She Is Risen!

She is risen!

I’ve been contemplating the metaphors that are so prevalent in this time of the Virus, and they are many!

It feels to me that this is the rise of the Feminine, and the Dark Feminine is certainly one aspect of Her. Many of us have seen her coming for some time, and now she is here in the form of the Coronavirus — the Crown Virus. What a way for Her to make Her presence known!

I’m a Jungian by nature and to understand the Virus more fully, I’m looking at the metaphors and archetypes She is giving us (and I credit my son, Darby for some of these ideas).

It’s so interesting that She has been named Corona, the Crown. In esoteric anatomy, the Crown chakra is the highest energy center in the body and it is where spiritual energy enters our physical system. So, here is our message from Spirit, and it is one we dare not ignore.

First, she comes to us from the East. And surely, the East is the Feminine as opposed to the Masculine energies of the West. She made herself known to us just as the Lunar New Year was to be celebrated. In dream psychology, the Moon is seen holding Feminine energy, while the Sun is seen as holding Masculine energy. And She arises from our desecration of the animals, and the animal markets are thought to be the origin of this virus.

This is the Earth Mother crying out that this is too much! We are harming the balance of her energy in so many ways that She is coming to us as mass illness. We’ve had so many warnings that we haven’t obeyed, and now we are being forced to see them.

The Virus is especially virulent for the old and infirm while the young are largely left untouched. In other words, the old and sick are being taken out to allow the young, new energy to arise. This feels like the energy of the Mother who protects her innocents and allows the rhythms of life to be as they are. It’s harsh but necessary (and as one of the old, I do not say this lightly!).

The Virus is particularly attacking our lungs. In Chinese medicine the lung is Feminine and holds the sorrow of grief for us. Are we at long last feeling the grief of the earth? Feeling the grief of our own lives? Feeling the grief that our mass consciousness has created on the planet?

The Virus is forcing us into withdrawal from the world. Again, this is the purview of the Feminine — the turning inward into the realm of Being, rather than moving outward into the realm of Doing. And it is also showing us how painful it is to be disconnected from each other, how painful it is not to touch and be touched. For touching is certainly an important aspect of our lives, and an important aspect of the embodied experience.

The Body is seen as Feminine in Jungian psychology while the Spirit is seen as Masculine. It’s how we know we are connected in the physical realm, and now we have to learn new ways of touching and being connected. The Mother is forcing us to realize our connection by the very act of making it dangerous to touch.

It certainly looks obvious that we are facing a world-wide economic collapse, a collapse of a system that though it supports us, is blatantly unfair to so many. The Mother wants to support all of us, not just the wealthy, and we are being asked to find compassion and care for our neighbors, both locally and globally. She is rattling the cage of Profit and presenting us with the necessity of Care instead.

Finally, it looks like the Virus may be the undoing of our president, a harshly uncaring Masculine energy if ever there was one.

She is mighty, and She is having Her sway within us. Let us find a way to be at peace with this energy. It is a profound moment on the planet, and the only way to survive is to learn Her lessons at last.

Love to all of us. Candida

The Long Goodbye

 

April 25, 2019

Today is the first anniversary of Michael’s death. I awakened earlier than I wanted, but I’ve become used to this in the past three years of his dying and death. I find a dense fog outside my window in this near dawn light and I wonder if it will rain, for I intend to do a ritual outside in his honor.

It was Michael’s birthday five days ago, and now it is his death day. I guess that it’s good that these events are coming so close together. I’ve taken most of the week off so that I can move into the deeper psychological and spiritual work of this time.

On his birthday, I got a small pastry, put a candle in it, picked some daffodils, pulled a tarot card, and sang Happy Birthday. I started crying in the middle of the song because it felt so empty to be singing to the remnants of what remains of his earthly life, to be singing into the hollowness of life without him.

As I was shuffling the deck of 78 tarot cards, I kept asking for one card, just one, that would tell me what I need to know about Michael. I was thinking that maybe The Star card would show up, for he has communicated with me and others through the stars. But the card that came was Death. I almost laughed when it turned over, and I almost cried. Of course! He is dead and my task is to accept it.

This made me realize that there’s a new level of acceptance that is attempting to come in, that needs to come in. And it’s all about letting go of the various ways in which I’ve tried to keep Michael alive. I need to finally accept that no amount of crying, or praying, or wishing, or remembering, or meditating, or fantasizing, or writing, in short — nothing –will bring Michael back to me. I need to understand this fully and unequivocally. For I believe that this is the level of acceptance that will begin to bring relief to this endless grief.

I have to confess that I’ve been playing Ghost with Michael for this past year. He would be smiling about my “playing ghost” with him for we had joked about it as he was dying, and he vowed he would play it with me.

You may remember the 1990 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in which Patrick’s character is killed and then comes back as a ghost to protect his lover, Demi. The scene that stands out in my mind is the one in which Demi is creating a clay pot and Patrick’s ghostly form sits behind her, holding her, while she makes her art.

I’ve been doing my own version of this. I’ve been feeling Michael holding my hand for many months now. I ask for him to hold my hand, and I feel a very subtle sense of his hand on mine – warm and comforting. Sometimes I feel him holding my hand even when I haven’t asked. I feel him in my office too, the office I shared with him. And I often feel him when I meditate. I don’t know if it’s really him, but it doesn’t matter. It’s something that’s been happening and I have wanted it to happen.

At this one-year anniversary of his death, I’m realizing that at least for now, I need to let this go. I need to stop playing ghost with him. It keeps him too alive in my mind, and it keeps me from moving forward. And the point, the very necessary and painful point, is that he is dead and gone.

But it’s hard to let go of our loved ones, and the efforts toward communication with our dead feel important. It seems natural that we would strive to continue our connection to them. The bonds of love are so potent and profound, and they weave themselves into our  very Being in unknowable and inextricable ways.

So, there is something about fully accepting that Michael is gone and at the same time finding myself at a vibrational level that can occasionally and consciously commune with whatever remains of his spirit in this realm. But this communion needs to change in some indefinable way. I need to accept that no matter how potent the connection may be, I must move on with my life. It is too lonely and too empty to continue to reach back into our life together in this way. It is too sad to sing Happy Birthday to an empty chair. He is gone. And I remain.

And yet, I don’t know how to accept this. Not really. I’ve got the words, the concept, and even the feeling sometimes. But the level of true and complete acceptance of his loss continues to elude me.

Then I realize that I don’t have to know how to accept this, that in fact, I may not be able to know. Like so many things, I can’t figure this out. No amount of time in my head is going to make this clearer or easier. In fact, just the opposite. Once again, it comes down to trusting the very nature of life. To trusting that life will show me exactly what I need to learn. It comes down to being on my knees again, to asking for help and guidance, and to being humble enough to receive it. I have been on my knees so often in these past several years, and yet, here I am again. It seems to be the only place from which I can begin to know the deeper wisdom.

I go out to the garden where Michael’s ashes are buried, and I clear the space around them. The marker stones from last year have been moved by the harsh winter and I am on my knees as I place them once again in a circle. The giant hosta in the center is just beginning to show its spring growth of stalks and leaves. Among the stones are citrine, and hematite, and quartz, and tiger’s eye. There is aventurine and several pieces of lapis, for that is the stone of Medicine Buddha, and Michael had many of them. There is granite and a mysterious translucent green octahedron. There is obsidian and an unknown stone of orange and black. And there is his pocket Buddha. I know I will take these with me wherever I move for the rest of my life. And I will take the small urn of his remaining ashes.

It is so peaceful here today and I’m surprised to find that I am not crying. Instead I am washed in gratitude and love and the fullness of life.

Now I prepare a ritual by creating a sacred circle with the directions and the archangels and the powers they represent. I light a candle that will burn for 24 hours. It is a Yahrzeit candle from the Jewish tradition for remembering those who are gone, and it is lit on the one year anniversary of their passing. My intention is for the deepest honoring possible. And then, finally, it is about letting Michael go, or at least letting him go a little bit more.

For this is the long goodbye. This year of mourning is ending, and though I know my grief doesn’t end now, this is a signpost of some kind. I’ve made it through this terrible ordeal of Michael’s dying and death, and now it’s time to re-enter the flow of life, it’s time to begin to heal.

Even writing these words brings a fresh round of sorrow. But this is the task and I welcome its completion.

I say these words out loud to Michael and to the Universe as I kneel in the garden. “I fully accept that you are dead and gone. I let go of our life together with immense love and gratitude. Thank you, my love. I ask for help in letting go and moving forward into life’s flow. Help me. Please help me to let go of you, as I ask you to let go of me. Goodbye, my love. I will miss you forever in this life.” Now I cry wholeheartedly, every bit of me is committed to this moment, and once again, I water his resting place with my tears. I close the circle in reverence and silence.

I’m hoping that something is shifting. Today, I am trusting the process, the larger Source. It feels a bit like falling, but I’m falling softly, falling gently into the great mystery. And really, it is so soft that it feels like being held. My heart is being held.

 

 

Resting In Peace

October 8, 2018

My son, Darby, and I take a trip to the Pacific ocean, the ocean of peace. Our intention is to release the last of Michael’s ashes into this great sea, to forever blend the molecules of his Being into the vast and sacred water.

I bury some of his ashes in the Appalachians on the new moon in August. He loved those mountains, as did I, and I found a huge, ancient oak for the resting spot. In September, under the full moon, I bury most of his ashes in our garden along with several small mementos of his life. Now it is the new moon in October and I am with my son who loved Michael as a father, loved him in his own way. It is right that we are doing this together.

We find a perfect beach — almost no one around, tide pools, clean water, good waves. I know what I want to say, and I wade into the shallow surf until I feel I am standing exactly where I need to stand, water washing over my ankles, beautiful stones at my feet in the sand. With three handfuls of ashes I thank Michael over and over again for leaving me so well.

“Michael, thank you for leaving me physically safe and comfortable in my beautiful home.

Michael, thank you for giving me emotional sustenance, for giving me confidence, for giving me what I need to move forward, for believing in me.

Michael, thank you for supporting my psyche and my thoughts, for listening to my truth even when the words were hard to hear.

Michael, thank you for demonstrating the power of meditation to calm the mind and grow the soul. Thank you for teaching me to trust my spirit every single day.

Michael, thank you for dying when you did – leaving me enough time to get used to your going, and not so much time that I was unable to function.

Michael, thank you for loving me as I loved you.”

I cry throughout, my salty tears blending with the salty water. And now it is Darby’s turn. He has witnessed my ritual, and he does his own honoring with the ashes that are left. He is silent, though there are tears in his eyes as the last of Michael’s ashes are released to the sea.

On the way back from the ocean I find myself in a common argument with Darby, arguing that he needs to give me credit for hanging in there with Michael, for not leaving. I had told Darby of my thoughts about leaving Michael over a year ago. But Darby’s belief is that there is no real choice — you stay with your loved one when they are dying, even if the marriage has become relatively empty, has become friendship, has become physical caregiving, and emotional toll-taking. You simply stay!

I say that Michael understood the toll his illness was taking on me. In fact, Michael was the one who first brought up the idea of me leaving. “Babe, if you need to leave, if you just can’t do this, I understand. If you need to leave, then you should go.”

He said this early on in the process, and I knew he meant it. I was free to leave if I wanted to, but of course I couldn’t imagine doing such a thing at that time. And even then, I knew that we had both created and agreed to the situation, that we were both being tested in exactly the way we needed testing, and I stayed.

But I argue with Darby that there is a choice all along. That each day is a choice, that each act of giving care is a choice, that each moment is a choice that speaks to one’s ability to remain stable and kind while walking through hell.

Though my son seems to recognize the choice, he doesn’t really see it. How can he? He has never had to do anything like this.

He says he would do the “right thing.” For him, there is only one path, and it is the path of staying the course. I say that there are many who do not make this choice. Or that if they choose to stay, they stay with resentment, denial, anger and guilt. I insist that he give me credit for the choices that I made, and finally, reluctantly, he does.

But I can feel the reluctance and I come back to it. He says, “Mom, this is your issue. You keep bringing it up!”

And at that blessed moment, I see it all. For a moment, I see the entire crucible of my life with Michael. All the patterns, all the pain and joy and sorrow, all the ways in which I have tied myself into knots over his dying and death. And in that moment, that elusive clarity, I say, “I think I need to give myself credit.”

Now I am quiet, I take a deep breath, and I let this sink in. I’ve been feeling guilty. My child self has been back in her old mind-set, the one that says no matter what she does, it isn’t enough. It is never enough. And the cost of never being good enough is guilt. For almost six months now, ever since Michael died, I’ve been feeling this niggling and obscure sense of wrongness playing in the background, this sense that I didn’t do enough, or that I said too much.

I feel the horror of telling Michael that I am so unhappy that I have thought about living elsewhere, and now it really hits me. I thought it, and finally, as an act of desperation, I said it! I felt I was drowning, that my spirit was dying, that I couldn’t sustain our situation, and I told him. A crashing sense of regret and sorrow overwhelms me for a moment. How could I have said these things to this good man? To this great soul? How could I tell my dying friend that I was at a point in which I wanted to leave?

But then I know that if I hadn’t told this truth, if we hadn’t had the kind of relationship that would allow this level of truth between us, my soul would have shrunk inside of me and my heart would have closed. I would have stayed, but I would have stayed with a frozen heart.

It all becomes clear now. I’ve been feeling guilty and angry at myself for telling the truth! And feeling angry at Michael for putting us in this terrible and inescapable hell in which the truth I have to tell is painful and deep. I am angry that I dared to speak what my heart simply had to say.

Though I said all along that telling the truth, that being the emotional truth, was the most important part of Michael’s illness for me, I feel guilty that these were my feelings. But then I know that the only way I could survive his dying was to be honest about its effects on me and on us.

I think he knew this. I believe he understood this. I know he loved me, and to love me inevitably means being able to stand in whatever truth I glean and share from this sometimes difficult life.

I flash back again to his last moments on this earth, to his desperate struggle for breath, to his eyes rolling up in his head, to his last words: “love…you….” He died so well. He died with love in his heart and soul, and I was blessed enough to witness this love and feel it in myself. I am consoled by this.

For the first time since his death, I know that my guilt is simply my guilt. It wasn’t what Michael felt. It wasn’t what he took with him. He left this earth in love. And he wanted me to be happy. He said it many times, “I want you to be happy when I’m gone.”

And now, I begin to clearly allow this love to be what I am left with as well. There are tears rolling down my face as I feel into this truth. After almost three years, I finally let myself rest in peace.

 

New Identity

September 20, 2018

I must be working on a new identity now. Today I found myself renewing both my driver’s license and my passport, and certainly these are metaphors of identity. I got new photos, pictures that I hate, or at least don’t like very much. Washed out is how they look to me. Washed out and old. But that’s how I’m feeling today, so why shouldn’t my photos match my mood?

Even so, a new identity is being formed in the outer world, and I pay attention. I notice how negatively I’m viewing my pictures, how the words “washed out” arise on this grey stormy day, caught in another downpour in this unusually rainy September. But when I notice these feelings, I vow to see things differently.

Several times in the past week I’ve had to fill out forms for various agencies, doctors, and dentists. And I notice that I am now a Widow, a “W” on these forms, an upside down “M.” I realize that I feel a bit upside down, no longer married, no longer belonging to anyone in particular. It’s a weird thought really. Am I always and forever a widow now?

I’m actually not feeling so widowed these days. I’m feeling single. But that doesn’t matter to the government, to the doctors, to the institutions. Now I am a widow. Do I ever get to be single again, an “S”? Or am I destined to be a “W” for the rest of this life? An upside-down M, a reminder of the Hanged Man card in the tarot deck – the one who is  hanged upside down, suspended and waiting, but waiting with serenity and a slight smile on his face.

But waiting for what? Waiting for life to take a turn, I guess. Waiting for life to sweep me up again and blow its winds of change through my being. And when it happens, then I know that I’m the merest bit of flotsam in the Universe being swept, being held, being loved. Yet there is no sweeping without my willingness to give it space. And certainly, life can sweep in and overwhelm any plans that I have made, but today it feels like I have to participate in some more directed manner, in a way that allows a deeper truth to emerge.

I’m fairly certain that I’m not feeling like getting married again, not feeling like being an “M.” I’m seeing that for me, marriage is for raising children, for creating a family unit, or at least that’s how it seems right now. And even if I fall in love again, I’m not sure that I’d get married. I’m single, and I’m learning to accept my singleness. But there’s something here about also accepting my status as a widow. Something about completely accepting that this is how I’m seen by the world at large, and trying to find peace with it. And not only finding peace with widowhood, but finding peace with aging, with the inevitable changes, with letting go into this new reality.

Today, one of my clients tells me she’s asking the most basic identity question of all. She is asking: Who am I? I try to help her go more deeply into herself, but her answers are fairly commonplace – I’m a wife, a mother, an artist – words like that. I find myself wanting to answer the question as she does, to answer with relatively banal adjectives, to somehow identify myself in some easy and particular way. I know I can fall back on my profession, my business, my children, but that’s not who I am or who anyone is. It’s really such a profound question for any of us.

For when I get down to it, there is a “me” that inhabits this body-mind, a “me” who has built an identity around all kinds of adjectives. But it is just ego talking, and though there is a kind of truth in these egoic efforts, it’s cold comfort on the long nights alone.

Ultimately, there’s no real place to stand with any of these adjectives, but I didn’t truly face into this when I was married to Michael. I had the confidence of being married to a husband who loved me, a man who claimed me and who I claimed in return. And though it was terrifying and horrible, I ferried him through the awful dying and death he created for himself, through the passage that we co-created. And for a few years, this was my identity. Yet now, at last, I find myself truly alone. Alone and vulnerable and for the first time, forging an identity as an aging widow. I find myself cringing at these words, this cliché, so they must be true – an aging widow. What an awe-full thing to accept!

Of course I am more than an aging widow. I am full of spirit and light and hard-won wisdom and I’m generally healthy in body and mind. But these attributes do not change the necessity to accept the full spectrum of experience and truth, to explore all the aspects of identity that now present themselves.

I thought I understood the concept of the emptiness of identity for many years, but I didn’t really embrace it. For to embrace it fully means to embrace the utter emptiness that lies under the personality, under the body, under the mind. And this can feel stark and frightening. It can feel like nothing.

So, who is this “me” that lies under all the rest of it? Surely, there is something in the “I” who is writing these words. But even this is built on ego. Even as truthfully and carefully as I can answer this question, it still requires egoic energy to write these words, to articulate this truth. And when the ego is running things, we don’t ever really know the truth.

Anyone who has studied spirituality with any depth eventually comes to the question of identity. And it is always answered by recognizing the essence of the self, and ultimately, the inherent emptiness of the self. For when we get down to the real deal, to the bottom of the bottom, there’s nothing here but energy swirling in the vast unknown, and under this, there is the transparent and dazzling darkness of the void.

Fundamentally, it isn’t even “energy.” For it is all just Oneness. And the only thing that is holding this whole unutterably strange mystery together, the only thing that creates these forms in which we find ourselves, is love. Once again, whenever I really question who I am, it always comes down to love.

But these are easy words and not the true experience. I know that love is at the bottom of everything, but the experience of this ultimate love is fleeting and delicate and I can’t “make” it happen. Just as with any spiritual experience, it happens beyond us, it happens outside of personality, outside of words, and outside of any attempts to control it or understand it.

So now I pray. I pray wholeheartedly that I will once again be taken to the sacred place, that I will be swept up by God, or the Divine, or whatever you want to call this immeasurable ocean of experience. I pray that I will once again know the Identity beyond identity, the Wondrous Being. And when I do, then true acceptance will flood through me and heal me, and dear God, it will heal us all.

 

Impermanence

Impermanence by James R. Eads

9/1/18

I lost my center this past week. Circumstances arose that left me feeling needy and more alone. I’ve had plenty of people around, so it’s not that. But I can feel the neediness pulsing in my blood and running its greedy hands over my skin, and it’s taken days of meditation and thought to find my center again today.

Of course, there were several days in which I didn’t realize the loss of my center – days of confusion and excitement and fantasy that things are really just fine, that I am just fine. I’m still not sure what pulled me away from myself though I suspect that finally burying Michael’s ashes is a big part of it.

On the day of the full moon, I buried his ashes in our garden. I also put some of his “little treasures” into the hole with him, and all of it was watered by my copious tears and my gratitude, deep and true. Since then, I actually feel myself letting go a bit more. I feel the beauty of freedom, and I know that this freedom is the gift of accepting a greater intensity of impermanence. But this feeling of freedom, this acceptance of impermanence, also seems to be so new that my ground has once again been shaken. For now, there’s no kidding myself in any way, Michael is really gone.

No one is as close as Michael was, and maybe no one ever will be that close again. I don’t know. But I do know that I’m very aware of giving others space. I think I’ve been good at giving space for a long time. But before, I always had Michael to come home to, Michael to talk to, Michael to work it through with. This brought me comfort and peace and I didn’t need connections to others the way I currently do. So, and this seems so obvious, one of the main understandings is that my friends aren’t going to replace the level of intimacy that I have lost. And though it seems obvious, living it is something else again.

What I’ve realized with friends, is the utter importance of not being sticky. Love feels sticky to me when there’s a glue-like pull to it. It’s a love that’s not free, a love that needs something, a love that wants too much.

Certainly, I have levels of intimacy with others. But of course, none of these relationships can fill in for one that was 35 years long. It’s just not possible. And more to the point, I just can’t expect it to be.

I’ve asked my closest friends whether they have felt me being sticky. They all say they have not, but maybe they would say that anyway, though actually I believe they are the kinds of people who tell the truth when asked. Mostly people keep telling me how “strong” I’m being, but I’ve got to say, it doesn’t always feel this way.

For instance, I certainly experience this stickiness inside of me. There are times when I go through layers of emotional garbage to get to a more spacious place, and I always do it alone. I don’t put it on others, don’t talk about it, and I don’t expect others to fill up my emptiness. But oh, sometimes, how I wish they could!

I’ve noticed that if I’m set to have lunch or dinner with a friend, and they have to cancel for some reason, I’m certainly disappointed. The disappointment can then turn into feelings of anger, or loneliness, or a sense of rejection, along with several iterations of why things got canceled and whether there is some kind of problem in our relationship. It’s exhausting when it happens and thankfully, it only happens occasionally, but it can go on for quite some time. These are the times when my center feels gone.

Eventually, meditation allows me to move to the stronger place – the place in which I know that I love, and am loved in return. It seems so easy to write these words, and yet the years of work on the self that have gone into these words, have been long and arduous indeed. And now all of that work is being tested in the biggest way possible.

All of this has made me realize that there’s something new in me now that wasn’t there before, and it’s something about impermanence, about holding things lightly, about becoming comfortable with being truly alone.

What I know for sure is that watching one’s mate die over a long period of time has made me extraordinarily aware of the actual experience of impermanence. For as one slowly dies, one thing after another changes and is lost, and one thing after another must be surrendered. As Michael used to say, it’s the death of a thousand cuts. Before, impermanence was an interesting concept, part of understanding the way things work, part of spiritual philosophy, but now it’s a living reality.

Something that I unrealistically thought would last forever, didn’t. And yes, of course on some level, the relationship with Michael is continuing and is alive in me. But in this human realm, it’s over. And one of the main lessons that his death affords me, is to truly grasp that nothing lasts. Nothing.

It’s horrendous, really. We just can’t take it in because it is such a huge and painful lesson. Nothing, not a single thing that I own or do or am, lasts in this physical world. I’m currently struggling with this on a daily basis. But it’s an excellent struggle! It requires me to go to my Higher Self for renewal and sanity. It requires me to look at all of my possessions from a different perspective. It asks me to let go of the previous moment, and to embrace this one. If I don’t want to act crazy, or be too needy, or lose my stability, I must go to my center and ground, over and over again, many times a day.

So, finding the stable place, the strong place, is all up to me. There’s no one to bounce it off of the way I bounced it with Michael. I know this is good for me. I know it’s supporting my real growth, but it’s hard and I have to be very alert to the missteps that are caused by need. And somehow, it’s all connected to love, and learning to love from a clearer place inside of me.

Part of what is proceeding from this greater understanding of impermanence is that, as far as I can tell, I haven’t made any important decisions out of fear! When I really know that nothing lasts, it allows me to let go more easily. For example, I was sorely tempted to buy a new house a few months ago. It was a fine house in the perfect part of town. What a great distraction it would have been! More importantly, it would have been an avoidance of the very real need to process my grief, and there have been so many times when I have wished to avoid this endless processing. But impermanence says there will be other houses, or there won’t, and it doesn’t really matter.

I know that this work with impermanence and aloneness, like all work with the self, is an ongoing practice that requires me to be vigilant, and honest, and most meaningfully, compassionate with myself. And this compassion is really just another way of saying that I’m learning a deeper level of self-love.

This is not a sticky love, but a love built on the truth that everything changes. It’s a love built on the ability to surrender. It’s an acceptance of the reality of constant change at the deepest level. Grasping the truth of impermanence means that much of what I think and feel is so important, is simply ego. And when I genuinely know this, I am forced to find that which is permanent. For there is one thing that lasts, and only one.

I told a friend recently that when I go into deep meditation, my current mantra is a surrender to love. “I am Love, being Loved, by Love.” Try it for yourself, if you’d like. For me, it’s a paradoxical sense of receiving infinite love into my heart, and simultaneously giving infinite love out from my heart. It’s a constant flowing motion that contains utter stillness at its center. For always, the lessons eternally come back to the principles we’ve been shown, to those things we know in our bones. Always, they come back to the One True Thing.

 

 

 

 

Widow

The Weight of Grief by Celeste Roberge

8-4-18

I am living with “fully alive, heart-centered, resignation” toward widowhood. These are the words my friend, Fran, says to me. As she speaks, I remember several months ago not wanting to identify myself as a widow, wanting desperately to distance myself from the reality of this word, this state of being. But that is exactly what I am now, or at least part of what I am, and her words remind me that I am in the process of resigning myself to a fully alive, heart-centered widowhood. What a difficult task!

The word “widow” still feels sorrowful and disconnected. It conjures images of sad, old women dressed in black, and the “w” sound seems inherently mournful, or at least wistfully poetic. And then there’s that silent “w” at the end. Oh, the silence.

One of the things I’m realizing in this widowhood is the silence. There’s a goodness in it, a stillness. But there is also a terrible loneliness that nothing and no one can fill but Michael. And part of me, very oddly, continues to feel that he might be there to fill that hole, to fill the looming emptiness that awaits me at the end of each day. It’s completely irrational, but I can’t help thinking that he might be on a long, weird vacation. I’m not sure when or if that feeling will disappear, but it’s with me daily, that sense of him not really being gone.

Of course, he’s not “gone.” But that gets into all the things we imagine about our dead, about where they are, about how it is in the land of the dead, and about what our relationship with the dead really is. For instance, I often feel that Michael is watching me, hearing me, even helping me. I think many of us feel this way. Most of us end up talking to our dead, telling them what we’re feeling, how we miss them, giving them magical qualities that allow them to help us from “the other side.” Or at least, I do. But there’s not much comfort in this.

I really don’t have a clue whether any of these thoughts are true. I used to think I knew something about the other side, but I realize now that my thoughts were probably wishful thinking, or hubris, or some combination of ideas from various sources. Because the truth is, even if they are helping us, hearing us, seeing us, we really don’t know. I want it to be true, but all I really know is that Michael is in Spirit now. Whether there is any form or memory left over from the life he had with me is up for grabs. I imagine Michael is “there” but I’m still alone and lonely on this earthly plane, and this leaves a terrible sense of emptiness hanging in the space around me.

I realize that these thoughts have put me in a new phase of widowhood. In some ways, it’s a harder phase. All the excitement, which isn’t quite the right word, is over – the dying, the death, the memorial, the cards and flowers, the focused attention – all of that is over. And now it’s just the living with it. The daily grind of getting through it, of finding a life that begins to fill in the emptiness, of making a conscious effort to stay connected. Thankfully, on most days I am washed in my connections with beautiful others.

But there is still a large amount of time alone. I’m finding this alone time to be quite a challenge for it actually involves forming a new identity, and this is slow-going indeed. I hear myself referring to “our” house, “our” garden, “our” business. There’s 35 years of “us” to contend with, and that’s not going to go away.

I’m also noticing a strong need to talk about Michael. It’s some kind of struggle to keep him alive inside of me, and I realize I’m not ready to let go yet, that my separate identity hasn’t formed yet. And maybe one is never really ready to let go of those they have loved. All I know is that I miss him fiercely. It’s inevitable and there’s no way around it. There are just too many ways in which we are intertwined and entangled, too many ways in which his energy is part of me forever.

To deal with the endless time alone, I start cruising on the Match.com site. I’m embarrassed to say this, but it’s true, and as I said before, if writing isn’t about the truth, then it’s worthless. I’m just looking so far, but I’ve got to say, it’s pretty grim in Iowa Match world. Lots of men on motorcycles, lots of Hawk fans, lots of lonely hearts with whom I have little in common.

I haven’t put my whole self into this search. I just can’t. I’m looking around and it’s probably too soon anyway. But I’m not looking for marriage or a lifelong partner. I’d just like to go out for coffee, or for dinner and a movie. Mostly, I’d like to find a new friend. But as we all know, making real friends takes time.

So, a new identity needs to be formed. A new way of being in the world as an “independent woman.” I notice that I have to put this in quotation marks. This independence doesn’t feel quite real to me yet, and I can see myself floating on ego as a way of coping. “I love my work. I own a business. I’m a good partner. I’m alive and alert to life. I still look pretty good, etc.” This ego patter goes on until a new wave of grief washes over me and I realize it’s all just nonsense. Finally, I cry and my heart bursts open once again.

Then, I know that identity requires an ego upon which it can ride, but it’s the higher self that I wish to embody and become, the higher Being that is the only real truth, and ego has no ability to encompass this. It’s damned hard to build this new higher identity when I’m consumed in grief and loneliness. For it looks to me like there are two obvious paths here – one in which I move on into a new life, and one in which I cling to the old life and never truly let go.

Any loss, in fact, every loss, must ultimately force us into redefining who we are. From the smaller losses of things such as money to the larger losses of friends and loved ones, we are forced to re-forge who we are without that thing or that person in our lives, forced to re-grow ourselves around the empty space.

I know that it is grief and pain that allow the higher self to emerge. For it is suffering that either crushes us or entreats us to expand. I know I am in the process of choosing growth. But so much of what must be new growth feels like it is going on underground. I can dimly sense this growth in the liminal spaces vacated by Michael, in ways that I can barely imagine, in the fleeting winds of freedom that blow through me. But often the newness feels shaky, or false, or forced. So, I back off, retreat into my house, my dog, my writing, my books, until the next time life breathes me out into the world again. And thank God, it does. Over and over, I am flung back into the sacred flow of life.

I tell my friend, Fran, that I’m tired of being sad, that I’ve been sad for too long, that I want to be done with grief. She says, “What you really want is for grief to be done with you!” She’s right, of course, and I find my resistance to widowhood softening a bit, I find my identity shifting.

At the highest level we are always dealing with elemental forces – love, grief, fear, forgiveness, grace, and more. We can learn to see these as primal human experiences that are not under our control, and ultimately, we don’t move through them. In fact, our tiny ego selves literally can’t move through them. The forces move through us! And when we know this, rather than being captured by them, we witness them with curiosity and bated breath. For there isn’t any act of will that allows grief to end. It is Grace that moves us. Or it is Grace’s other name, Love. All of it, all movement, whether we recognize it or not, is in our surrender to this beauty we call Grace.

Riding the Waves

 

June 16, 2018

It’s 52 days since Michael’s death and I’ve been alone the whole day. I haven’t spoken to a single person, not one, except of course, Michael. But he doesn’t answer. For the first time since he died, and for a whole day, I haven’t cried. Though of course I’m crying now as I think about him. I’m so lonely and I miss him so much.

I talk to the dog. She doesn’t answer either, but she does wag her tail and lick my hands, so that’s something. The thing is, the very singular thing is, that this kind of loneliness can only be filled by Michael, and he’s not ever going to be here to fill it again. There is literally an unfillable hole in my life, and that is the truth of grief.

Sometimes I wish I had the mind of my dog. She is utterly present-centered. When Michael was alive and lying in a hospital bed in our living room, she loved him. She licked him and cuddled him and wanted to be near him. After he died I held her up to his body and she had no interest at all. None. He was simply gone and she knew it. And, weirdly, if he walked in the door right now, and how I wish he could, she’d be delirious with joy. There’s no gap for her. There’s no missing. He’s just not here.

A new friend reminded me of something Ram Dass said about the loss of a loved one. He said that not only is one dealing with the loss of that person, one is also dealing with the loss of the part of one’s self that was known by that person. And now that is gone. This makes me cry even harder. For no one else will ever know me in the very particular, subtle, and conscious way that Michael did. That level of being known, that rich particularity, is lost forever in this life.

In spite of my best efforts, the house is filled with Michael, even as I clear out so many of his things, his books, his clothes — he is everywhere! There’s the art we bought in Green Bay, and the fossil we found at the gorge. There’s the large vertebrae of some huge mammal we stumbled on in the mountains, and the garden ornament I bought for him because of a dream he had. The list goes on and on. Every room of this house, every thought in my head, has a tendril that leads back to Michael. There are times when it is extremely painful and times when it is comforting, but always, it is a little too empty now, and much too sad. And part of me just desperately wants to escape, wants to run away, wants to find another lover, another house, another life.

I find myself cruising the Zillow site looking at houses for sale, and I even find one I think would be right for me. I text my realtor, who also lost a true love, and she talks me down from the edge, thank god. I won’t be buying a new house today. But the impulse is still there and I have to wrestle with it. I plan a trip to California to meet my first grandchild in September and I realize I am pinning so many hopes on this new life that is being born, so many hopes for this hole in me to be filled, all the while knowing that it won’t. I look ahead to birthdays and anniversaries and holidays with something approaching dread, and I pray I’m in a better place inside of myself when they occur.

A friend eloquently writes: “I think about you being alone in a house still animated with scents and wispy trails of Michael’s presence, thicker in some places and thinner and more spread out in others, as if one moment you step into liminal spaces where the veil between worlds thins and the next you find yourself solidly in this physical world of ours.”

This is exactly right. I’m in the liminal space most of the time when I’m alone – between the worlds. I talk to Michael then, and there’s still enough memory of his voice that I can hear him say, “It’s ok, Babe. You’re doing fine.” I imagine it’s actually him speaking to me then, his spirit reaching out across the void to comfort me. And maybe it is.

I have a session with our psychic, the one who correctly predicted Michael’s death, to ask her about my life now that he is gone. She tells me that I’m still in shock from his death but this is lightening, and when it does, Michael will come through to me more easily. She also tells me that finding another love is not my primary mission. Rather, I am to “feel safe in earth” in order to experience profound relaxation while on my own. This level of relaxation is based in utter faith in the Divine as it unfolds. She says this is the key to deeper enlightenment.

She also says that the hardest part of enlightenment isn’t the leap into it, it is the integration of its many lessons and this takes time. I will know that I am making progress  when I am filled with fearlessness. She reminds me of other readings I’ve had in which I am told how important it is, how actually crucial it is, for me to find joy within myself and my own life. She sees another love coming for me but not for awhile, for it is my task to learn to live alone, to root deeply into my own center.

I know she is right. I’ve never really lived alone until now. I’ve lived with girlfriends and boyfriends, and husbands, and children. But I’ve never lived alone.

Many years ago an astrologer told me about my North node. The North node points to what your soul came into this life to learn, and mine is in the first house, the house of independence.  The numerology of my birth date has a similar message, for my life path adds up to the number “one.” This signifies that I am a leader and independence is my greatest strength.

But it doesn’t feel like this to me. I don’t feel like a leader. I feel done in, at sea, overwhelmed. So much of me wants to fall back into what is easy, to meld into another relationship, to give myself over to a new lover or a new house. Yet I can hear the truth in the psychic’s words. She gives me the same information I’ve heard from all of these other esoteric sources. I must find joy in my life without losing myself, without giving myself away to the life of another. Then, and only then, can true love come again. This finding of myself could not happen without Michael’s death, and now I realize this truth at another level. His death was an absolutely necessary part of our soul contract, a necessary sacrifice.

As I write these words, another tidal wave of grief comes rushing in. It tosses me into the deep water and as it does, I know this is sacred space. All of it. This grief is teaching me to learn to love my life without Michael. It is teaching me to swim in this vast ocean without drowning, and it is teaching me to find my way to shore once again. I know that the hardest thing is for me to sit exactly here on this shore, as steadily as I can. Sit exactly here and allow wave after wave to wash through me, leaving me clearer and calmer with each undulation of this endless sea.

Letting Go

 

A minuscule sampling of the stuff in Michael’s study.

June 8, 2018

There’s a kind of desperation in me some days, a desperation to be done with this pain, this horrible and unimaginable emptiness of loss. Michael has been dead for 44 days now, and I count the days wishing they would move more quickly, wishing that this pain would stop. It’s a far worse grief than when Michael was still alive though at the time I didn’t know it could be any worse. But it is.

A friend of mine likens this loss to an earthquake, another calls it a tsunami, and I read an account that calls it a tornado. These feel right to me. All are natural disasters. And that is exactly what death is – a natural disaster – one that literally brings us to our knees.

The disaster drives me today. I can feel its sharp bite on my heels and I want to do something, anything. Something to make the pain less intense, less pressing, less overwhelming.

I go to the jewelry store to get my wedding ring re-sized so that it will fit on my little finger. It’s the heart meridian finger in Chinese medicine and it seems appropriate. A place to put the symbol of our love — Heart fire.

As I’m speaking with the woman behind the counter she says that maybe I’d just like to buy a smaller ring. I say that I can’t, that this is my wedding ring and I begin to cry. I didn’t expect to cry here today. I thought I was doing ok, and now I am crying in a store in front of a complete stranger. Thankfully, she is calm and kind and offers exactly the right kind of compassion in this moment. I put my re-sized ring on and immediately feel that it is heavy and awkward there. The woman notices and says, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Then there are the days when I’m fine. I mean that. I’m just fine. Or not whole days really, but hours of being truly involved with life’s swift flow, enjoying the rush of people and experience, the quiet eddies, the deep pools of contemplation and relief.

But the desperation is what I’m working with today. I can meditate, but just barely. I can do yoga, I can walk, I can read a bit, and still the desperation for this grief to move on, for things to change, is there. It is asking me to let go.

But the truth is, there’s nothing I can do. The only thing that really works is to sit with it. To allow its sharp teeth to bite my heart, to let it bleed once again, to cry the red and blue tears of deep grief.

In my desperation I’ve been cleaning out Michael’s stuff, trying to make this space my own, hoping that as I do so, I will begin to move into this new life more fully, more peacefully. Yet there’s so much stuff that it’s taking far longer than I thought it would. How can that be true? I lived with this man for so many years and yet I am finding more “stuff” than I ever knew about.

My dear sister volunteers to help me move his things out, thank god, because I truly can’t imagine facing this alone. I have tried. I walk into his study, look around, move a few papers, and walk back out again. It is simply too much.

I’ve discovered that Michael was a pack rat! Far worse than I realized – a real pack rat, a hoarder of small things, useless things, funny things. For instance, in his study we found over 300 blank CDs. 300! Package after package. Clearly, he’d thought that he was going to make lots of recordings. In his struggle to find a purpose, he thought he would create meditation CDs. It’s a grand and completely outdated idea but here I am, stuck with 300 CDs and it feels horribly wasteful just to throw them out. Yet, I literally have no use for them. None. I keep them for now, waiting for my brother who says he “knows a guy” who will use them.

In the bathroom closet I find 22 boxes of band aids. Admittedly, Michael was bleeding easily and often. Brushing up against even tiny protuberances led to abrasions that might not heal for weeks, and band aids and gauze and tape were all needed. But there are 22 boxes of band aids for me to deal with. Many are opened but still full, and many aren’t even opened.

I can only imagine what he must have been feeling. His anxiety over bleeding must have caused him to buy band aids whenever he went to the store. Just one more box. In case. Simply forgetting that there are already many boxes at home. So, he’d use the latest box once or twice, push it back into the chaos of his bathroom closet, and buy another box. I take a huge bag of supplies to the Free Medical Clinic.

Then I find, buried in a file cabinet, every card I’d ever made for him. Years and years of homemade cards, some better than others, but each made with love, a way to express my feelings for him. I look through them and find birthdays, and anniversaries, and solstices. I cry when I find them for they were clearly precious to him. And then I realize that I doubt he ever got around to looking at them again. There’s so much stuff here that all they could be is another thing he is hoarding. And yet, and yet, there was such love between us.

Finally, after many days, his study is beginning to feel clear — except for the books. There are still many books, some to sell, some to give away, some to keep. It’s arduous going through them and it’s arduous letting them go. For I know he loved his books.

There are books on languages – Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, and even Esperanto. He spoke all of these a little bit, and he knew German and Latin really well.

There are many books on Western mysticism and magic, books on Kabbalah and tarot, books on ancient and hidden archeology, books on Chinese medicine and herbs, books on energy healing, books on astrology, books on music, and more books and books and books. There are also 10 decks of tarot cards. 10 decks!

It feels almost sacrilegious to be going through his books, his things, in this way. He treasured them, and for him, they held the knowledge he loved and acquired through decades of devoted study and learning.

And yet, I also know that I am not going to invest in several new areas of learning. I’m not going to study Hinduism or Vedic astrology or Chinese medicine any more deeply than I already have. These are not my books. And though I see their value, I can’t imagine lugging them around for the rest of my life.

For that is what I’m looking at now – the rest of my life. Michael has been dead for 44 days, and I’m looking at the rest of my life. I’m still counting the days, and now, the weeks, and I find that this is common for those who have lost a loved one. We count the days without them. The inexorable time slipping away between us, the subtle shiftings into the past tense, the memories becoming more distant and more abstract. I’m looking forward to a time when I can count the months rather than the weeks, and maybe someday, count the years rather than the months.

But there is also the sense of not wanting to let go, not wanting the memories to become abstract and distant. There’s a sense of scrambling to keep him close, to hold him in some secret way, to talk about him, to write these words. There’s a desire to keep his things, his messy things, to create a mausoleum of Michael. As a person who values order and calm, I cannot keep these messy things, these things that are not mine, these things that no longer belong. Slowly and surely, I am losing him and there’s no way to keep him close. Things are changing and there’s no going back.

I wait for the next earthquake with trepidation, wishing this awful shaking would be over, but knowing it is not. I cannot  prepare for them. There’s no safe place to ride out this kind of disaster.

My ground has been shaken and it will shake again — maybe in a store, maybe with a friend, maybe sitting alone at night watching a sentimental movie. I will be shaken again in the inevitable grief and loneliness of profound loss. And maybe it’s the shaking that actually does it — that makes me tremble, that throws me to my knees, that allows me to realize that this earth is not the place to put my faith. Maybe the shaking is finally deep enough that it allows me to let go.