Dancing with the Stories of Our Lives

The basic instincts of humanity are to be wanted, needed, and loved. Believe me, when I say that all of us who have touched the raging river of grief know that the numbness and shock that takes place of your once loved person doesn’t even reach the ability to feel any of these places within the heart.

For a moment picture a wasteland with a small tree growing out of the center,  it appears to be an incredibly beautiful tree. A promising tree that looks somehow like it found a way to obtain its nutrients from a deep, deep source, ensuring its survival. It’s a tree that gives hope and proves to sustain shade and a respite from the starkness of the wastelands. This tree represents the idea that not all is lost. But one might observe the wasteland and wonder how this one tree, of all things, could survive or even want to. 

There lies the deepest understanding of grief for me…

Desiccation of a life I once loved so deeply. 

Off in the distance, I see my life, it is barren. I can see it’s all still there but it is drained of life force or the ability to feel its support. The initiation has begun into the dark lesson. The quiet scream of grieving has begun.  I am turned from mother to animal with the stopping of my boy's life force. His heart stopped beating and I stopped pretending he wasn’t going to die. 

When my boy died it was still years before I realized he had. I remember the day well. I was just walking as if I had been aware of his death all along and then boom, I was on my knees. Down, from 1,500 layers deep, came the words from my mouth, “Koa’s fucking dead!” It wasn’t that my mind didn’t know he was gone but at that moment I realized I was feeling it for the first time back in my body. I was back only for that moment; but, there I was standing as a mother in full realization that Koa, the boy I gave birth to and was raising, was indeed dead. Dead. Dead. 

Even now, writing the words I can hear one part of myself saying to the other parts, “Yeah, he died. Didn’t you hear?” 

The little parts that are answering are fragments of my soul that have shattered and taken refuge. I almost have a picture of them scurrying to hide their faces so they don’t have to look or feel what just happened. The work of this year is one by one, to summons them forward as they come. I have to tell them yes indeed Koa died and we didn’t. 

Straddle nine the threshold of living and dying