Since arriving back in Colorado I've been subject to the magic that is this place. I'm so glad you brought me here. If anyone were to have to go through the pain and loss that I am dealing with, doing it here, in these mountains, in grounding nature, in this beautiful house, and surrounded by these magical people is the best possible option.
As I sit in our home and look out on the acres of pines cascading down the slopes, the beauty is sublime. It has been snowing since I arrived home. I watch the snow cover surfaces, spilling white peace over all that's both alive and nonliving. The powder reminds me of softness and of femininity. Grief is a feminine process. It requires a deep vulnerability, a chasm of emotions, gentleness, a willingness to come apart, and hope. There is no fast forward button, there is no fight that will help one win, and there is no way to bully through it with toughness. There is simply unraveling, opening, and letting grace shine in. This morning, I see that grace in the cool and camouflaging snow. It tells me, "Sami. Things may look monotone now. You may only see one element of this world – loss. But when I melt away, in time, after this frigid season, life will reappear. In time, dear one."
Magic is bred in the mountains. I've been witnessing its reveal since I've been home. Seeing enchantment or maybe even your supernatural hand in my life is heartening. On my first night back in the house, I said my gratitudes and prayers and drifted off to sleep. I was supine in our bed, nestled into the middle, because I no longer have a side. At some point in the night, I woke from my unconscious, yet still in a dreamlike state. I realized I'd awoken because I felt the weight of your body on top of me. I still was laying on my back, but you were laying on top of me. I heard your breath in my ears and felt it on my body, you breathed calmly and deeply, as if trying to relax me. Although I was lucid, I couldn't see you. I knew it was you, but the vision was so real that I became scared. There was someone in my bed with me. I could feel the hands holding me, fingers pressing into by torso, hair near my face, and legs down near mine. How could this be? You rolled to the side onto your half of the bed, taking your weight off of me so my breath could deepen. You spooned me and cradled me in your arms, but I'd become frightened. What if it wasn't you? What if this was a stranger in my bed? I still couldn't open my eyes and felt trapped even though I wanted to feel comforted. Once you sensed my fear, your body drifted away from mine. I felt it lift up into a plane in space over me. With my eyes still closed, I heard and felt what I can only describe as the flapping of wings over my body. It was as though a fan was turned on above my body. Cool air spilled onto me, chilling me enough to allow me to open my eyes and gasp. Awake, eyes open, I saw black and white swirls above me, your pixie dust. I watched the stripes circle on our ceiling for about a minute until they drifted off, and I was alone again. I closed my eyes, shaken up but thankful for your clumsy visit. I think you visited me for both of us. For me, so I am reminded that you are here. And for you, to infuse some of yourself in me. Because since that visit, I've felt different – I've felt a bit more like you.
Wonder continues. As I paced around our house last night in hazy stride, I found a stack of greeting cards that I've received over the past couple months. I went through the stack again, because many of them I'd been too devastated and shocked to actually take the time to really read when I'd received them. I found one that had been sent from Spoons and Daren, an old Vail roomie of yours and her husband. I studied the picture on the front of their card – it was a snowy scene with a smiling bear and a smiling fox in the foreground. The inside of the card was blank and a typed message had been glued into it. I had received that card along with smiley balloons just days after you passed. The bear and fox have carried such poignant symbolism through this journey, but I hadn't noticed them on the card prior to yesterday. I sent Spoons a message, telling her how much I appreciated the card she chose. I know they live overseas, so it couldn't have been easy to find one so perfect and get it to me so quickly. I woke up this morning with a response waiting from her. She told me that they hadn't chosen the card – the local flower shop had. It was just a coincidence that the shop had sent a card with a smiling bear and a smiling fox. I don't know if I believe in coincidence anymore. So I will take the synchronicity as a grinning 'hello' from you.
Last night I watched the String Cheese Incident's show on the internet. The show was nearby, but I'm headed there tonight and tomorrow and felt that three nights is more than I can handle in my current state. I've never watched a show from home before. However, I felt a need to be a part of it last night. I knew if you were going to be around, you would be there. And as I said, I think you've infused yourself in me. It was as though there was no other option than to watch the show.
The second song the band played was 'Sirens'. The lyrics are nearly a literal explanation of what happened the night you died. Members of the band played the song at your memorial. Also, when you were living, you and I had cried and danced to the song. It was a very special moment to witness. I had wanted to be at the show if they played that song. I'd wanted to be held in a blanket of love. I stood in our bathroom and watched the song on my computer screen, alone. I was crying. Beats came into the room. She tends to ignore me most times. She was really your cat. She loved you, mostly. But as I cried and watched, Beats pawed at my leg and meowed repeatedly until I picked her up. It was unlike her. She stared at the screen, watching the lights, listening to the rhythm of the music and my sobs, and purred for the entire song. It's probably the longest she's ever let me hold her. She offered support in a moment when I needed it most though I believe you helped her out with that. The band never finished the song. Maybe at some point over the next two days they'll go back to it and I'll be surrounded with the camaraderie and love from our loved ones when they close it out.
Beneath Boulder lies a layer of natural quartz. In crystal lore, quartz offers balancing clarity, healing, and energy. Quartz also offers third-eye access to psychic vision. It can help manifest ancient wisdom and channeled communication with spirits and other worlds. It also is useful in dream recall. I'm grateful to be nestled into the powerful earth here in these mountains. Life and connection with the spiritual realm feels more intense and unavoidable here. Your signs may be obscure, they may be mistaken as synchronicity or serendipity, but I choose belief. I also think you have a lot to learn in your new dimension. Knowing you, you are figuring it all out, you are pushing the limits, and you are enjoying the ride. I hope that you continue to visit us and you learn to do it less mysteriously. But I will take what I can get. Even when on earth, your love was magic.
Roots run deep, rock deeper, and fire deeper yet. Snow appears as a guise on the surface. We know what is below, but above us is the unknown. Just because we can't see it with our naked, human eye does not mean it doesn't exist. In fact, in my mind, I believe that means it really exists. It exists in a way that is beyond our understanding and it is godly.
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Anchors
This week in my therapy session, we talked about anchors. Anchors are stimuli that trigger certain states of mind - thoughts and
emotions. They can be brought on unconsciously without knowing what the anchor is. They can be triggered by memories, like the smell of a rhubarb pie making me hungry, the sound of an old favorite song making me nostalgic, or the love I feel from the unconditional kiss and wagging tail my ten-year-old dog greets me with whenever I come home. An anchor can be a scent, a sight, a taste, a feeling, a person, or a sound. People develop hundreds of them as we grow, unconsciously.
I'm back in Toledo, Ohio – my hometown – for the holidays. I've been thinking about the anchors that draw me back to this place. For me, the smell of a Gino's pizza, extra crispy with pineapple and banana pepper makes me feel like a salivating seven-year-old. The Christmas Eve tradition of spaghetti dinner with our best family friends brings me back together. No matter what's happening in my life, on that night there will always be meat sauce, paper crowns, and lotto tickets on every seat. Even tomorrow night, despite all my pain and holiday cynicism, there will still be hot spaghetti and those dear friends.
Tonight, I'm in my bedroom, sitting in the same bed I've slept in since I was ten years old. My bed is an anchor.
I remember lying here when I was in the sixth grade listening to Love Phones on my alarm clock radio. It was a late-night hotline style radio show where callers rang in to ask about sex-related questions. I would listen to it for hours before falling asleep with the radio volume as low as possible, so my parents wouldn't hear. I was certainly not supposed to be listening to such content. I learned much more about sex than an eleven-year-old should have ever known.
I remember being in this bed when I was a junior in high school and my on-again/off-again boyfriend came over after school. He was just supposed to be dropping me off, but when we saw that my parents weren't home, he came in. Mid-session, my father came home. He saw my boyfriend's car in the driveway. We could barely pull ourselves together before my red-faced and furious father, stormed into my room, doors slamming. The boy had one leg out my bedroom window. He was trying to make a dash for it, Dawson's Creek style. Until that boy became a dear and platonic friend a decade later, he was never the type to enter or exit through the front door. I was grounded immediately and from that point on (until very recently) my parents had a very mean nickname for that guy.
I remember this bed when later that same year, I was recovering from a major back surgery. I had been diagnosed with stenosis and two herniated disks in my low spine. After eight months of major pain killers, physical therapy, and unrelenting numbness and pain – I was operated on at the University of Michigan. A couple weeks after the surgery, I had my preview night for my senior year of high school. I went to school a shadow of my former self. The once fun-loving, social, impressionable cheerleader could now barely put on a pair of pajama pants and had no desire to see any of her friends. It was that night when I realized the months of overly-prescribed medication had resulted in an opiate addiction. Wanting to reconnect with my true self, I went cold turkey that night. My mom had to sleep in my bed with me for days while I sweat, shook, and had visceral nightmares while I detoxed from the dosages the doctors had prescribed me. (To this day, spare a near-death motorcycle accident, I haven't gone near painkillers. That shit is poison.)
I remember this bed when I was twenty-five and got laid off of my job working with the Olympics and broke off a five-year relationship all in the same week. I moved out of the condo I had shared with my partner and came home. I stayed home that summer trying to piece back together who I was. Or maybe I was trying to figure it out for the first time. That summer, 2009, I had no plan. No man. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing. That summer, it felt like freedom. It felt like anything was possible.
The canvas has drawn a blank again for me in a way now. But this time, it doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like a noose has been tightened around my neck. It feels like the floor has been ripped out from beneath me. It feels like I can't breath. It feels like emptiness.
You and I slept in this bed together just two times. You were a part of this anchor too. The first time was about eighteen months ago. We came home for a wedding. We stayed half of the time at my parent's house and the other half at your parent's house. We liked that. We thought it would always be like that when we would return home for holidays and trips over the course of our life together. The second time was less than a year ago. My grandmother had died and I flew home immediately. You had a gig that night, but joined me in Toledo just a day later after her memorial service. Your flight came in very late and I was exhausted and worn out by the time we made it home from the airport. I was beyond emotional at the loss of my grandmother who had served as a beacon of class and generosity for me as a young woman. You cradled me as I cried myself to sleep. Of all the times I slept in this bed, that was the most comforted I had ever been. You held me tight, just like my mother had when I had sweat out painkillers a dozen years before. But that night last year, there were no nightmares. There were beautiful dreams of the beautiful life we would share. It was just the dawn.
This morning, I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom. I dropped the towel that I'd had wrapped around my torso and I stared at my naked body in the mirror on the back of my door. 'The mirror is an anchor too,' I thought. That mirror has seen my body morph more than any person. It has seen my reflection grow over decades with many backdrops. It has seen an adolescent swimmer of ten with creamy pink walls behind her, jumping on one foot, head cocked to the side, trying to get water out of her ear. It has seen a nervous thirteen-year-old ballerina trying to pin up her bun perfectly with bobby pins while popping a zit; behind her the walls are now wallpapered with pages of fashion magazines and a collage of sixty-nine photos of Leonardo DiCaprio is taped on the mirror's glass surface. It has seen a naive young woman of sixteen trying on the outfit she'd wear to school the next day, grey pinstriped polyester pants her crush said made her butt look 'hot' – the walls are now neon green and orange. It has seen a high school senior, in her cheerleading uniform practicing herkies while lip synching to Britney Spears's remix of "I Love Rock and Roll", the walls now a more mature palette of brown and tan. It has seen a woman leaving her hometown for the second time for Austin to find herself and a new career, dressed in Banana Republic slacks because now she's grown up – the walls have finally been taken over by her parents after a remodel, they are off-white.
The mirror in my childhood bedroom has seen me more over the past month then it has in years. I looked at my thirty-year-old body. I noticed how it's changed over the decades. I noticed places that were softer, larger, firmer, or smaller. I moved my face up-close and ran my finger across the thin wrinkles on my forehead. I searched for a grey hair amongst the blonde, surely one has sprouted over the past two months. I turned the edges of my mouth into a fake smile and looked at the laugh lines that had been starting to form because of all the smiling I did with you. I started to cry, a woeful sob. I watched the tears drip down my cheeks in the mirror's reflection. I saw the tracks that the tears took, my face now recognizing the path of salty sorrow. I saw an ugly woman staring back at me. She had my eyes, but they were sadder now. She was so much older than I remembered her. In a way she looked like a stranger.
That mirror has witnessed a lot of tears over the years. But of the decades of tears it's seen, lately, they've been the most sad. There is no comparison to tears of grief. They even look different than other tears when studied under a microscope. They are sharp fractals without any order or pattern. They look painful to touch. In fact, they look an awful lot like they feel. These are not tears from a boy who didn't call a fifteen year-old girl. These aren't tears because I'm pissed at my parents for grounding me for sneaking out. These are not tears from belly laughing at a funny punchline so hard that my eyes water. These aren't tears because I was cast as the ugly step-sister instead of Cinderella. These aren't tears because I got wait-listed at my first choice university. These aren't tears because of a breakup that is sad and hard, but instigated by me. These aren't the tears I cried when my grandmother died peacefully at ninety-plus years.
These are tears of deep, deep devastation. These are the tears of loosing the father of the babies I couldn't wait to have. These are the tears of not being able to call my best friend. These are the tears of shattered tradition. These are the tears of loosing the life I'd always dreamed of. These are the tears of a second family slipping away through my fingertips. These are tears of questioning the value of life without you. These are tears of confusion. These are tears of loosing faith. These are tears that really have no words to describe them.
The anchors remain. The ones here in my bedroom remind me nostalgically of childhood. But in my current state of grief, retreating to memories of the past, before these tears, is comforting. The anchors pull me in and ground me. They remind me that while you aren't here, there was something here before you and there are still things that remain here now. This is your hometown too. And in your absence I wish I'd had the time to learn more about what pulled you back to memories, what rooted you. I am not sure how it will be when I return to our house in Colorado next week. There, the anchors all bear the weight of memories of my life with you. I want it and I fear it at the same time. So for now, I will lay in this bed. I will curl up and try to remember what it was like to sleep peacefully like I did as a child.
I'm back in Toledo, Ohio – my hometown – for the holidays. I've been thinking about the anchors that draw me back to this place. For me, the smell of a Gino's pizza, extra crispy with pineapple and banana pepper makes me feel like a salivating seven-year-old. The Christmas Eve tradition of spaghetti dinner with our best family friends brings me back together. No matter what's happening in my life, on that night there will always be meat sauce, paper crowns, and lotto tickets on every seat. Even tomorrow night, despite all my pain and holiday cynicism, there will still be hot spaghetti and those dear friends.
Tonight, I'm in my bedroom, sitting in the same bed I've slept in since I was ten years old. My bed is an anchor.
I remember lying here when I was in the sixth grade listening to Love Phones on my alarm clock radio. It was a late-night hotline style radio show where callers rang in to ask about sex-related questions. I would listen to it for hours before falling asleep with the radio volume as low as possible, so my parents wouldn't hear. I was certainly not supposed to be listening to such content. I learned much more about sex than an eleven-year-old should have ever known.
I remember being in this bed when I was a junior in high school and my on-again/off-again boyfriend came over after school. He was just supposed to be dropping me off, but when we saw that my parents weren't home, he came in. Mid-session, my father came home. He saw my boyfriend's car in the driveway. We could barely pull ourselves together before my red-faced and furious father, stormed into my room, doors slamming. The boy had one leg out my bedroom window. He was trying to make a dash for it, Dawson's Creek style. Until that boy became a dear and platonic friend a decade later, he was never the type to enter or exit through the front door. I was grounded immediately and from that point on (until very recently) my parents had a very mean nickname for that guy.
I remember this bed when later that same year, I was recovering from a major back surgery. I had been diagnosed with stenosis and two herniated disks in my low spine. After eight months of major pain killers, physical therapy, and unrelenting numbness and pain – I was operated on at the University of Michigan. A couple weeks after the surgery, I had my preview night for my senior year of high school. I went to school a shadow of my former self. The once fun-loving, social, impressionable cheerleader could now barely put on a pair of pajama pants and had no desire to see any of her friends. It was that night when I realized the months of overly-prescribed medication had resulted in an opiate addiction. Wanting to reconnect with my true self, I went cold turkey that night. My mom had to sleep in my bed with me for days while I sweat, shook, and had visceral nightmares while I detoxed from the dosages the doctors had prescribed me. (To this day, spare a near-death motorcycle accident, I haven't gone near painkillers. That shit is poison.)
I remember this bed when I was twenty-five and got laid off of my job working with the Olympics and broke off a five-year relationship all in the same week. I moved out of the condo I had shared with my partner and came home. I stayed home that summer trying to piece back together who I was. Or maybe I was trying to figure it out for the first time. That summer, 2009, I had no plan. No man. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing. That summer, it felt like freedom. It felt like anything was possible.
The canvas has drawn a blank again for me in a way now. But this time, it doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like a noose has been tightened around my neck. It feels like the floor has been ripped out from beneath me. It feels like I can't breath. It feels like emptiness.
You and I slept in this bed together just two times. You were a part of this anchor too. The first time was about eighteen months ago. We came home for a wedding. We stayed half of the time at my parent's house and the other half at your parent's house. We liked that. We thought it would always be like that when we would return home for holidays and trips over the course of our life together. The second time was less than a year ago. My grandmother had died and I flew home immediately. You had a gig that night, but joined me in Toledo just a day later after her memorial service. Your flight came in very late and I was exhausted and worn out by the time we made it home from the airport. I was beyond emotional at the loss of my grandmother who had served as a beacon of class and generosity for me as a young woman. You cradled me as I cried myself to sleep. Of all the times I slept in this bed, that was the most comforted I had ever been. You held me tight, just like my mother had when I had sweat out painkillers a dozen years before. But that night last year, there were no nightmares. There were beautiful dreams of the beautiful life we would share. It was just the dawn.
This morning, I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom. I dropped the towel that I'd had wrapped around my torso and I stared at my naked body in the mirror on the back of my door. 'The mirror is an anchor too,' I thought. That mirror has seen my body morph more than any person. It has seen my reflection grow over decades with many backdrops. It has seen an adolescent swimmer of ten with creamy pink walls behind her, jumping on one foot, head cocked to the side, trying to get water out of her ear. It has seen a nervous thirteen-year-old ballerina trying to pin up her bun perfectly with bobby pins while popping a zit; behind her the walls are now wallpapered with pages of fashion magazines and a collage of sixty-nine photos of Leonardo DiCaprio is taped on the mirror's glass surface. It has seen a naive young woman of sixteen trying on the outfit she'd wear to school the next day, grey pinstriped polyester pants her crush said made her butt look 'hot' – the walls are now neon green and orange. It has seen a high school senior, in her cheerleading uniform practicing herkies while lip synching to Britney Spears's remix of "I Love Rock and Roll", the walls now a more mature palette of brown and tan. It has seen a woman leaving her hometown for the second time for Austin to find herself and a new career, dressed in Banana Republic slacks because now she's grown up – the walls have finally been taken over by her parents after a remodel, they are off-white.
The mirror in my childhood bedroom has seen me more over the past month then it has in years. I looked at my thirty-year-old body. I noticed how it's changed over the decades. I noticed places that were softer, larger, firmer, or smaller. I moved my face up-close and ran my finger across the thin wrinkles on my forehead. I searched for a grey hair amongst the blonde, surely one has sprouted over the past two months. I turned the edges of my mouth into a fake smile and looked at the laugh lines that had been starting to form because of all the smiling I did with you. I started to cry, a woeful sob. I watched the tears drip down my cheeks in the mirror's reflection. I saw the tracks that the tears took, my face now recognizing the path of salty sorrow. I saw an ugly woman staring back at me. She had my eyes, but they were sadder now. She was so much older than I remembered her. In a way she looked like a stranger.
That mirror has witnessed a lot of tears over the years. But of the decades of tears it's seen, lately, they've been the most sad. There is no comparison to tears of grief. They even look different than other tears when studied under a microscope. They are sharp fractals without any order or pattern. They look painful to touch. In fact, they look an awful lot like they feel. These are not tears from a boy who didn't call a fifteen year-old girl. These aren't tears because I'm pissed at my parents for grounding me for sneaking out. These are not tears from belly laughing at a funny punchline so hard that my eyes water. These aren't tears because I was cast as the ugly step-sister instead of Cinderella. These aren't tears because I got wait-listed at my first choice university. These aren't tears because of a breakup that is sad and hard, but instigated by me. These aren't the tears I cried when my grandmother died peacefully at ninety-plus years.
These are tears of deep, deep devastation. These are the tears of loosing the father of the babies I couldn't wait to have. These are the tears of not being able to call my best friend. These are the tears of shattered tradition. These are the tears of loosing the life I'd always dreamed of. These are the tears of a second family slipping away through my fingertips. These are tears of questioning the value of life without you. These are tears of confusion. These are tears of loosing faith. These are tears that really have no words to describe them.
The anchors remain. The ones here in my bedroom remind me nostalgically of childhood. But in my current state of grief, retreating to memories of the past, before these tears, is comforting. The anchors pull me in and ground me. They remind me that while you aren't here, there was something here before you and there are still things that remain here now. This is your hometown too. And in your absence I wish I'd had the time to learn more about what pulled you back to memories, what rooted you. I am not sure how it will be when I return to our house in Colorado next week. There, the anchors all bear the weight of memories of my life with you. I want it and I fear it at the same time. So for now, I will lay in this bed. I will curl up and try to remember what it was like to sleep peacefully like I did as a child.
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