Hi –
Nothing new to report around here. The Hanamus tree is up and it looks pretty damn good if I do say so myself. I’m heading to Rab’s on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been a pretty big constant in my life for the last 5 or so years. It will be nice to do it again. Plus I could really use some Rab love, especially a hug.
Since I have nothing really new and overly interesting to say these days, I figured I would let someone else do it. Carly gave me this quote a while ago and I had tucked it away for safe keeping, and I stumbled upon it today.
"Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence...The more often I cried in my room...and felt just generally wretched, the more often I started to have occasional moments of utter joy, of feeling aware of each moment shining for its own momentous sake. I am no longer convinced that you're supposed to get over the death of certain people, but little by little, pale and swollen around the eyes I began to feel a sense of reception, that I was beginning to receive the fact of [the death,] the finality. I let it enter me.
I was terribly erratic: feeling so holy and serene some moments that I was sure I was going to end up dating the Dalai Lama. Then the grief and craziness would hit again, and I would be in Broken Mind, back in the howl.
The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it, like a nicotine craving, I would discover that it hadn't washed me away. After a while it was like an inside shower, washing off some of the rust and calcification in my pipes. It was like giving a dry garden a good watering. Don't get me wrong: grief sucks; it really does.
Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of living spirit. Mostly I have tried to avoid it by staying very busy, working too hard, trying to achieve as much as possible. You can often avoid the pain by trying to fix other people; shopping helps in a pinch, as does romantic obsession. Martyrdom can't be beat... I've found that a stack of magazines can be numbing and even mood altering. But the bad news is that whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you.. A fixation can keep you nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since your life may indeed have fallen apart, the illusion won't hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave, you will be willing to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination...'There are cracks, cracks, in everything, that's how the light gets in.' "
Love you forever, miss you always.
Rachel
