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                                                                                                                   

Polymath's Prayer

Polymath's Prayer

Dear Ian,

My Mom was a polymath, I think. That is...."A person of wide-ranging knowledge."

Chris is too. 

I am not sure if he realizes it, but he is.

Does the lens

of his shyness and quiet sadness blind him to the perfection

of his fine mind?

 

As his Mom, more than anything,  I have  wanted for him liberation;

that he grow wings to lift him aloft that he may know himself.

For he is SO worth knowing.

My foolish impulse is to interfer.....to meddle in what seems a loneliness of being almost too keen for this blunted world.

Then again... that would rob him of the deliciousness of the journey. 

He would never let me anyway, my young Einstein.

I think that might be his method;

His science.....to ride his own nature like an engine, inward and deep. 

The true mechanics of the polymath.. is to be in possession of more desire and more depth than one's peers. To seek (and yet never quite find) that which is sought. 

Mom never quite broke free, but I believe he will. Ticking beneath the surface of my quiet son is an old soul with wisdom yet to be unrolled  and deciphered like a scroll . It is really exciting to think where his thoughts will take him.

Ian, am I a polymath?

I don't know, but maybe. I seem to catalogue a lot of ideas; then go down a fair number of rabbit trails. Hunger to know has always been an ember.

You were not a polymath,

 I do not think, 

You were an warrior and an empath.

You were a lover and champion of Chris and I.

You saw us.

I have a whole day with nothing I need to or have to do. Why is this scary? One of the mysteries of my buried self is the tug of anxiety and the pull of both hating and desiring to be alone. I do want humans near me. Humans of all sorts around me. Activity and energy and ideas and new things to see and do. I crave it. Yet the having of it frustrates. Perplexes and  eludes. I know that if I am alone, it is because I choose to be. Being with people that don't get me is too painful to take most days.

And on the precipice of this day, I begin to index the things I might do. Mow my grass, start a painting, clean out an old closet. Sweep. I could go out and be with people, in fact I do imagine it. But instead, I pile up on the couch with Old Mr. Henry and read T.S. Elliot's "Mr. Elliot's Sunday Morning Service".

I get lost looking up every unfamiliar word in my dictionary; the various analyses of its meaning. I read it again and wonder that someone  writing 100 years ago could actually describe me. I feel the bliss of really getting what he means when he describes Sweeney as:

 "shifting from ham to ham, 

stirring the waters in his bath."

(And describes Sweeney's arrogant independent ways): 

"The masters of subtle schools

are controversial,

 polymath."

Sweeney is me. I languish in my bathtub of ideas, consider fossils and ferns; birds and beetles; poets and ponderings. Hours pass as I am drawn into this and that, as I find all sorts diversions from the world of humans. I shift in my waters alone.

 I go to the church of infinite ideas to worship, instead of taking a shower and going out to be with people. I don't know why, except that the waters are warm and there is a longing; a persistent hum for me to go inward. All answers are not there, clearly, but they seem to be. As all religions, it is just my own telling of the story.  Chasing the name of a fossil, or the definition of the word "Paraclete" is consumptive. Why are a Cedar Wax Wing's tail feathers dipped in butter? Did all these bivalves die together in some mass kill or in a slow downward drift over 100000 years? Does a fish see differently in air than water?

Do polymaths have any choice in where their minds go and can we break free of it and go join a club, attend a meeting? Connect? Go forth and find someone to love? Oh, how I so want to be loved...The path of least resistance for me this day is these books, this couch, that TV;  To fall into Elliot or Downton Abbey, or whatever. It is so easy. At least until it is less lonely and exhausting to walk among others who don't get me.

    

Yesterday I saw a MEME that said:

Find People

Who Can Talk About the Universe,

Souls, and Consciousness

Makes about as much sense to me as anything else I can think of.......So, I am petitioning you, my other son, my beautiful champion......to keep a light on for Chris and I, as we navigate the waters of this human trekking. Put people in our path that get us. Salve the loneliness and kindle the fires that temper our blades so that we can slice through the unnecessary into to essential. Wrap your big arms around us as we dive deep.

    Love us and guide us....At least that's what this polymath wants, and more. 

                                                                                        Love,

                                                                                                     Mom

    

    

+Finding Headwaters

 Finding the Headwaters 

Dear Ian,

     It's been eventful since I decorated your tree in the Arctic. "Have a ceremony of letting go", Marie said, "Release him as he was, so you may know him as he is."  I can see the truth of it, unfolding like a flower, when I go back and read my notes  since Jordan and I visited her on your birthday last year.

It all makes more sense,

and as sure as the seasons,  I change. 

Here I am,

At the headwaters,

 going downstream.

The current is moving me along again, as so many other times in my life. Stuck-ness  has given way. 

Movement comes from outside more than within, seemingly.  Just like I have described it to others, it's like being jerked up, lifted, carried along.

Last week, when I took my pups walking at the boat ramp, you did this amazing thing (or we did it together). But first I have to go back a bit. What preceded it was my earnest effort to let you go, as you were, so I can better receive you back now, as you are. I'm weary of needing Elijah or Marie to interpret.....I wanted to be able to communicate and keep my focus independently.

    

                     And find you again.    

     

  It began with Marie, Elijah, and you demanding that I let you go. 

 This took a while. 

I fought it hard.

 It felt wrong.

    But eventually I surrendered in to the notion

 Because you asked me to so persistently.

 That's how much I love you, Ian.

 It helped that memories have become battery acid to me. Every time I am brought to remember our times together, it leaves me sick and miserable; crushed and ruined. Whatever we were, whatever we has become a burning house; photos and mementos being scoured with flame. I just couldn't bear the heat anymore, I have to flee them. Let them go. 

As you have said to me,

"Those times are over

They're not coming back

I cannot reanimate them for you, Mom"

 There is no death. You didn't die, you're still here, living some kind of life without confines of space and time and distance. Everywhere all at once. Able to be right here on the couch with me and Henry and also swirling in the arms of Creation Energy. I didn't lose you, I got you back, except more whole and developed ,,,,,,You are really cool, Ian.

If I didn't already love the living shit out of you, I'd still think so.

What you are and have become

Fascinates the shit out of me.

This give me great hope that there is more interesting stuff

To come in the future;

In the great "Out There".

     

Another truth about these headwaters, is it turns out to be badass. All the traits that may have vexed me (and others, most likely), are the ones I needed to get right here. I am perfectly built for the task at hand. Like a crawfish, my pincers, which here-to-fore have been awkward and treacherous (shredding the fabric of my old life), turn out to be great for cutting through the non-physical world. They're great for finding supper. I am not "too much"....too sensitive, emotional, brooding, impatient, blunt, demanding, wishy-washy, non-conformist or lazy. Set apart from others....alone. Each  seeming flaw was a tool, placed in it's own compartment perfectly, so that I could draw on as needed. I don't dislike myself anymore. My heart and mind are once again on speaking terms. My tools just happen to go with a rocket ship better than a bicycle....when the ship was built, the tools could be used, and nothing was ever a mistake at all.

You knew I was built for space travel

And I had forgotten that I knew too.

     

Every day, literally, every day, I receive epiphanies and cheats from you, or God or Source.

I need a new word for the Energy that creates worlds.

Something more fitting, expansive, intimate....I look up and see a cloud, hear a song lyric, read an idea, or put two thoughts together differently and a piece drops into place. Yesterday, while walking a dog at PAWS, you caused my Spotify to play "Wonderful, Merciful Redeemer" and I suddenly knew that Jesus came with the re-gift of self-love; the liberation of true unconditional love of self and the power of worthiness... seeing that we are fit for every journey. As I am now.

There is a lot more to write about how last year I ceremoniously said goodbye to you with nothing but my own faith....how I  hiked to the top of a spongy berm of permafrost in the Arctic, found a small fir tree and load it up with mementos and pieces of our life. Feathers, coins, plastic medals, strips of a t shirt that once smelled of you;  beads, pictures, and your truck keys. How I accepted that these were to stand in memorial, facing due north, as the sun shines,  birds pluck pieces for their nests, snow falls and time turns. Temporary is the point, you see.....infinite and finite....

And this makes me so happy. Your bigness is big enough to be there at the beginning, the middle and the end of all things. It makes me proud to know it; to be a part of something really fucking BIG. Biggun.....Someday, by some means, all these ornaments will dissolve back into the rock of Creation, but our love will remain.

So,  back at the boat dock last Thursday, with my phone dark and in my pocket after listening to worship music,  as I do sometimes, I was "imagining you in"......around my shoulder and hand in my hand. Chatting with you a little, keeping it light, as if we are together all the time.

  You turned on my Spotify

Changed the channel to  "Worship" to "Weird and Dark"

Played seven songs of love

In random order.

I paid attention to the message

Deliberate, sweet, perfect.

    I only list them for posterity, I already knew as they played exactly what you meant.

SHALLOW

40 DOGS AND CIGARETTES

FEEL LIKE HOME

HEART FULL OF HOLES

QUESTIONS

OVER THE HILL

HOLDING IN THE WORLD

All perfectly picked, starting with a tender love story about suicide, and ending with a hard rock anthem I have loved and listened to for 20 years by Bob Schneider. Here is the message you sent:

     "Mom, the depth of our love and connection made my leap to non-physical perplexing for you, but we are two living cells in a vast beating heart. We love deeply and there is perfection in our connection. We will be together again and we will have fun. WE are tribe, we are home to each other, and there is so much mystery yet to be explored together. Let talk about all this more and when you need me, I am right here still. We are badasses....wondrously and perfectly made. And, by the way, Mom, we are the Headwaters." 

How could I want more than that?

Love, 

                          Mom

    

      

    

    

In Royal Garb

In Royal  Garb

Were drugs an addiction or anointing;

Your pain an affliction or a crowning;

Was our story a eulogy or an awakening?

 Hard to know with this swarming, harried mind. 

But a quieter inner voice tells me this:

It was your coronation.

I close my eyes and see the fabric of you smooth as velvet and intricate as a lacewing. From a brighter, blessed place, you chose every thread, every color and hue.

The warp and weft, designed by your fine eye, 

Divine and rich.

I breath the truth of it in and see so crisply 

Your lush drape. 

Your tilted crown. 

Wicked humor and vast heart,

Your straight back and set jaw.

 I see you standing there in royal garb,  you took a step.....

And with a swirl and sway;

                                Through the portal you flew.

                                                                                           Love,

                                                                                                    Mom