Over the past week, I've learned that, surprisingly, I can live without you. It's a painful thing to type and a painful thing to feel. When you walked this earth as my counterpart, as my soul mate in the flesh, I did not think that I would be able to survive without you. I thought that if you left, I would crumple into a pile of dirt. Gone. Though I feel like a puddle, when I look in the mirror, my reflection looks back at me. I am still here. I am the same. I don't know how it is possible, but it is so.
When we were together, you were the air I breathed. And when you left, I felt as though I could not breathe any longer and I no longer wanted to if you were not here with me. Yet, despite a fight between my body and spirit, I've learned how to breathe air again. My body won. Air is not as good to breathe as you were. I want to breathe breaths of you. You were pure and sacred to inhale, and exhaling you left me feeling as though my insides sparkled. Every breath of you filled me with vitality, love, and effervescent joy. Now, I still breathe, but I breathe reprocessed, tormented, and brokenhearted air. Every inhale leaves me wanting more and every exhale drains energy from my weary body.
My life these days feels like a facade. I am going through the motions that I always have: Get proper rest. Feed myself. Exercise my body. Meditate my brain. Give myself pleasure. Seek passion. Exhibit love to others. Be grateful. Let music sooth my soul. Write and create. Stay busy. Call my mother... But it all feels dull, like scratched facets of a fake diamond. And the main element is missing: you. Give you love. Be there for you. Listen to you. Be listened to by you. Laugh with you. Smile with you. Plan the future with you. Help you. Teach you. Be taught by you. Hear you. Kiss you. Offer my everything to you.
Life after you will never be like life was before you.
Seeing life continue without the main actor is a very confusing process to witness and be a part of. The show goes on. The clock ticks. Hair grows. Seasons change. Laughter still sounds. Often I want to shake people or even slap them, and say, "How the fuck are we living without him!? This is not OK!" Often, I want to slap myself and yell the same thing. Sometimes I do. It was not supposed to be like this: shaking and slapping. It was supposed to be a fairy tale.
As I see life continue it's as though we're all on a moving sidewalk and you are stuck way behind us on the unmoving road. We can't turn around and walk backwards – and you are still, no longer trying to catch up. One of my biggest fears is that I will move so far away from you that you will be forgotten. My moving sidewalk could be very long. It could continue on well over sixty more years. And I'm scared that you will blend in with all the other things in my past – that you will somehow become a dull and blurred memory, a chapter in a book. Our love and your memory deserves more than that. It makes me fear, am I even worthy of the love you gave me?
Our love deserves churches, altars, skyscrapers, and memorials that will keep reminding me and all of the man that was you. You, the man whose name appears in lights and whose silhouette is drawn by the clouds. You chose me. And now I watch you slip through my fingers and away into dust as life goes on, even though I'm backwards with my arms outstretched, crying on my knees. I'm scared I'll forget you and everything you taught me. I'm scared I'll forget what love is. I'm scared I'll forget that love is the only thing worth anything.
I don't know this path. The body and mind's capacity for healing is shocking to me. I did not think that I would be able to survive. But I am surviving. So I go through the motions of life. But it is not how it was with you. There is no color. It's all grey.
You were my container for love. The love I offered is floating somewhere, not contained. It was housed in your body, in your heart. And now, poof! It's escaped. I feel like I'm scampering around trying to capture it. I scream at the space around me, "Hey, give me back my love! That's for Teddy, not you! That love is sacred. That love is too righteous to be mixed in with the plethora of other shit out there! Give me back my love, damnit!" But it's too late. My love that was for only you lost its container. It has slipped away and mixed in with recycled breath and untethered souls. And the love you gave me, the love that is housed in my being, I'm trying to treasure it. I'm trying to keep it clean and pure. But it's mixing with confusion, loneliness, anger, and unworthiness – and they are really trying hard to dirty the love, just like the oil in my car.
So I'm surviving. I'm putting one foot in front of the other and stringing words together to form poetic messages, sarcastic comments, and dirty jokes. But I'm not enjoying it. I can't hear you laughing. I can't feel your hand on the small of my back supporting me. I'm treading water. I'm gasping for the air that I became addicted to – you. Your love is my drug.
Showing posts with label breath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breath. Show all posts
Ashes to ashes
I'm writing from somewhere in the middle of Iowa. I'm driving across the country, back to our hometown, with Kira and my mom. I'm escaping to Ohio… said no one ever.
Unfortunately no matter where I run to, there is no escape from this reality. Wherever I am, wherever I go – I know that you are no longer physically here. Not two seconds go by without me thinking about your absence. Distraction from reality is even more painful then actuality, so I just let myself sit in the truth and bask in the torture of this loss.
Avoidance has never been a route I've turned to, so it's not instinctual for me to turn there now. Instead I've faced life full-on, sometimes too full-on. When we were falling in love, it was with fervor and enthusiasm. I did not hold back. I fell in love – completely, hopelessly, and absolutely – with your being and your soul. And now, in grief, I wear those same shoes. I wholeheartedly stand in the fire of this bottomless, raw despair, full-on.
Although, maybe there was slight avoidance when it came to picking up your ashes. It took me until yesterday to get them – the last possible day before heading home to Ohio. I sat with guilt as I put off going to the mortuary. Guilt and I know each other quite well. You used to tell me that guilt is anger turned inwards. I have a hard time getting angry at others but it's a cinch to put on myself. So on Monday, guilt and I drove to the mortuary to get your remains.
It was at that same mortuary where one month ago, I sat alone with your body for an hour before your memorial. I had to see you again. I couldn't let that horrible night in the emergency room be the last time I saw you – tubes in your mouth, failed EKG patches stuck all over your chest, and your body slumped lifelessly and gracelessly on a metal bed, my own unrecognizable screams echoing so loudly through the halls – that couldn't be the last time I saw you. So I asked your family if before your cremation, I could see you again. I needed to see you at peace. Thankfully, they obliged.
When I saw you that day in the mortuary last month, it wasn't you any more. Your spirit was gone. The soul I love so fucking much had escaped from the confines of your gorgeous, yet broken body. But, that morning, I chose to believe that your soul was nearby – maybe floating around that dull, cold room listening to me choke out my final words to your body. You were so cold when I touched you. Your skin didn't have the same spring that it did when you were alive. I touched all the hairs on your face, they seemed to have grown a bit and I wondered how that had happened, or if it was my imagination. I thought about how you'd probably want a clean shave. I felt your chest where they'd opened you up for your autopsy – the looming question mark that still remains – they had stapled you closed. They had you in a gown. I reached down to the hem near your thighs and pulled it up, just so I could see all of your manliness, one last time. I overheard your voice in my head telling me how inappropriate I was being. I didn't care. Though it's your spirit I love most, your physical body made you human. It made you capable of audible communication, tangible pleasure, and palpable interaction. It made you beautiful, in reality, not just essence.
So yesterday, I arrived at the mortuary to get what was left of you, "I'm here to pick up my fiance, David Welles." Those words actually came out of my mouth. He's now ashes. He's been divided into three urns. He was beautiful, but now he's only dust. How is this happening to me? How the fuck is this happening to me? The man working there (the man with the most depressing job in the universe) asked me if he should glue the lids down. Am I seriously having this conversation? I noticed the three lids teetering unstably on the top of the urns. "Wow, those are really full," I said. "Uh, yeah... there was... a lot of... him," he responded. I imagined him sweeping out the extra ashes that wouldn't fit in the urns. I wondered what they did with the rest of you. Had they swept you into a dustpan with some other people and thrown you in a garbage? Flushed you down the toilet like a dead goldfish? I closed my eyes tightly as if that would help my mind from wandering. I told him to glue two out of the three lids down. I needed mine open. I needed to see you.
When I got home, I took my urn into our bedroom. I sat it on the dresser below my painting that says 'Buy Less. Fuck More.' and next to the harmonium that you bought my for my birthday and I still haven't learned how to make a sound on. I stared at your urn and stroked the marble, noticing how beautiful the container was. I thought about how you would approve of it. And then I thought about what it was I was thinking about and fell on the floor in a ball of tears.
I opened my urn. They had you in a plastic bag. You hate plastic bags. I untied it and studied what was left of your body. You are grey. I had imagined that your ashes would be all the colors of the rainbow and peppered with glitter, a magical pixie dust. But you are grey – the color you hated. I noticed pieces of your bones. I wondered if the staples from your chest were in there somewhere. I wondered what parts of you I got in my third of you. I dipped my hand in your dust. I looked at it and rubbed my fingers together like some fucked-up mudra. I smelled my fingers. They smelled like nothing. I tasted my fingers. They tasted like nothing. I knew it wasn't really you in there. But that didn't stop the pain, it only intensified it.
So that was my day – wake up, attempt to eat breakfast but settle for coffee instead, cry through a therapy session, pick up my your ashes, oh yeah, then a quick oil change while I left you in the front seat, in a box, head home, taste your ashes, cry through yoga while my teacher told me to clear my mind and focus on my breath. Do you have any idea how heavy my mind is right now? He told us the breath was our greatest gift to the body. I thought about how deep your breath used to be, how alive, how rich each inhale and exhale was when you used to practice yoga next to me. I used to try to match your long breaths and joked with you that I might suffocate while doing it. I thought about your last breaths, how faint they were. Then I remembered I wasn't supposed to be thinking, just breathing. And I wondered if you were doing the opposite – not breathing, but still thinking. And I hoped it was the case. This is what my life has become.
So here I sit, at a roadside hotel in Iowa, on my way to our hometown for Thanksgiving. I will sit in your seat at your family's table and we will try to come up with things to be thankful for – and we will. I will eat pie. I'll visit friends and family who stare at me with pity and whisper behind my back, "Did you hear what happened to her?" I will drive by the school we both went to. I will sleep in the bed that I slept in as a child and that just months ago you held me in after my Grandmother died. I will try to hold joy in my heart for the blessings I have. But, I will definitely not escape.
Unfortunately no matter where I run to, there is no escape from this reality. Wherever I am, wherever I go – I know that you are no longer physically here. Not two seconds go by without me thinking about your absence. Distraction from reality is even more painful then actuality, so I just let myself sit in the truth and bask in the torture of this loss.
Avoidance has never been a route I've turned to, so it's not instinctual for me to turn there now. Instead I've faced life full-on, sometimes too full-on. When we were falling in love, it was with fervor and enthusiasm. I did not hold back. I fell in love – completely, hopelessly, and absolutely – with your being and your soul. And now, in grief, I wear those same shoes. I wholeheartedly stand in the fire of this bottomless, raw despair, full-on.
Although, maybe there was slight avoidance when it came to picking up your ashes. It took me until yesterday to get them – the last possible day before heading home to Ohio. I sat with guilt as I put off going to the mortuary. Guilt and I know each other quite well. You used to tell me that guilt is anger turned inwards. I have a hard time getting angry at others but it's a cinch to put on myself. So on Monday, guilt and I drove to the mortuary to get your remains.
It was at that same mortuary where one month ago, I sat alone with your body for an hour before your memorial. I had to see you again. I couldn't let that horrible night in the emergency room be the last time I saw you – tubes in your mouth, failed EKG patches stuck all over your chest, and your body slumped lifelessly and gracelessly on a metal bed, my own unrecognizable screams echoing so loudly through the halls – that couldn't be the last time I saw you. So I asked your family if before your cremation, I could see you again. I needed to see you at peace. Thankfully, they obliged.
When I saw you that day in the mortuary last month, it wasn't you any more. Your spirit was gone. The soul I love so fucking much had escaped from the confines of your gorgeous, yet broken body. But, that morning, I chose to believe that your soul was nearby – maybe floating around that dull, cold room listening to me choke out my final words to your body. You were so cold when I touched you. Your skin didn't have the same spring that it did when you were alive. I touched all the hairs on your face, they seemed to have grown a bit and I wondered how that had happened, or if it was my imagination. I thought about how you'd probably want a clean shave. I felt your chest where they'd opened you up for your autopsy – the looming question mark that still remains – they had stapled you closed. They had you in a gown. I reached down to the hem near your thighs and pulled it up, just so I could see all of your manliness, one last time. I overheard your voice in my head telling me how inappropriate I was being. I didn't care. Though it's your spirit I love most, your physical body made you human. It made you capable of audible communication, tangible pleasure, and palpable interaction. It made you beautiful, in reality, not just essence.
So yesterday, I arrived at the mortuary to get what was left of you, "I'm here to pick up my fiance, David Welles." Those words actually came out of my mouth. He's now ashes. He's been divided into three urns. He was beautiful, but now he's only dust. How is this happening to me? How the fuck is this happening to me? The man working there (the man with the most depressing job in the universe) asked me if he should glue the lids down. Am I seriously having this conversation? I noticed the three lids teetering unstably on the top of the urns. "Wow, those are really full," I said. "Uh, yeah... there was... a lot of... him," he responded. I imagined him sweeping out the extra ashes that wouldn't fit in the urns. I wondered what they did with the rest of you. Had they swept you into a dustpan with some other people and thrown you in a garbage? Flushed you down the toilet like a dead goldfish? I closed my eyes tightly as if that would help my mind from wandering. I told him to glue two out of the three lids down. I needed mine open. I needed to see you.
When I got home, I took my urn into our bedroom. I sat it on the dresser below my painting that says 'Buy Less. Fuck More.' and next to the harmonium that you bought my for my birthday and I still haven't learned how to make a sound on. I stared at your urn and stroked the marble, noticing how beautiful the container was. I thought about how you would approve of it. And then I thought about what it was I was thinking about and fell on the floor in a ball of tears.
I opened my urn. They had you in a plastic bag. You hate plastic bags. I untied it and studied what was left of your body. You are grey. I had imagined that your ashes would be all the colors of the rainbow and peppered with glitter, a magical pixie dust. But you are grey – the color you hated. I noticed pieces of your bones. I wondered if the staples from your chest were in there somewhere. I wondered what parts of you I got in my third of you. I dipped my hand in your dust. I looked at it and rubbed my fingers together like some fucked-up mudra. I smelled my fingers. They smelled like nothing. I tasted my fingers. They tasted like nothing. I knew it wasn't really you in there. But that didn't stop the pain, it only intensified it.
So that was my day – wake up, attempt to eat breakfast but settle for coffee instead, cry through a therapy session, pick up my your ashes, oh yeah, then a quick oil change while I left you in the front seat, in a box, head home, taste your ashes, cry through yoga while my teacher told me to clear my mind and focus on my breath. Do you have any idea how heavy my mind is right now? He told us the breath was our greatest gift to the body. I thought about how deep your breath used to be, how alive, how rich each inhale and exhale was when you used to practice yoga next to me. I used to try to match your long breaths and joked with you that I might suffocate while doing it. I thought about your last breaths, how faint they were. Then I remembered I wasn't supposed to be thinking, just breathing. And I wondered if you were doing the opposite – not breathing, but still thinking. And I hoped it was the case. This is what my life has become.
So here I sit, at a roadside hotel in Iowa, on my way to our hometown for Thanksgiving. I will sit in your seat at your family's table and we will try to come up with things to be thankful for – and we will. I will eat pie. I'll visit friends and family who stare at me with pity and whisper behind my back, "Did you hear what happened to her?" I will drive by the school we both went to. I will sleep in the bed that I slept in as a child and that just months ago you held me in after my Grandmother died. I will try to hold joy in my heart for the blessings I have. But, I will definitely not escape.
My practice
In the days after your death, my dear friend Natalia called me from Spain. She, along with her prayers, condolences, and love, told me, "Now is when your yoga practice really starts." Before I even got off the phone, I ridiculed her comment in the back of my mind. I thought to myself, 'I'm supposed to think about yoga, now!? My soul mate died and she tells me to do yoga?' And for one week, I didn't do yoga. And that was OK.
But after those seven days, my body started to mourn its practice. My back started to hurt and my lack of eating started to take its toll. I got dizzy spells. I threw up constantly, my brain was traumatized. My spine throbbed from laying in bed and rolling around in the fetal position. My body couldn't handle the grief I was inflicting on it. So, if only to ease the pain in my lumbar spine and encourage an appetite – I went back to yoga.
But what I've gotten from my yoga practice isn't just a prescription for my back pain, it's peace.
Five days after your death a bear came into our garage. He made my heart sing because you'd known I'd really wanted to see a bear – so I felt he was a sign from you. But he did something else too. He climbed up onto a bench and left muddy bear prints all over my yoga mat. I don't remember why my mat was out of the car that day, where it always lived, but it was. And I didn't notice the prints until I went to unroll it a couple days later. But now when I unroll my mat, I see those prints and those scratches, and I know that you're reminding me to practice.
You want me to practice my coming back to my breath – because my breath can't escape the now like my mind can. You want me to practice coming back to my body – because my body needs to be strong to support the loss of my heart. You want me to practice coming back to my drishti (my focus) – because I need supreme attention to recognize intuition. You want me to practice coming back home – home was with you, so I am now homeless – but through my yoga practice I'm reminded that home is actually inside of me. And since you are now infinite, you are here too.
When we met, you had never been to a yoga class. But you embodied the yogic limbs more than I certainly did. And while over the next year and ten months, I taught you asana – you taught me breath, you taught me stillness, you taught me peacefulness, you taught me moderation, you taught me self-study, you taught me compassion, you taught me to breathe, you taught me purity, you taught me awareness, you taught me truth, and you taught me to surrender. Here I was, new to town, and desperately searching for a teacher – when I had him right there all along. You were my teacher. And you were a sage.
Lately, as I've moved through my practice, I've felt a chill shudder over my skin. Maybe it's a whisper from you that's awakening the hairs on my body. I close my eyes and I think of you. My breath deepens as I run through the pages in my memory of our love. The closest I get to intimacy now is the touch of my teacher. I close my eyes and imagine a conduit, a gentle caress from you. It's a desperate place to be. My body doesn't understand you're gone. My body craves you, but I can't give you to her. So I give her my practice, the other thing she knows.
So I am alone on my mat. I am alone with my breath, though it used to ebb and flow with yours. I am alone with my dance, though I used to have a partner. I am alone in my thoughts, making space for you to come join me. I am alone in my body, fantasizing about when I used to press it to yours. But I am not alone in my surrender, because you are there too.
So now, I practice in sadness. I practice in a soulful search for a crevice of peace. I practice in solitude because even if I'm in a room full of breath, I can't hear yours. But in my practice, I commit to hunt for the collective union of breath, for that "Om" that embodies me and you and all of spirit.
But after those seven days, my body started to mourn its practice. My back started to hurt and my lack of eating started to take its toll. I got dizzy spells. I threw up constantly, my brain was traumatized. My spine throbbed from laying in bed and rolling around in the fetal position. My body couldn't handle the grief I was inflicting on it. So, if only to ease the pain in my lumbar spine and encourage an appetite – I went back to yoga.
But what I've gotten from my yoga practice isn't just a prescription for my back pain, it's peace.
Five days after your death a bear came into our garage. He made my heart sing because you'd known I'd really wanted to see a bear – so I felt he was a sign from you. But he did something else too. He climbed up onto a bench and left muddy bear prints all over my yoga mat. I don't remember why my mat was out of the car that day, where it always lived, but it was. And I didn't notice the prints until I went to unroll it a couple days later. But now when I unroll my mat, I see those prints and those scratches, and I know that you're reminding me to practice.
You want me to practice my coming back to my breath – because my breath can't escape the now like my mind can. You want me to practice coming back to my body – because my body needs to be strong to support the loss of my heart. You want me to practice coming back to my drishti (my focus) – because I need supreme attention to recognize intuition. You want me to practice coming back home – home was with you, so I am now homeless – but through my yoga practice I'm reminded that home is actually inside of me. And since you are now infinite, you are here too.
When we met, you had never been to a yoga class. But you embodied the yogic limbs more than I certainly did. And while over the next year and ten months, I taught you asana – you taught me breath, you taught me stillness, you taught me peacefulness, you taught me moderation, you taught me self-study, you taught me compassion, you taught me to breathe, you taught me purity, you taught me awareness, you taught me truth, and you taught me to surrender. Here I was, new to town, and desperately searching for a teacher – when I had him right there all along. You were my teacher. And you were a sage.
Lately, as I've moved through my practice, I've felt a chill shudder over my skin. Maybe it's a whisper from you that's awakening the hairs on my body. I close my eyes and I think of you. My breath deepens as I run through the pages in my memory of our love. The closest I get to intimacy now is the touch of my teacher. I close my eyes and imagine a conduit, a gentle caress from you. It's a desperate place to be. My body doesn't understand you're gone. My body craves you, but I can't give you to her. So I give her my practice, the other thing she knows.
So I am alone on my mat. I am alone with my breath, though it used to ebb and flow with yours. I am alone with my dance, though I used to have a partner. I am alone in my thoughts, making space for you to come join me. I am alone in my body, fantasizing about when I used to press it to yours. But I am not alone in my surrender, because you are there too.
So now, I practice in sadness. I practice in a soulful search for a crevice of peace. I practice in solitude because even if I'm in a room full of breath, I can't hear yours. But in my practice, I commit to hunt for the collective union of breath, for that "Om" that embodies me and you and all of spirit.
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