Jennifer Said:

December 26th, 2022

Year 5

      "I know this is gonna sound weird, bit I feel like Ian is letting me know that you are going to get very close to a wild animal...a bird or perhaps a fish...it will be looking at you intensely and will be conveying a messge to you. He wants you to be still and listen. I think it is a whitish bird wit a pointy, long pinkish beak....although it felt like it was a fish at first, that almost beaches itself...whatever it is will be in the shallows somewhere."

,

Ian,


Nita and I started birding on your fifth leaving day at Edinberg Wetlands in South Texas. A lush little thicket with trails that wound around a pond,  with a thicket so thick that it was like one of those mazes in an English garden. Cormorant, Herons, Chachalaca,  Egret, and the sounds of Kiskadee could be heard everywhere. There were lots of people out enjoying a warm day after such a cold, cold week. Because of your cousin Jennifer's words, I felt expectant and light, instead of the familiar heaviness on my chest.

Three Kiskadees that I called up with my phone flew in and positioned themselves around us like a chorus. Aunt Nita and I stood at the rail and registered the moment, listening and laughing at their raucous bitching. Driving in the dark to South Padre after such a day, we had the most lovely discussion about the nature of all these things; the possiblities of who and where you are....what knits us all together in this grand tapestry.

The next morning, at the island Birding Center, something presented itself as an offering from you. Seeing it almost at the same time, we turned to each other and gasped.  It was a perfectly placed Great Blue Heron in white morph with a pink pointy beak...let me say it again....a large white bird, curiously close and statuesque, with a pointy white beak. It stood a few feet from me on the roof of a bird blind.  A bird that goes from grey to royal white, just like Gandalf did, after defeating the Balrog.  Nita and I both knew...the truth of it ran through our bodies like electricity.

You made your point....again.

I still get dark....I still miss hearing human words from you, Ian; the ones Elijah and Marie used to give me. I still do not want to let you go of the human version of you that walked this Earth; that sat on this sofa; that called Henry's name in the cute, high-pitched way. I don't want to let go of my son.

First I loved the human you. Then I loved the you that came after and taught me to see signs and mysteries as I chased after ways to grasp something that was left. Now, I am being asked to let even that part go and expand my view of things a bit more. I am being asked to love the you that is a part of a bigger story; to love you more generally.....to try to love everything.

Always and everywhere is an invitation you keep sending to peak behind the veil. This time it seems Jennifer found herself getting still and looking there. Perhaps is was just a gift for a beloved cousin, or perhaps it is because it has been a hard year for her. The people she loves (as I love you) are hurting and leaving and that creates a crack in a person's known reality; just like the crack that found its way into me-where the light now remarkably comes in. Perhaps it is simply her good heart that drew you to her to give me a little gift on the 26th. Perhaps all her quiet talks with you finally came to fruition.

I have so many signs from you. So many....but having regular people share them doesn't happen very often. Once with Debbie, and once with Kassandra; and yes Carrie finds feathers..... but that is just about it....this time Jennifer and Nita were pulled in. I can imagine it is fun for you to mess with us this way.

I am being called, as I have suspected for about a year, to become my own conduit with out Elijiah or Marie, but is it possible that there is more than this? Could my knowing now be expanded to those who don't generally swim in my pool of weird ideas?  Did you nudge her in the ribs and invite her to jump into the game with me? If you did, by now you know that she and Nita and I paid attention on the 26th:

30 hawks

3 complaining Kisskadees

1 Great Blue Heron in white morph, a curiously obvious metaphor of transformation

1 white scallop shell

An Ocelot....yes an Ocelot, pulling her dinner across the road into the thicket

Elijiah called on the 28th-he doesn't have much to say about you anymore-almost like an entirely different person who has awakened from a a dream state. He did clarify that "white winter tiger" reference he offered on Christmas Eve was about me and my work, not you. He said he thinks your withdrawal from him might be, as Marie suggested, that you have reincarnated again. You might be a baby somewhere, so messages I get will be from a distance...softer....that makes so much sense to me. So there is that.....and oh yes, this.....

Coy turned one year yesterday and I went to see him. Sweetest little boy, bursting with simple joy. He loves his brother Hudson; the bond between them clearly precedes this life. Hud looks after Coy without even being asked; and Coy is delighted by everything his brother does. It is clear to me they have done this before, just like you and me. Maybe soul partners.....and also,  I kept seeing and feeling a sense of amalgamation of personalities all at once but also such distinctiveness personalities. I felt you, Kenzie, Chris, me, Hudson, Coy, and Chase too.....such a soup of souls all flowing and swirling...being stirred and stirred and stirred. All individuals, all connected. It answered for me a question I have been considering. 

If we reincarnate, do we lose who we were before? 

As I was getting ready to leave, holding Coy and watching him laugh hilariously as Hudson road his bike in endless circles, Hud got off his bike and disappeared for a bit. When he came back and handed me a treasure he had just found....He said:

"Look Grandma, its a feather! what kind is it?"

"Its a dove, I think," I said as I felt a tingle run through me. What provoked him to jump off his bike and go get me that feather? As I thought of this,  I looked down to see a tiny yellow sulphur butterfly flutter around my feet and land, just so. 

Remarkably  it was still alive after two weeks of hard freezes; weak but able to fly. I picked it up and showed it to Hudson and it's color flashed like gold. As it took flight west off the back of the porch, Hudson said:

"Woah, Grandma!"

"It's magic....," I said, and I could see he got it.

So another year passes; the fifth since you started changing, my sweet Ian. As we all must..... boy and boy and butterflies and birds;

And you

And me.

                                                                                      Love,

                                                                                            Mom

For Kyle (and Jacie)

Ian, 

You already know that Kyle Holmes has transitioned;

I don't know if you were his friend, but he is loved by Jacie and his Momma and Dad,and by so many, 

So I love him too.

Once we found each other for a moment a few years back. He was panhandling at the corner of Blanco rd. and 1604 by the big HEB. I offered him five dollars.

 I did not know who he was, but he knew me.

"Ms. Ray? It's Kyle....I am so sorry about Ian, he was a really good guy...I am so sorry....." he said.  His kindness was like a soft punch in my face. I grabbed both of his arms through the window of my car and hugged the part of him I could reach. He let me cry and hold him for a minute, like I could not hold you.

His eyes were so blue.

He looked really healthy-almost radiant with the sun shining behind his mop of blonde hair. Just like an aura.

NOT a halo, they are false.....halos are too laden with expectation; They don't capture the realness of how hard this life can be to a young man finding his way.....No....... it was an aura.....an energy that was coming from every pore in his body. He seemed Whole to me.

How can a man be living on the street,

Using drugs, panhandling......sleeping under a dirty blanket

And still be so Whole? 

The truth of who he was seemed untouched by the tough circumstances in which he lived;  the ones he chose for himself. He had the look that I feel you have now;  the one I saw so many times as you grew from boy to man. Sometimes the clouds of human weariness, being lost and sad were there, too, but never for long. Those things pass.......Disappointments pass; betrayals, too..... Just like you, his Wholeness was the main thing I could see. You had the look of a beautiful, wild animal...lean and strong and free.......

Maybe it didn't mean a damn thing how clean his blanket was;

Whether the next meal comes

From a paycheck or a passerby.

                                                              

He was Whole when I touched his arms,

 And he is Whole now.

The door he walked through

 When he exited this human place

 Simply wiped away the unneeded bits

Of this physical life.

And he expanded back into a version of himself

 Both ancient 

And brand new.

Now, if he were my son here on Earth, this morning I would be in darkness. His Mom and Dad and Jacie must bear this. I would be filled with rage and longing and I would want to tear up this world and pull in the sky. I would be, as I was with you, furious and helpless, and lost. That is the burden of those who are not yet to the end of learning. The burden of letting go of beautiful Kyle. They persist, they wonder, they wait. They remember, with such bittersweetness.  Those blue eyes and the soft voice.

But not me this morning. 

Instead

I will hold the candle of his Wholeness.

I will remember how his goodness spilled over on me.

And I will be thankful for this perfect young man.

He is like a young wolf has been set free into the wilds of Canada.

He is a sea turtle that has been saved from tangled fishing lines and is quietly descending into a cerulean sea.

He is a bird set free into the vast morning sky.

I send this.....

 Into the Universe and to everyone who loved him......

He is Whole as ever he was; 

From a babe in his Momma's arms, 

To a man showing kindness to me 

Through my car window.

Maybe he used that dirty blanket!

 He bundled up

 All the knowledge and wonder

 He found as he lived the life he decided to live, 

And took it with him

To a freer place.

To the best place for Kyle.....

Into the wild

Beyond.....

And he will make such interesting use of it,

Just like you.

                                                                                                          Love, 

                                                                                                                Mom

 

Aufusa (on simple Gratitude)

Dear Ian, 

I won't write about Halloween because it is still too hard to open that jeweled box and recall the joy and fun of "Us". Maybe someday I can, but not yet. Probably not ever. Those good, good days belong to another chamber of my broken heart, and the rhythm of her beating is just too tentative to rattle and disrupt her. 

 Leave her be, I say, 

 to the fragile process of building new memories

 and learning to love again.

Autumn eases in with an extra blanket, and I held my breath last week, as my old heater cranked back to life. It was a nice moment....Almost as if the heater kicking on was a promise that this season will be ok afterall.

It is year 5 without you

and my heart still beats despite it's utter brokenness,

and my heater still kicks on when it is cold.

and I feel gratitude for in this.

Spontaneous gratitude, 

The kind that comes in on it's own with no prompting, 

Is showing up for me lately. 

In other times my gratitidue was more obvious, harried, formulaic-

"Thanks you for my children"

"Thank you for my business; for my family and friends, for my health".

Yes, I feel real gratitude for all these things, but as life becomes bleared by so many years zipping past, like I am in a speeding car; the way spontaneous gratitude finds me in smaller, softer, more intimate ways.

She finds me when Mariana calls me to say the sunrise is beautiful or that she was touched to hear Chris's voice that sounded so much like yours. Gratitude comes.

She finds me when my Henry stops sleeping to look up at me with cloudy eyes and licks my hand; 

Or with a chill of frost in the morning and I pull an extra blanket over us both, and we warm each other at the beginning of the day.

Gratitude always leaps from my throat over a remarkable soldier-like grasshopper, exquitely armored in color that lingers so that I can get a good picture or a snake doesn't seem to to be bothered that she shares my fish pond

Or as the dogs and I walk quietly through silent woods, and as an airplane flies over, a pack of coyotes is scared into raucous song; old gruff grandpas and the tenor-sounding puppies yipping and yowling. Im instantly covered in chills and amazed at their song. It makes me feel so happy that we are in the company of nature brings an audible "thank you" to my lips.

And there are human surprises too.

Mixed with the pain and disappointments I so often feel about people; the 

things I want..... but cannot have from them, 

is here everyday

that is  surely true......

and I must bear the loneliness of  being "Me" without "YOU" as I finish out my years....

I feel all of that, but that is not the whole story.

Sometimes there is a surprise from one of my human that causes a firecracker of gratitude, small and tender, to rise up and POP inside me.

Callie's expression

So ripe with joy as she slid an ultrasound across the table

To tell me she is finally pregant. So exquisite.

Ashley sending me a picture of Ian's grave...the place I cannot go, and a rush of love I feel at the thought that she would do that and that he comes to her mind.

Disclosures from my students of husband's  suicide; a brother that overdosed; the abuse and pain and disappointment that they carry, as I do, each day and into each session.

 I feel a door open and we are all suddenly in the same room together, and gratitude comes too.

And then there are the sweet moments when my kids and grandkids show that they still possess pieces of our original “US.” 

Chris's humanity as he tells me how much it bothers him to kill butterflies as he drives, or that he murmers an apology when he kills an imaginary animal in one of his video games. How kind he is to Mariana or his friends.

How he serves others. 

He does not know, as I do, that he has great moral depth...He does not see how very good he is and that this is the measure of a real man.

And my daughter, 

My wonderous Kenzie...who loves her boys with a fierce and steady eye. Blesses and accepts them as their glorious self as she lifts and holds her family together, loves all around her and is a force of nature. I am grateful that she is actually stronger than me, has more wisdom to bear....I feel gratitude that she has become so steady and self assured. 

And she’s wicked funny, which is just a bonus.

There is the big gasping gratitude, that I was lucky to share with my dear friend Kassandra......when I saw an eagle rock with a young man climbing it, just as we placed a box  for your 28th birthday within a grotto....the cosmic serendipity of these things,  laid out before me like a trail of crumbs toward pure unbridled joy. A granite rock that seems sculpted just for you and I in such an intimate way that only gratitude can possibly come. There is no room at these times for anything but wonder. She and I felt it and it was palpable and hilarious.

And within myself, I sometimes find gratitude for how I have managed to untether my soul from most bitterness; 

from some of the neurotic thoughts and judgements. 

I have forgiven.....

I have felt the relief of it.....

and I have found some joy, even though my heart is real and truly broken.

There is no concealing that fact and I am glad that I have the courage to say so.

To pronounce to the world that I am a Mother whose heart is broken; Who lost what is most dear and still seeks to find it again....and has come some way in pursuit of this.

I, too, have climbed the mountain of grief and I am alive,

Actually more than alive....I am softer, more accepting, and sometimes I release butterflies into the lives of others. Gratitude smiles on my withen I talk to my dear old friend Sherry now, or when I play with Hudson and Coy and the love I never thought I could feel again pours forth with no constraint. 

Love I hardly knew I could have again.

Gratitude tells me then,

With pride in her voice....That I still love God.

                                                                                                              Love, 

                                                                                                                           Mom      

On Begetting

Begetting

Your birthday  is coming

like a thundering train;

 like Fall's first brutal blast; 

like a lump in my throat that never leaves. 

This morning I got up, put collars on our dogs, and let them out. I could hear the tinkling of their tags as they tripped across the porch and into the dark of pre-dawn. I drank my coffee and read, as a mosquito buzzed nearby; swatted it away and considered whether to try to catch it to turn outside or simply let it land and kill it. Instead, I just let it be; decided to let it have a drink of me if it comes back to my spot on the couch. Nothing should be hungry today....

Not so close to your birthday.

I've been reading about the value of kindness in "Spiritual Literacy". It said that the word generosity comes from GENEROUS, which is close to GENIUS whose derivative is the Latin root word GENERE, which means to BEGET. I looked that up too.

"To bring something (a child, for instance) into existence.

To give rise to; to bring about".

To me that sounds a lot like creation .

To be a generous heart, a genius heart, in fact to be in the act of creation and expansion. As I chewed on that thought,  a memory burst into my brain like a solar flare.....

Sometime after you expanded, a woman contact me to tell me she had met you several years before. Your Dad had built them a house in 2002 when you were about 7, and then later when you were about 16, she reached out again and asked him for help digging rocks out of her back yard. It seemed her husband was now frail and dying, languishing his last days in a hospital bed in their living room, and she wanted to build a garden for him to enjoy as he lay bed bound. 

I guess you were in high school and doing some work for your Dad; probably paying off some sin or infraction. I don't even remember.

She said you were so polite and gracious while you worked removing all those rocks and building a flower bed. From the big windows they watched you work, moving back and forth hauling rocks and building something for the old man to look at in his last days. 

She brought you water from time to time. She remarked how sweet you were, and how big. 

One day, she said she came in from shopping to find you sitting at her husband's side, listening intently as he told stories of his life, asking questions....paying attention to him.... and comforting him through a rough moment. Maybe he was lonely and struck up a conversation when you came in for water? She said you were dusty and and sweaty as you sat there chatting the old dying man.

It touched her to see a big kid showing such generosity; such genius of spirit. Your begetting of the moment. Yes, begetting. Knowing when to stop and listen.

I knew all of that about you, it was apart of your DNA.

You knew how to love generously.

You knew how to open up your heart and fucking SHOW UP for people.

This was not something you were taught; it flowed out of you like a spring from the Earth. It was not contrived or showy. In fact, you could mask it quite well under a blanket of being a bit of an asshole to people who were not really deserving...You are  just a crisp and clever in that way......  

Always finding that kindness and generosity are best delivered in secret and without a show. 

You, the person sitting dusty and hot with a lonely and sick old man....that was you....the one I always knew. I saw it in you as a small boy in the tender way you treated animals; in your fierce protection of underdogs and your brother and sister.....and me.

That lady's loving memory didn't surprise me in the leas, t even in that first dark year of longing for you, but it did remind me of the truth of who you are. She ended her story by saying she tried to hug you that day as you got up to leave his bedside to move more rocks. You wouldn't let her.

"I don't want to get you dirty, ma'am"

was all you said.

You never could do that, 

My beautiful boy,

You are exquisitely clean.

   Happy 28th Birthday beautiful boy,  

Love Momma                            

Spider Haiku

 Spider Haiku

Don't worry spiders,

I keep house

casually. 

                                                                  Kobayashi  Issa (1790)

The spider haiku made me feel guilty today because lately I have been evicting them from the corners and window sills in my house. Little black and brown ones are being shooed from where they are  leaving disturbing evidence of their meals, then depositing little ammonia drops on the floor. I clean up their mess, put them outside, and hope I don't kill any of them; taking special care to avoid casualties.

Now I just want to clean up their mess and leave them alone. Like Kobayashi Issa said.

It's a quiet time here at this house-not going anywhere very much; not hearing from anyone out in the world. People, even the ones that aren't particularly "awake", are very busy and I don't seem to come to mind. I eat my meals alone, spend days and days finding filler work to do like pulling weeds in the front flower bed. Even pulling spider grass makes me feel guilty, with each pull I am a little ashamed and regretful. I sigh as I write these words....I just hate death.

Compassion can be a curse.

It can be more of a shroud than a halo.

With my compassion for nature, I often can't stop thinking that every living thing must be protected. I over-sanctify life, which is problematic in a world so steeped in constant death. Constant comings and goings of life.

Once I read that some religions (was it Hindu?) say we should strive to not even break a blade of grass or step on an insect, and this seems to be about the only spiritual rule to which I am totally true. I get this notion entirely.

Yesterday I was buying potted plants at a garden shop and had to put back one because there were a few fire ants in the soil. If they came home, it is not that they would spread and colonize; it is that I know that three or four would disorient and die in a new world without their colony. I never questioned my decision, I simply put the plant back down, ants and all. It was not an option to do that to them.

What contribution does that kind of thinking have on humanity? I'll wager I am the only person (or one of the few) who think like this.

I'd like to know a few more who do, too. Chris does, Ian did. My favorite humans....

Solitude draws me even deeper into a world where human occupation is superfluous to everything else going on around me. I don't want to feel ashamed of us humans for bull dozing other life on earth, but I do. I feel that I am unwitting member of a hostile invasion. Gentle as I am, spineless and melodramatic is how some might describe me, I still worry that my presence disrupts the living of others here at  764 Narrows. So to mitigate the damage, I try to go a little further to run a safe house of sorts;

To be the watering hole; 

The Buckees for birds and butterflies; bugs and bees.

Fruit rinds are put out on a tray for insects;

Seed for protein;

Chicken bones are thrown out my car window as I drive to work, so my dogs won't get them but a fox might get it as a supplemental snack. Coffee grounds are shared with house plants, bread crumbles and old nuts are given to the very fat squirrels.

The length of my madness goes on and on. I run my sprinkler under the canopy of a red bud tree because I have noticed the birds like to sit on the lowest branches and have a shower. 

A hose on my front faucet is never screwed completely tight, so that it drips down into an old bowl that is also a toad swimming pool. Sometimes I find a dead insect in the bowl that has drunk itself to death. I guess that is a better end than thirst.

My attic is full of residents that I rarely see, but the signs are there....in the Spring wood ants march in a line along my porch beam. I chose to ignore them and hope they are not eating anything "load bearing". In the winter, if I listen carefully, I can hear the scritch-scratching of a mouse. I even catch them on occasion in a live trap, if they start over-helping themselves to my vitamins and pantry food. (They seem to love turmeric and cinnamon caps the most...God knows why). I set the trap with irresistible globs of peanut butter and pecan pieces. There they are, on my bathroom counter the next morning, in a plastic box. I can take a few minutes to observe them up close, their little dark eyes gleaming and tidy grey coats. Then I drive them to Art Lopez's horse barn 2 miles down the road where I have wagered that they can live quite nicely on horse feed and trough water.

There is never a question that the deep violet blue mud dobbers who find their way into my house through the AC vent will be carefully collected in a towel as they beat themselves against a window pane. As I open the towel up outside, it is a magnificent feeling to see them reorient, then fly off into the sky. It feels like a communion of sorts.

It is NOT magnificent at all to find them dried up dead in a curled heap under a table because I missed a capture. I really hate to clean along the sliding door jam, where there will always be little dead fellows....bees, flies, dobbers....who were trying to get out. Especially cruel to imagine that they can see outside and cannot get there. 

I don't mind helping any and all of them, even if other stuff around here doesn't get done. I'd honestly rather liberate a bug or move a mouse to a more suitable home, than anything else on my to-do list. Maybe my epitaph should read:

                                                        "She was a friend of bugs".

And until I find another human partner who feels the same, I'll man the gates myself.

Someone who understands that we must watch the water level in the bird bath; keep the flat rock in my goldfish pond suitable for bees to bask upon; someone who remembers to fill hummingbird feeders...

Someone who can fathom the logic that the black stink bug that hangs around my front door mat is there because she can feel the cool air from under the door on horribly hot summer days; and also knows to be extra careful watering pot plants so as to not drowned the anole that has an apartment in a large turquoise pot. I can wait.

 

On Things

 On Things

Ian,

You've been on my mind in a troubling way, like a finger running through the silty bottom of a pond, stirring me muddy. It's close to Mother's Day and my mind arcs away and into the tannins of longing again. It happens. Especially around holidays and symbolic times when families are supposed to be together. No matter how much time I get to have with your brother and sister and the loveliness of being with them, there is a quiet emptiness where you should be. As if, even in the sweetness of loving them and feeling the joy of these two distinct humans, something is not quite right. Like the picture is slightly unfocused or someone has taken scissors to it and cut you out of the frame. And when is see it again (it cannot always be ignored), the joy runs out of me.

 And here I am missing you again. It gripped me coming home from seeing Kenzie and the boys, perhaps because I have the belief that everyone is going home to someone and I am not. My sorrow cranks out the story that it is only with these people, my children and their children, that life is really happening. Indeed that love is really happening. That I matter. That I am loved. To go a bit further, I fall into a story that tells me that love and meaning only really exist when I am in the presence of them.....because of the past we share and the times that came before. When I fall into this pit, all the other components of my life seem to dim and become less. I forget the rich tenderness of this life that I have made. I tell myself I am alone, and that I shall be alone forever. I sometimes tell myself this, but it is not true.  

I pull into my driveway; coast to a stop under the the canopy of Elm and Oak, and I am home.

This is my home. Always, even on the really dark days, I feel a soft relief at this precise moment, when I turn off my car and let the dogs out. I take myself inside.

Relief floods me; I've never really quite understood why, but it begins with just a feeling  not unlike being among friends; in the presence of love. Yet no one is here. I begin to unknot and feel the presence of my things. I am not alone. 

 Around this place reside all the living and seemingly non-living components that make my life work. Outside in my yard, an almost perfect sense of belonging under these trees; of being wrapped in their arms as if I am a baby. It is intimate and calming. There are the old grandfather oaks, that were alive and present before cars or houses; and also the demur and elegant redbud beneath lanky elms.

Then there are the newer things.... grasses and flowers that suddenly show up sometimes in Spring, never seen before; Where did they come from? Layers of green can be seen into infinity when I sit on the back porch, leaves shimmering and awake. Nothing is ever exactly the same and yet everything seems constant. I walk my yard, especially in the early morning and at the dimming of the day, hearing birds speaking. Different songs for different times. Occasionally when I cannot sleep, I move through the yard in the stillest of hours, 3 or 4 am, when the strangest and most solitary are awake; the owls and whippoorwill, or a single rustling woods creature. Every time I bother to go out in this special hour it is magic and in the stillness I am not alone.

Inside my furniture; my things seem to greet me, each one a bit of me. My fish are here, but also the quiet hum of their air pump always giving the reminder that water is nearby. Life. They flop and swish in the mornings and grow quiet and drowsy at night, just like me. Objects that have personal meaning, and others that are just practical, like my coaster, where coffee always sits. My favorite pen., books read and not yet read, and some that never will be. A favorite throw for Henry, and always lots of pillows on my couch. This old couch, that sags and smells funny,  has been my favorite spot to read or watch shows over and over. We all piled up on her then, and I still do now. She is a womb.  Pictures and whimsical pieces sit just-so, all around the house; a rubber rat with a bone sword in his front paws; he will always sit on my mantle. He reminds me I am still delightfully weird despite my pain. Rocks and art, always art. Mine and Chris's, and yours and Kenzie's. Things made by our hands, each moment frozen in time and precious as gold.  There is more than a sense of familiarity, it is a recognition that creation is another form of love. Maybe this is why I hang onto all these things, I feel the life in them and the active way each thing in my world still speaks to me. And I am not alone.

Maybe things really do love me back?

 I know there is something special about my bed. You gave me the mattress pad to hold onto for you once when you had to move suddenly, until you got your own king size bed. That was 6 years ago, and in this life you will not claim it again, so it is now mine. The foam is soft as a bird's nest, especially covered in my old cotton sheets Irene gave me. I move into it at night and it embraces me like a baby or a lover. It feels so perfectly good that it must have feelings, too. My bed loves me, I know it, and I know it is infused with your DNA and very self.  Your big strong arms around me all night long. I remember this miracle each night as I lay down. And I am not alone.

 As I sit on the back porch in the chair you and James made me eleven years ago, I study the shiplap ceiling Chris installed. His carefulness and precision is still evident. Beautiful, sturdy, tightly fit, I believe it loves to be seen and admired and appreciated. It is the most perfect ceiling ever made, and it knows it. Did you know that the chair you made sits at the perfect angle for me to see the many and varied bird feeders hung in purposeful disarray? They are placed for the convenience of the birds, not for us. This draws them in for food and drink...and love comes right along with them, as well as the occasional smell of feather oil and seeds. They are so happy and comfortable that very often they do not notice me sitting and watching. And did you know that the arms of your chair are perfect for my coffee cup, my books and journal? You fashioned it perfectly when you were just 16 in shop class. That is a miracle of love too, my boy. My chair loves to cradle me and my things just-so

Is it possible that it is actually more that I am feeling than just the love that poured from you and Chris and Kenzie and I? The things, living and otherwise, the Thus-and-Such of all days spent here now actively giving back to me what once was, and more? Not so much a bank where love was stored, but a greenhouse of love that is generative and dynamic and alive.  As if our love fed, and was fed by a community of things who might actually have a consciousness,  bursting with meaning and sentient as fuck. Love that overflows and swells with mutual admiration as we all live together, my things and I, giving and receiving. And maybe, to go a bit further, this is the essence of the universe, ever expanding and fueled by attention and seeing that which we love, and loves us back. So we are all connected, and we are not alone. Love is, after all, the DNA. The consciousness within the consciousness.

    Hazrat Inayat Kahn said:

"Everything in life

 is speaking; is audible; is communicating, in spite of  it's apparent silence."

So to those who think that my hanging onto a feather, shell, jeweled frog, rubber rat,  broken necklace, heart-shaped rocks, fading notes and dried flowers, sweat shirts with cigarette burns, wind chimes, coffee mugs, old dead tree stumps, sagging sofas, crystals, fishing lures, and all the other relics of love, is a sad obsession with the past, I say to hell with that idea. These things are more alive now, and in all ways, than at anytime, anywhere and ever. They pronounce love and feed me when no human can. They are my family of sorts; a river of consciousness that never disappoints as long as I can pay attention. As long as I can stay awake to it, I am not alone.

Today, I opened my eyes again, took a breath and looked again. And all the universe, God, everything, and every one that ever was, including you baby, are right here again.

                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                       Love, 

                                                                                                                              Mom