More jottings from my grief journals. 12/8/13 I am not so easily overset as I was. My cup is no longer full-up, sloshing, to the brim. So I am not constantly spilling over at the merest additional drop. On the other hand, I am able to push real recognition away. Continue Reading
2013
pieces-parts: October-November
More jottings from my grief journals this fall. Writing, talking about it feels like rooting around, scratching out a depression in the earth, trying to make a place to fit myself and curl up. * OCTOBER PIECES-PARTS “How are you?” (early October) I went to a large event with a Continue Reading
pieces-parts: September
I wrote about living with grief this summer. I’ve been jotting down what I could throughout the fall, too. I haven’t been able to shape it into a whole essay yet — it’s more piecemeal, as the experience of my grief itself has become a little more piecemeal, the dough Continue Reading
wish list
Hello my dears! Are you wondering what to get me for Christmas (or Solstice or belated Hanukkah)? Here is what I would like: a memory. I would love it if you would tell me something you remember about Val. Or about Val and me, or Val and you, or you Continue Reading
Day of the Dead
Nelson Mandela died yesterday. Here is a thing: nowadays, when I read that someone has died, I am noticing that I react with almost a comfortable sense of kinship. Not kinship with the mourners, but with the person who died. As if the dead person and I, we went to Continue Reading
a poem I read to Val
My dears, In the last weeks of Val’s life, someone from her meditation group shared a poem with her. She described it to me, briefly with her brief breath, and I sat in the bed next to her spelunking the internet with my phone until I found the right thing. Continue Reading
to be dissolved
This is from My Antonia, which I just read, wishing the whole time I was reading it to Val. Today marks six months she has been gone, and it still makes no sense to me at all. I miss her fiercely.
sangha stone & huckleberry
My dears, A small sweet house in SE Portland has been turned into a meditation center, a sangha. Val used to meditate there, and when she couldn’t travel easily, her meditation group came to her at home. Nelly (Val’s meditation teacher) and the rest of the group wanted to Continue Reading
an invitation
My dears, listen, this blog has so many days felt like a lifeline. Writing that – “lifeline” – I pictured, in quick proliferation: a towline, like with a mule on the Erie Canal; a muddy tug-of-war rope at some happy family picnic; an IV drip; the belaying line connecting mountaineers; Continue Reading
When I came into this room
When I came into this room, you were already here. When the fierce winds pushed me in, and the door slammed shut, you looked up from your tables of quiet fellowship and you greeted me. You know who you are. I knew who I was. Now I am becoming again. Continue Reading