Photobomb

 The Photobomb

12/26/20

     Well, it's here again. For four months the clock ticks toward this day, this hour in the world.... 

When everything begins 

And everything ends again...

Slowly

 And at once. 

     Every cell in my body keeps the time, never far from my thoughts from August until now. It is not a choice, it is autonomic. Knitted and stitched into my seams, timed to the beating of my broken heart. It takes everything in me to brave up to the counting and the waiting for it all to pass again. 5 o'clock on the 26th.

     Christmas passes. I go to bed and lay still as the darkness around me and wait. Wait for dawn of this day. This fucking horrible day. If I am lucky and my dogs are near, I sleep. Sometimes dreams come and sometimes it is a quiet, almost suspended animation of semi-sleep, as if someone has switched me off, turned me into hibernation mode. 

     I wake up and wait for it to hit, and it always does. Like an enemy slowing emerging from the portal of a damn tank, a grinding gun that slowly pivots and sets its bead on me...... and BOOM.

 I am shot again, 

I am shot again, 

and I can't fall down. 

     I awaken, prepared to take the bullet again, but this morning, there is something else in me besides the pain and dread of another year without you. The bullet comes, but with it, a newish feeling. In truth, I have felt it a few times, not often, but I felt it strong on this morning, on this 26th day of this year without you.

    A whisper, a murmur of love. Not the love I feel in my human skin....not love that is generated from my own self; not the kind of love that I churn up to face the day. No. It emanates from somewhere else, I cannot put my finger on it at first. Outside but also inside, as if a swarm of sweet bees have come humming into my bed. It is from the All; the Source, it is from US, from God.

     Like the rings of a tree all around me, I began to feel the palatable presence of others...friends, family, even my clients...those who encircle and share our orbit, those who share our story. Those who love you, remember you.....miss you. Those who know how dark my days, and who have chosen to look NOT away from this horror, but to face it, arms locked with me, as the tanks come.

     These people who take my calls, who listen to me cry and wail, and sometimes wail with me; who remember your remarkableness, wholeness, goodness....meanness, too. Or those who have come to know you as you are now, a luminous, radiant force. All of them praying and thinking of me. Thoughts taking flight and murmuring toward me as I face this. Thoughts giving me nourishment and armor. These ones who I call, who I ask for help, who don't paddle away in lifeboats...away from my thrashing in the waters of it. And they bring love. Love as soft as a feather and as strong as the breeze that lifts it. And suddenly I am Ok.

     Driving south to Laredo in the blanket of all this, Nita and I watched the terrain turn arid and unforgiving, and I felt the excitement of seeing new things. Excitement that surprised me, again coming from outside of me...transfusing, renewing. My reinforcements had come from the other side. It is hard to convey how surprised I feel that I am simply Ok.....

Then Elijah texted:

        "FYI, Ian photobombed Chris in that picture you posted."

 me.. "What picture?"

        "The fireplace one. I can see it, lol, after the recent upload (of energy from the universe.) He is still in the other Realm, but also here in that picture, cheesy-ing it up, next to Chris, being funny, right behind him, giving a peace sign."

    

It was so good to hear, as I recalled my thought taking that single picture of  my son, building a fire for me Christmas morning. I wished you had been there, too. And so you came, and so you were. And I felt the truth of it course through my veins. Yes, this did happen.

    

     Walking later, at the hour of your passing, 5pm..... Walking along the Rio Grande River, as it cuts between Texas and Mexico, dusty and wild and beautiful. Walking quietly and with reverence. I know my sister checks her watch...she keeps the time, too. Birds everywhere, so many I could not count them. Chachalaca, sparrows of all sorts, Warblers, Green jay, Clay colored Thrush..... they've found their way to Salinena Preserve and to the old chatty couple with an old fat dog....You found your way there too, I felt you hold my hand, felt you compel me to look down. 

     A small black feather. I picked it up and felt you tell me to turn it over, revealing a scream of emerald. 

Green for life.

 Green for peace. 

Green for the jay we chased together all those years ago, the very first time we ever saw one. 

Later, the feather left me

As if to remind me of impermanence. 

As if I didn't already know.

    And then Beth found a feather, too....and then our friend Bill reminded me of Keats, who said of melancholy....

"Feed deep, deep on it."

               Love,

                       Momma