A wonderful woman, Betty Garrison, left the world a year ago today. She is sorely missed by me and many others. I’m doing my best to remember her on Val’s behalf too. This year I’m gonna pick out some new dahlias in her honor.
loss
pieces-parts: January-February
More jottings from my grief journals. 1/13/14 R asked me about the term “bucket,” and Val using it as an endearment. Here’s what I told her: To be honest I am not sure where she got it. But it seemed to spring up a few years into my knowing her Continue Reading
pieces-parts: December
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
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
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
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
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
rosehips
Four months ago today we lost our Val. I miss her all day, every day. The ache winds like a fugue-melody through the background of everything. The days are filled with things that don’t quite become real because I don’t get to show them to her. I wanted to show Continue Reading