of all her own particular sorrows; of lost babies and lonely times.

     For almost three years (10 days short to be exact), every morning starts with me waking up and remembering what has happened to us. Starting each day in the shade of it. Some days harder than others and a few days better lately, waking up and stepping over death and going directly to business. Fairly often now, I touch the red light of my coffee pot and while it gurgles and hisses, I tidy my kitchen, feed my fish and birds, make my bed. I set things in order.

     That is some kind of bravery, right? 

To imagine life goes on

 and this old body 

can go along, too?

     

    

There are other mornings, too. I wake up with such a brick on my chest; such a dark weight of missing you pinning me down. I cannot move. I lay still and warm and silent as I take it in again. Head mashed deep into my pillow and I want to stay right here....well....forever. It is the best this particular day will be and I know it. As if all the air has been let out of me. As if I am a paralyzed bug in a spider web, after the poisonous kiss, waiting for the eating to come, no feeling at all. Waiting for the blessed end.

 But mostly it is not so bad anymore. Mostly, I have my program set for each new morning and I go about it; I get things done as humans do. Ignore my waking sorrow and push into my human skin from night-soul wandering and I go make coffee. Step over the pit, and find something that needs doing. Often this begins with me drawing my hand cross the soft back of a warm dog, watching my fish dappling at the flakes of food as if it were their first meal..... Or possibly I call to mind the sweet kindness of Chris hanging my Christmas lights or a hilarious video of Hudson. These can grab me by the shirt and yank me into real happiness again. And shoved forward I go.

     Whatever gets me up these days, these 1075 days since you left, I can glimpse a bleary miracle here. It is sewn into the hem of my clothes, so small that only I can sense it there helping me. Only someone who has carried this weight every day could recognize the miracle of endurance, only maybe Chris or Kenzie or Danny.

     The Buddha was wrong, you know. The solution to suffering is not, as it turns out, in staying in the moment. It is not in being cut off from the regrets and memories and echoes of a boy's laugh that is now gone. It is not forgetting the blonde hair or the long, tapered fingers touching the lizard's still back. No, it certainly is not this.

Suffering is to be born and to be bared in the cusp of waking. 

I wear it.

I do not transcend,

so much as breath it. 

I draw the missing of you into my lungs

air as cold as a corpse,

and feel it warm within my chest.

Missing you feeds my tissue and my blood.

Reminds me who I am 

And who you are

And who we are together.

The pain fuels me.

It is a promise

A reminder

A recognition of what I care about

 in this imperfect, perfect life.

     In spite of every fool around urging me to let go of my grief and move on, I persist in hanging on because the miracle of the paradox is so clear. Solitude has schooled me so well in this....Our Phoebe jettisons into life with no thought of yesterday or tomorrow. I launch each day powered by a soup of sacred rememberance.

     Pain shocks me into movement even on days when I don't want to do this anymore....by the stunning notion that maybe your leaving actually clarifies me and sluffs off the useless bits of human silliness so what comes forth from me is more true, more real. Curiously, pain unburdens me. 

Frees me of the impossible lie of who I AM NOT.

Rakes across my spirit

And stirs 

The wind of my soul at hurricane force somedays.

Or whispers a dirge

And I am suddenly wistful and tender.

    Like a giant eraser

Blearing my outside lines

So every sensation finds me

Strangely transparent

     I reach across my bed now and put my hand on a warm, white coat of fur. I feel the life in her and the way muscles relax into sleep after chasing the things we chase in life. After darkness draws and  the need for comfort pulls us back to bed. I marvel that after how much it hurt to love you and lose you, I can wake up on this particular day and love this particular smelly dog.

 And so, to Buddha I say 

that the end of suffering

 is not detachment from desire,

 but daring to ride the wave of all love, 

all pain,

 all longing,

all loss....

 just to see what I might find out there in the dark.

And Buddha laughs....

Love,

Momma