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