Kelly | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

Daily Truth from the Brave Girls Club: “there is nothing on this earth so beautiful, so comforting, so warm and inviting and loving as a girl who knows who she is…A girl who knows who she is shows up with so much light, confidence and love for everyone and everything around her that the room, the world is never the same after she is there.”

this is that girl

This quote describes my friend Kelly perfectly–so much light, confidence and love for everyone and everything around her—her life, her presence on this earth meant the world would never be the same, and two years ago today, the world was forever changed in another way when she passed. This anniversary is such a strange day, filled with “sad wonder,” a raw and broken tenderhearted sadness, profound love, the brutality and beauty at the heart of life’s preciousness. But also on this sad anniversary, I feel a lingering rage, an anger that is both fierce and impotent because there is nothing to attach it to—who am I going to blame? God? Cancer? Western medicine? Certainly not Kelly, who did everything she could to stay.

Grief is a strange and sneaky beast. You can be moving through the most normal, boring part of your day, and something will catch you, trigger a memory. A flash of color, a smell, a song—it catapults you right back to that moment, the moment it happened or the moment you knew, when your love was unbound from form, screaming through the wilderness like a wild, rabid animal, suffering and murderous. It’s just like those mornings after it first happened, when you woke and there was that moment of innocent, sweet forgetting. Then you remembered, and it’s like you just found out, like the loss is happening for the first time, and again the grief is just beginning. The gift of dull, blank detachment you’ve cultivated, the veil of disassociation, the illusion of healing is torn away, ripped off and replaced by surprise, shock, tearing and smashing, pain followed by anger.

Thich Nhat Hanh said “what’s most important is to love each other, to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive. This is the best that we can do for those who have died: we can live in such a way that they continue beautifully, in us.” I was stuck for a long time, but Kelly’s loss, preceded by Obi’s—both of them diagnosed the same week, with Obi’s cancer terminal from the beginning—changed…everything. The loss of their lives gave me back my own, shook me, shattered me, woke me up, and while I am grateful, I am also angry, and I know how utterly naïve it is, but I want to throw myself on the floor like a three year old, screaming and kicking about how it’s not fair.

The essence of grief is love unbound by form, nothing physical to attach it to. When the form that we love is no longer with us, we don’t know what to do with all the love we feel. There’s a collection of stuff left behind that provides no way of connecting with what’s gone. It is tangible, reminds us, but gives us no comfort, no real relief–a paw print preserved in plaster, a picture, a letter in that familiar handwriting but only the memory of the voice. With no forehead to kiss, no ear to whisper into, no hand to grasp, nothing to hold, we are adrift, lost, angry and afraid.

And yet, while form leaves us, love doesn’t. We may find ourselves with nothing physical to direct our love to, but it’s still there. I can no longer have a bodily experience of those I’ve lost in the past few years. I will never again smell the musky stink of Obi’s neck or touch the soft hair of his belly. I will never hear Kelly laugh or be able to hug her. And that is devastating, heartbreaking each and every time I think of it–but the love remains, whole and unbroken, constant and enduring.

In yoga this morning, I cried during shavasana (corpse pose, an asana done at the end of a session, meant to relax the body, allow it to integrate the practice). This happens a lot. It’s a vulnerable position, physically and emotionally, and after a good (or bad) class, a hard class, an intense class, I am left raw and wrecked, tender and open. I can’t think about how much I’ve changed in the last few years, how much happier and more focused I am, the drive I feel to do good, to save lives besides just my own without thinking about Kelly, without feeling a deep determination that I need to do what Kelly is no longer able to, to reflect all the love and kindness and good she manifested. I feel an obligation to so, to do better, and then do more, to wring every last drop out of life, to show up “with so much light, confidence and love for everyone and everything“ that the world is changed.

Kelly, I wish with my whole, broken heart that you were here, that we were having a dance party to celebrate. I’m going to have a little one today anyway, because no matter where you are, the love is still there, unbroken and whole, and you, your brilliant, precious self will always be something to celebrate. You will forever make me feel like dancing. And although I know I can’t do anything about the empty spot you left, I can fill the Jill shaped hole, to “live in such a way that…[you] continue beautifully, in…[me].” I love you and I miss you.

P.S. If you are together, please kiss Obi for me.

It’s been a rough, emotional week. I love many people who are actively suffering, confused, hurt, angry, and who can’t see their way out, can’t seem to get unstuck.

As someone who wants to help, to serve, it is incredibly painful to not be able to do anything, to not be able to fix it, to know that I can’t save them.

Even worse is that I can’t simply stand by and watch, untouched. Their pain, their poison seeps into me, into my porous heart, and I suffer too. I try to care for myself, but my chest and stomach cramp and ache, my heart and head hurt, I can’t sleep, and my right eye twitches for an entire day.

And within the past 24 hours, we’ve had difficulties with our boys. We discovered that Sam has Discoid Lupus Erythematosus, (a benign form of systemic lupus, a form of autoimmune disease, which manifests as loss of pigment on his nose, and dry, irritated, raw spots), and Dexter sprained his tail, (Limber tail syndrome, or acute caudal myopathy, a disorder of the muscles in the tail, usually affecting working dogs, also known as Cold Water Tail, Broken Tail, Dead Tail or Broken Wag).

It makes me so sad to see either of them hurt, but the real issue is that recognition of their pain leads to the realization, the remembering that they are mortal–some day they will die, and I will lose them. Our direct relationship, our time together is limited, we are impermanent.

And then there is another remembering, of those already gone and of the loss of them. Two years ago, Kelly was sent home from the hospital and those of us who loved her knew that the end was coming. We entered an awful season of waiting. It only lasted a few days, but it was also eternal, and in so many ways, it’s still happening.

Then and now, there is something so bizarre about the new life of Spring, the return to green, the flowering, the soft earth, the clear blue sky, the bird songs and baby animals, the soft warm new body of the whole thing in contrast with the blackness, the blindness of loss, the grief, the wailing and crying and disbelief, the emptiness, the suffering, the wreck and the broken, the raw of the rest.

That is life though, isn’t it? The horrific brutality and the precious brilliance. A cat smashed on the road, twisted, broken, someone’s lost soft love, and a butterfly resting on a flower, its wings folding and unfolding as it feeds, as it floats from bloom to bloom, drawn by their scent and their sweetness. There is bad in the world, life is brutal, and there is good in the world, life is beautiful–Life is precious, because it is both beautiful and brutal.

I remember…