Please note, as a follow up to last week’s post, that I DID donate and sort everything that was scattered around my yard and got stuff all back into the shed. The shed is now very empty and very organized and I got rid of or consolidated about 20 bins worth of stuff. I got very numb about halfway through this… that lasted for a few days. Such is the price we pay for existence in grief and in general. Or it is what it is. Are those the same thing? Hmmm… yes.
Anyway. To own something is to be owned by it… and so there is freedom in releasing things.
I do feel lighter. Now.
And the weight of disorganization has lifted too. Which is nice.
As I type this I am feeling the “what is that, temperature equilibrium?” of a warm 75 degree breeze blowing in through the open window. But still… the window is open.
It rained hard ALL night on Friday, which was great. The gardens needed it. With all the stuff put up in the shed, and nothing I had to worry about getting rained on, it all had a very “all is right with the world” vibe to it.
it’s not. Let’s be clear.
But with the rain and this one curled up next to me… the vibes are there, at least.
Cats make everything/anything better. I am convinced. And it’s nice to be so loved by a literal tiny little creature.
The rain luckily didn’t cause mud issues at a party with live music thing on a ranch I went to last night. There was a musician playing that I swear to GOD I heard was dead. But nope. And said musician was one that Lucas and I used to go see in Austin in 1999… a statement that also doesn’t seem possible and yet here we are.
I brought the best behaved ghost I know with me. I went and was social and tried not to be weird… effort on that front can only take me so far, but just know I fucking tried. And I had FUN. A statement I can make without a qualifier or asterisk on it even! Look at that… I almost didn’t think that was possible to accomplish.
I did have 4 beers last night and that’s fine and was good and I worry a bit (again) that talking about it here conveys that it was a problem, before. No no, but this thing I’m doing of recording data without judgment or intention behind it has been so interesting! And I just woke up one day and behavior just started shifting around me. Easy peezy, you know? Isn’t that odd? I was fine before. I am fine now. I am trying to stick this lesson in my brain is all- that recording of data like this will be useful in multiple things around habits and pattern recognition in the future too. And in the mean time… my skin looks better and my sleep is a way higher caliber. I feel better. I try to stick this as a note to myself with a thumbtack to the corkboard in the mind and not forget.
In other, other news I have been holding to my Friday Night Writes regularly again… but this last one was different.
Room was still cleaned first. New sheets were put on the bed. Candle was lit. Tea was poured.
The ritual stood as it always has.
But this time there was no writing. There was only editing.
THIS WAS SO WEIRD! So all these 291 pages have been written over the last (counting on fingers) last 17 months and are about grief. I eventually started sorting them into 4 categories/stages:
Stage 1: Shock
Stage 2: Survival
Stage 3: Deciding to Live
and an as yet unnamed 4th stage. (nobody suggest “Thriving” for that stage because nooooooopppeee.)
This has come recently, this categorization- but it’s helped me sort through all this REALLY disparate writing into subfolders/concepts.
So last night I sat down with my tea and did a first edit on the folder called Stage 1: Shock and woof was that weird! As we all remember in early/mid grief my mind went all Pixie’s song on me (singing *where is my mind*…) and I was FLYING in some weird liminal reality coupled with some rocking short term memory loss… which means editing my writing from that period is WEIRD AS HELL because I don’t remember damn near any of it.
Two things I took away from first edits on the 80 pages I got through: I’m funny even (especially?) when I’m in pain and also I can’t spell worth a shit.
it was (she says for the 3rd fucking time in a short fucking space) weird. It also showed me how broken I was those first months/year/now, because (character flaw) I ALWAYS used to remember my own jokes/writing… and I don’t really remember ANY of this, now.
It wasn’t hard to read, which I was a little worried about. No, no, I stare grief in it’s stupid little face daily so there was no difficulty to read it- it was, so much of it, just new but not.
Here is an example. I wrote this last August, under the title: “Object Impermanence and Lost Love”
I consider if the connection is gone just because I can’t see him. In the before time I did not stop loving my husband the second I couldn’t see him around the corner in the other room or even when he was a country or two away. I’d be damned if physics and the distance between wherever the hell he is now and wherever the hell I am now is going to stop me from doing the same. My love is stronger than the laws of physics, and so is my husband’s, of that I am sure; if anyone could make this work I have faith that it is going to be us. I fundamentally am absolutely never going to come to a place where I am done with that boy and so I resolve to figure this out.
And so… my love survives. And sustains me. And is an active part of my life. I write to him. I meditate to him. I dream of him. I talk of him. I talk to him. I move my purse from the passenger seat to the floor so he has a place to sit.
I will say that the only time- the ONLY time messages or signs come through are in moments not of despair but of peace. Luckily I drift through this wasteland and I can get there, not often but still more than seems probable. To peace, I mean. And I feel him near and see many a sign. I know, in that, I am lucky. Maybe you won’t and can’t. But I bet, even if you can’t hear them or feel them… that they can hear you. I would challenge you (or whoever I am, in fact writing this to (me?)), to operate under that assumption. And for sure do the things the whoo-whoo books tell you to do. Call on them to help you in your desperation. Call on them to enjoy a sunset with you in gentle times. Call on them to give you signs. But… don’t do just that. To do that, only, means the relationship is one sided. All you are doing is asking… what are you giving? Conversation and relationships and connection are all about give and take. I’d stop showing up too if all someone did was ask me for a white feather! Here’s your damn feather! I’m off to see what the rings of Saturn have to offer now, you know?
And so, what do you GIVE? For me I beam out love- and I wish there was a less insane way to phrase that. But I literally sit in meditation, call up my husband’s handsome face, and beam love right at him. I try to push out the warmth and care and adoration I would have conveyed in a hug and sustain that out as long as I can. I talk to him, sometimes during the day, and I also write to him at night. I tell him of my sadness, or hard times, but I share the good times too. I tell him I love him. And that I’ll see him soon but that I have to take the long way round to get there. I tell him to stay with me. I tell him I love him, over and over and over again. Love is a verb, is all, is all.
I liken it to this: If your person was an astronaut and an accident happened- they were not coming home. Mission control can’t tell you if they are alive or not, but miraculously the radio is open and still connected… wouldn’t you talk into it? Wouldn’t you put in that small effort, on the off chance your voice is the only one they hear? That maybe they can’t talk and tell you what they want, hold a conversation… but they can hear you. I bet you’d keep talking to them. I bet you would. And I bet if there was ever a blip of the machinery you’d know they were doing everything in their power to somehow get a message across… trying to tell you they were okay somehow. By waggling the telescope relay. Pounding their fists on the control panel. Anything within their power. Any means possible.
They are only lost if you are.
I DO NOT REMEMBER WRITING ANY OF THAT.
I agree with it, mind you. And I remember doing the things I wrote about then, and I continue to do them now… but that may as well have been someone else doing the typing, back then, over a year ago. This is WILD to me, to go back and reread stuff in these pages. And the weirdest part is… my own words are a comfort to me? Is that what self kindness is? Comforting yourself? It kinda all… I don’t know. Breaks the brain a little.
Anyway. That’s what all my writing on Fridays has been like. And this last Friday was the first time I’ve gone back and reread any of it. I feel like I’ve been just furiously typing on a typewriter and tossing the pages behind me in a jumble on the floor. It’s SUCH a weird mess of first and third person, present and past tense, styles, subjects… editing will be no easy feat.
And I could totally just go: that was a personal exercise that helped me in my grief and I can leave it as that… aside from one thing. EVERY time I have those thoughts… someone will tell me I should write a book. Isn’t that weird? I just… feel compelled to listen to it, because it has happened SOO many times now (no lie- it’s 10+ times) that I just go… okay. OKAY. Telescope relay waggle received. I will do the thing.
So I just… keep doing the thing.
I am, somehow, on a great adventure, here.
Now I am off, belatedly, to set up my ofrenda.
Love is a verb, after all.
Till next time.
the something garden 