I've been thinking a lot about the idea of being seen and heard.  As a child of abuse it was not something I experienced growing up, I think it's pretty common among that subset of children.  I also grew up choosing relationships where that did not happen, recreating my past.  Perhaps David's greatest gift to me was that he gave me a relationship where I was seen and heard. 

He saw all the crazy, angry, beautiful, creative things in me and did not turn away, did not try to change any of it.  And in doing so allowed me the space to change some of them for the better.  He heard all the ugly stories, all the crazy crap I had lived through and created for myself and he just let it be.  And in doing so allowed me to let some of it go. 

For someone like me that is an astonishing gift.  I believed in my heart of hearts that most children got that from the start and so had no idea what kind of gift it was.  In reality, I suspect none of us gets that kind of unconditional attention and acceptance as much as we deserve, and so we all wish for it and wonder if it's possible. 

To be seen and heard and loved in all our prickly, terrifying, amazing beauty.  That was David's gift.  Not just to me, I saw him give it to others as well.  Many times they did not even realize what he was doing, I doubt he even realized it. They just knew they liked him, felt safe with him, could relax with him.  They felt loved by him.  And he was almost always surprised by that. 

I think that ability is what I mean when I say that he gentled me.  He smoothed off some of my prickly, scared, rough edges and made a space for the compassionate loving person underneath to come through.  I'm not sure I had enough time to make it permanent, damn it, but perhaps some of it stuck.

The song from the rock opera Tommy keeps going through my head, "See me, hear me, feel me...."  I believe it's all any of us really want, even when it scares us so much we are afraid to acknowledge it, when it scares us so much we fight against it with all our being.  If I can learn to be present with others, seeing and hearing them and loving them in all I see and hear, I will have accomplished a great deal.  If I can learn to be present with others allowing them to see and hear who I am I might have accomplished even more. Maybe it's not even about learning to, maybe it's simply about allowing the gift to come through.  

In some ways writing through this process of David's illness and death has been for me a letting go of the shields.  An act of honoring the gift he gave me.  I was seen and heard and loved so I will continue to allow myself to be seen.  To believe that being seen and heard is worthy of love and compassion and offers the greater gift of allowing others to let me see and hear them.  I think it's kind of working....during this process others have opened their hearts to me in ways they might never have otherwise.  And oh, what a gift that has been. I kind of smile at the idea of this big old spiral of gifts flying around and around and around, one begetting another until we can't really tell where they start or end.  The good life.  All we ever wanted. 

I've been trying to write for a couple of days and keep erasing things.  I don't usually do that, but thoughts haven't been coalescing for some reason.  This morning I realized they are just a bunch of thoughts and awareness's and maybe if I put them all down they will mean something.

I took my ring off last week.  I kept getting this rash under it and it drove me crazy.  Every time it went away and I put the ring back on, the rash came back.  Okay then, I'll leave it off.  And now it feels normal not to be wearing it.

In the midst of great pain, I saw the great blue heron again this week.  Hello dear one.

The pond exploded again.  This time David wasn't here to help but I handled it.  Figured some pieces out.  Things he didn't figure out.  He knew a lot, a hell of a lot, but he didn't know everything. 

I went out with a friend last night for coffee and a play.  It was good to be in downtown Asheville, watching the tourists and the Ashevegas scene again.  I hadn't done that in years. 

A friend posted a poem about letting go today.  How it just happens, no fanfare, no talking, no setting a date.  You just do it. Like a leaf falling from a branch.  Leaves don't drop they just let go.

Every once in a while someone posts a photo of David on facebook and when it pops up in my newsfeed it's like a kick in the chest.  Sometimes I see things in those photos that I'm pretty sure they don't.  The pain he was in at the time, his joy in something, his fear.  And sometimes it's just okay to see.  I smile and move on. 

He was a big presence.  He was the glue that kept a lot of folks together.  I wonder what will happen now. 

 Folks are not checking in as much.  But life keeps pressing forward toward life.  More folks die, babies are born, houses are bought and moves are planned, kids graduate.  My piece of this is different from theirs.  I always knew that, knew that I would live into this in a different way from those others who knew and loved him.  That for a while at least, I would not have the grace of going back to normal after the memorial services. 

I gave up a lot to be with him.  Some of it I did not even notice at the time, some of it I gave up consciously.  I didn't and don't regret it.  What I got in return was well worth anything I gave up.  I suspect he did and felt the same.  We didn't really talk about it.  I know I brought him joy and I know he worked harder than he probably would've liked.  But his last few years where the kind of years he had always wanted, he told me this.  He gentled me.  He SAW me and HEARD me and loved me because of and in spite of what he saw and heard.  He gave me a huge loving family to be a part of. That was all I ever wanted from life.  I would've happily lived the rest of my life there.  But now I am seeing doors opening again; new ones, old forgotten ones.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.  Will I lose the family I gained with him?  I hope not.  Will anyone every see and hear me again?  I hope so. 

Sometimes the hardest thing is realizing that my life will move on without him in it.  He was a part of it and now he isn't.  Sometimes that feels impossible and sometimes it feels exciting.  And all of this I expect is exactly where I am supposed to be in the process.  I suspect that's what the therapist I have been working with would say.  And my response as always is a resigned, slightly cynical YAY!  So maybe what all of these thoughts are about is simply letting go, the spiral of life, little steps forward in the midst of big steps backward.  And me watching myself in this process.  Life for me is moving forward too and I feel relief, fear, joy, anticipation, sadness....everything.

Hiding again from the outdoors.  It's beautiful and so very very overwhelming right now.  So many things to do and fix and work on.  I just want to run very far away.  Leave everything behind and become someone new, someplace new.  Start over.  It's been a move to Australia kind of week. 

My birthday is next week and then three days later our anniversary.  We never made a big deal out of that sort of thing, but it scares me anyway.  One of the first big hurdles.  Then there is family reunion, his birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I am going to run away for Christmas, I just don't think I can face it this year.  And then the season of his dying.  It all makes me so tired.  If I could take out the tape of my life and insert a new one I think I would.  Maybe not.  But right now it sounds like a grand idea, as good a one as running away. 

It feels as if my life has been one great cycle of grief.  I thought I knew loss before, I thought I understood grieving, how much it hurt to lose what you loved, or to never have what you wished for or deserved.  But this, this one brings me to my knees. 

There is a song I called, "It's Gonna Get Easier."  And the line that fits this day perfectly is this one:  "On my knees, just can't breathe, it's gonna get easier."  The pain and the sure knowledge that it will get easier, all in one sentence.  Living in the center of paradox is the hardest thing we are asked to do.  And I believe that if we live our lives well, that is the only place we can live.  I just don't like it very much today.

I am sitting inside this afternoon, on the computer, hiding from the beauty outside.  Sadness has been a blanket around my shoulders these last two days.  When I tease sadness apart I find alone-ness.  I'm not really lonely, but I am profoundly aware of my alone-ness.  Before David I had gotten to be pretty good friends with alone, I kind of liked it.  In fact, some of the harder work I did in the beginning was to learn to be with another. And now I am missing sharing what I see on my daily walk, hearing and sharing the details of a day well spent, bouncing new thoughts and ideas off another's perspective.  And I realized today that it's been almost four months since I have been touched, really touched. 

Touch is so basic to who I am as a person and it was David's only request.  "If I ever get to the point where I cannot tell you what I want, just remember to touch me.  That's all I want."  I spent all the time I could touching him in those last days. I climbed into that stupid hospital bed with it's high bars and curled myself around him.  I was holding on to him when he died, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.  I don't know if he knew or not, but I was honoring his dearest wish. 

We were well matched, we both spoke through touch.  We never drew away from each other in anger or fear.  In fact, when I was unhappy or frustrated with him I made it a point to touch, to reach out.  It's hard for me to stay unhappy with someone when I touch them.  Connection, energy flows, I remember that we are the same. 

Two Rilke writings came up in my newsfeed today.  My mantras for this day:

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
 

We Move in Infinite Space
by Rainer Maria Rilke

[Listen to Audio!]

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses
And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside.

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this point our development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside them. Just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet" 

Hard hard day today.  No particular reason.  Just woke up sad and overwhelmed, then little things kept going wrong.  Eventually I worked my way to the part of the day where I was conducting a training for Madison County Literacy volunteers.  This is a project dear to my heart and it brought me a great deal of joy.  I started working on this project last fall before David got sick.  I had to drop my involvement once we got his diagnosis.  The woman who is the force behind this emailed me last week and said she needed me, the training she had organized had fallen through, and was I ready yet?  I was.  If she had asked two weeks ago I might have said no.  Timing is everything. 

I drove home today feeling a mixture of contentment, excitement and sadness.  I love this sort of work with a passion and I was remembering the start of this project and sharing my excitement with David.  One of the hardest things to get used to is not having someone to share my excitement, my concerns, my decision making with.  It's a very lonely place to be and yet there is no cure, it can only be lived with.  Friends can help, family can help, but it's not the same. 

I haven't written in a week....I've been busy and disinclined to focus on the process.  I think that might be progress.  But I also realize paying attention to the process is important, because when I don't I eventually crash.....harder than I would if I had made the process a part of my daily intention.  It's a razor's edge of sorts.  Not of sorts, it is a razor's edge.  This whole grief process is a razor's edge that I walk with reluctance and of necessity. 

Sadness has a way of sneaking up on me and knocking my feet out from under me.  Today I'm having trouble moving into the day.  I sit with my coffee on the deck and think, "this is not the way my life was supposed to go."  I was supposed to be working less, not more.  Sharing dreams and work with someone, not trying to make it alone..again.  It wasn't supposed to go this way, not that thinking like that really does me any good.  But I indulge myself for awhile, feeling very very sorry for myself and crying, thinking if I sink into it deeply enough it will pass. 

In reality I don't think the sadness snuck up so quietly.  It started in church seeing two friends lean into each other and then reach to hold hands, finally filing with Social Security, talking to someone about renting out the shop space, and worrying over the garden and the weeds and the potatoes looking sickly.  Little things just pile up until I find it hard to remember to breathe.  I have to tell myself to breathe in and out, in and out.  I don't want to do anything, can I simply just stop?  Not really, but it's a tempting proposition. 

When friends find me overwhelmed with things, especially the garden; they usually tell me to let it go.  And I usually answer with something along the lines of,   "I simply can't let it all go to hell, it will be too hard to bring it back later."  This morning I realized it is more than that.  It was ours.  It is a piece of us, of him, that I simply cannot let go of yet.  I need it to be there.  I don't know why, I don't even know if it's reasonable, but if there is one thing I am learning it is that reasonable doesn't really matter.  It simply is what it is, it will change, I will change, but it all takes some kind of mysterious "it's own time."  I sometimes feel as if I am simply along for the ride.  Kind of like rafting, there is only so much you can do to master the river, at some point you are simply a part of the river, responding as best you can.

So today I am sad.  I will walk the dog, go to work, and do the best I can.  Breathe in, Breathe out.

I'm okay.  I am starting the process of selling David's wood and shop tools.  With a lot of help from a dear friend.  It's time to sell the wood.  I feel ready for that.  And I'm getting there with the shop.  It's an odd thing, knowing when you are ready.  I have learned to just wait and then one day I know.  Sometimes I have to try something and see how it feels.  But when I pay attention, I know. 

A month ago I could not have thought about selling the shop stuff.  Then I found I was ready to gather info..  Now I can think about selling.  I put his clothes in bags that sat in the bedroom for awhile.  Then it was okay to take them to Goodwill.  At first I couldn't take off my ring, then it felt right to move it to the other hand, now I am thinking about making a new piece of jewelry from both of our rings.  To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Paying attention, taking one step and then seeing how it feels.  And trusting what I know, what feels true. 

I am very aware that this is excellent advice for life in general.  It's hard to do in "real life."  I think the difference is that I give myself permission when it comes to the grief process.  How much more honest, easy, true life would be if I always gave myself permission to act from my heart.  To wait and see how a step feels.  Why do we feel the need to rush through our lives?  To know, act, do...right now!  To think about things logically but not honor what our heart, our soul tells us too?  I would like to take these lessons to heart.  To use some of what I learn in this process for the rest of my life. 

There is no rush.  Our heart is as important as our mind.  We know, if we honor that part of ourselves that knows.  Be kind, to yourself and others.  Be gentle with yourself.  There is no rush.  That one is important.