Burn

The other night I dreamt my childhood home burned to the ground. I stood on top of the rubble, with other members of my family. I looked to each of them for a place to live, to be taken in. There was no one for me to stay with. Although in reality this home was sold shortly after I'd moved to New York, in my dream all of my belongings had still been in the house, and now they were gone. Everything I'd owned had burned, but I wasn't phased. In fact, I felt a relief. I could start fresh. I needed, and was attached to, nothing. Yet there was a realization of how special the walls of that home had been. What they had held was scared, and now it was gone...as if it had never stood there in the first place.

I've often documented my dreams, and the visions that have come to me in the in-between here. Some I understand the meaning of right away, and seem almost more real than reality.

This one makes sense. I've been in a state of emotional purging recently. A lot of gunk has built up inside me over the last few years. Trapped in me, I've been living with the sickness of it. PTSD, and anxiety. Physical manifestations that breathe down my neck daily, and dull my sparkle. Only recently has it started to pour out, mostly in the form of tears. This is unusual for me, to have bouts of crying. Sometimes full-on sobs. I have been in fight-or-flight for so long. I've had to hold off on letting it out due to the battles I've had to fight, raising my son, and simply not having the time. But lately it's leaking out, ready or not.

This isn't a bad thing. The webs are untangling inside from around my brain, and heart. The water from my tears is cleansing. "Make space. Clear the way." It whispers..

I have had a sense that a new page is just about to turn. The next chapter is so close. New players will enter, a new stage is set, and life begins, anew. I see white light where I once saw no color at all. I feel warmth right around the corner, coming to me from the opposite direction.

I have only felt on the verge like this one other time. I searched through my old posts until I found it, and wouldn't you know it, the date was February 2013 (here). Exactly one month before absolutely everything about my life changed in a million ways I never could have seen coming.

Is there a shedding of the skin every six or so years? I laugh to myself, remembering that every seven or so we literally become new people, as every cell in our body replaces itself with a new one.

Of course. 

I hope I'm right about this precipice. I have no reason to doubt. Everything I once had burned to the ground. I need nothing other than walls to house a sacred space, where that ends up is TBD.

But I stand calmly on the rubble.
A clean slate.
I don't feel loss.
I am not empty.
There is a hint of spring in the breeze.

I wait...

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One year later

One year. One year ago today my life blew up. It was instant. The loss happened so quickly, I was left gasping and scrambling. I am still processing. I am still very much grieving.

I made it through the year of firsts. Holidays. Birthdays. Every season. It's interesting what you think will hurt doesn't, and what sneaks up on you with a kick to the guts. Christmas was fine, but the Tulip Festival was another story. The closing of the old bowling alley, a certain hotel in Vegas changing it's name...confirmation that my old life was over.

It's been one year since we were all under the same roof.
It's been one year since there was a real face-to-face conversation.

For one year I've avoided almost all the old haunts.
I had no energy left to spare to enjoy a lot of the things I once enjoyed.
I spent a year without my roller skates.

I've spent a lot of time feeling broken. Foggy. Scared. Bullied. Feeling that a lot of what had been the most meaningful in my life was now for naught. Wondering if I am supposed to go on living. Missing my old self. Wishing for the confidence and creativity I once had to return. Feeling hopeless that they ever will.

Somehow, I kept pushing through, and had a lot of wonderful experiences, too. I found a new freedom I enjoyed. I made deep connections with incredible women who share similar stories.

I continue to work hard in therapy to heal from my trauma and PTSD. I am slowly, slowly making progress. Baby steps. Forward motion. Glimpses of my old strength are becoming more frequent, and the waves of anxiety are happening less. The decision to take control of my own healing in a situation that left me so hopeless has been empowering and crucial.

I have gotten over the pangs of both heartbreak and jealousy that would hit when I would see a baby out with both a mom, and a dad. I am working on getting over the pangs of both heartbreak and jealously that hit when I see an announcement of baby number two.

I have forced myself out of my shell and comfort zone, a ton. This has been one of the best things for me. I have met people I never would have met otherwise and have tried my hardest to learn from each person who has crossed my path, knowing that they were all placed there for a reason.

I took some inspiration recently from a woman who after experiencing loss said something like, "Option A isn't available. And if option A isn't available...then we're going to have to rock the shit out of option B." I am still wrapping my head and heart around the fact that yes, option A isn't available. But I'm feeling more optimistic that once I know what option B is, I can rock that.

I have met new men. It's been more of a social experiment for me than anything else, because I've never dated. I've been in a long term relationship since I was 19. I need to learn who I am around new men, and what I want. It's few and far between. Dating for me has been conversation, or food or a drink. I've had a year without romance in my life. And that's okay.

I slowly feel my creativity, focus, and spirituality coming back. Like sparks lighting up through my system...a tiny bit here and there at a time...slowly coming back online. Back to life. And I'd rather give myself time to see it through and feel the difference, than to jump off a bridge.

I am learning what boundaries I need, and how to begin to draw them.

I believe, with nothing but trust and some blind faith, that there is something more for me. I don't know what that means, or when I'll get there, but I know I'm not on this earth to be shattered and stopped at this point in the story. What if this is right when it's about to get good? I have to know.

And then of course, my boy. My boy. My boy. My world. My son. I am the most happy, grounded, myself, rooted in earth, and in my essence when I am being mother. I am not sad. I am not lost. I am fully present in each moment. I am dropped in, I am there. I am just as in awe of him as I have ever been, if not more so. I know there are big lessons he is here to teach me, big things he is here to do, and I am HIS mother for reasons I have yet to know. He is my joy and my balm.

I had never known what regret felt like until this year. But when I look at my son, I know it couldn't have all been for nothing because HE came from this. Little blonde being of light, life, and magic.

I have been thinking so much about this day as it approached. I didn't know how I'd feel, or what I'd want to say. I wanted to wake up in my full power, a sense of relief. Healed.

But instead I feel sad. I feel in time I'll be okay. That one day I will wake up that way.

But today I'm sad, and that's okay, too.


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Just one of those days.

Grief is not linear 

Love is not linear

In waves, forever in waves they’ll be.

Each person you pass by has been filled to the brim with good, and had a heart so heavy it’s all but bottomed out. Walking universes. How are we made survivable? 

Some days we are on top of the world, others we are under it. In waves, forever in waves they’ll be.

Just one of those blips, you know? Where I try to picture the future, and I can’t. Static silence. Black.

How can this be my reality? 

I’m having a (temporary) glitch.

Or this is my new normal. 

I busted my heart this year. That thing is BUST.ED.

I am continuing to survive the saddest thing I’ve ever survived. What a strange thing to say. What a weird planet.

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August blurbs

A couple of musings from August 16th, the anniversary that wasn't.

one

In 2012, I shattered, entire. As I built myself back over a summer, fall, and winter, I was never more open. The omens were everywhere, and that's when I learned the universe is tailored just for me, as it is for you. 

Relatives who had passed on came to visit me in animal form. The animals were everywhere. There were notes scrawled on the sidewalks, and the walls. I had visions of the child I would one day mother. I had dreams where I traveled from this plane, I saw heaven. 

Never again, have I experienced that kind of connection to the universe. Never again, have I been that earthed.

Maybe I didn't need it. Until now. "I could sure use an omen or two", I've been whispering to the cosmos. 

But I know it requires just as much effort on my part. 

I must not be cloudy. 

I must pay attention. 

I must know it when I see it. 

The visit from my ancestors yesterday was one. 

When you left me, I experienced a dream like those from five years ago. This time it was to be embraced by a real, and equal love. How different.

Today's omen came in the reminder that there are no coincidences, and time is magical.

A chance conversation with a stranger to give me all the right reminders, and to send me on my way...okay. 

two

What I would say to you today, if I could?

Today, I sat where we sat every year. I had to go to our spot, because where else would I go? Buried deep, or not so deep at all, was my hope to see you. To see you had taken the day off. To be here. 

"Your last name is Wride?" Surely someone would say. "How funny, there is a man here with that same last name!"

I wanted to write you. "Please, as someone who was so recently your wife, and love, give me a moment off the record. Please, if there is any part of you, I don't care how small, who doubts this...meet me tonight. If somewhere in there, past ego, past pride, you feel you don't want this, this emotional, financial, mental, devastation of us, meet me. Meet me in the lobby of our spot. 6 pm. The time we said our vows three years ago today. I'll be waiting for you with a glass of champagne. And if you choose not to, please don't use this against me. Please disregard this, as someone who was so recently your wife, and love."

In my minds eye, he he comes. He walks in, wearing his suit. He doesn't want our destruction. He wants to come home. "Yes," I say. But I approach delicately. I ask we just try for a day, or a weekend. It's so fragile. 

And that's where it stops. I can't see further. And I know I am not allowed to ask this of him, although this is my biggest wish. 

Come home, my heart says. Come home. 

*

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*

Now.

This morning was different.

Out for a walk, I could hear it. I could feel the pulse. I was so away of the universe breathing. It was alive, I was a part of it, and I was in sync like I hadn't been in five years.

I am focusing on breathing today. I am aware. I am alive. I am breathing deeply and purposefully.

What if this is exactly where I am supposed to be? What if, after a false start, this is the beginning...of everything?


Eternal retour, eternal retour, eternal retour.


Inhale. Exhale. Begin.



*
*

Nowhere to go.

"Grief is just love with nowhere to go." 

I've stumbled upon the perfect quote, and I'm thinking of it throughout the day. I ping-pong between moments of rest, and being seized with sadness. For a minute I think I'm going to be okay, and then my heartbreak is debilitating. 

I can't help but feel this is a monstrous waste. A rash, hurried, angry waste. The depths of what this is are unbearable. I do not want this. I do not want this for me. I do not want this for him. I do not want this for our boy. 

My boy no longer lives under the same roof as his mother and father. 

He will never see us kiss. 
He will never bound into our bed, waking us up early on a Christmas morning. 
He will never sit between us on the couch, watching a Disney movie. 
He will not take another family vacation. 
He will not be given a sibling from the two of us. 
He will never hear us tell the other, "I love you." 
He will not remember how hard it got for the two of us, but also how much love was there. 

All time is happening at once. We are speaking our wedding vows, we are watching our son be born, we are divorcing. Divorcing. And what can I do? What was I to do when I was being taunted with the word, divorce, for over a year? What was I to do, but beg and plead and nearly lose my dignity in the process? Don't leave me. What could I do, if I alone was willing to walk through the fires, to the ends of the earth, to fix anything and everything that came our way? 

What if what came our way damaged me emotionally, mentally, and physically in the process? My appetite vanished, my anxiety mounted, and I questioned my self worth. My worth. To feel unworthy is a scary spot to be. 

But what if I still I wanted to fight for us? What happens when one won't stop fighting, and the other won't start? What's to be done when you're desperate to draw someone out of communication shut-down, and they aren't a willing participant? What do you do when you ask for help for him, for you, for your baby, and nobody answers your cries? 

What if, despite it all, you don't want it to end? 

To end without a fight is such a devastating shame. In these moments, where I can't catch my breath, I am sinking. My love with nowhere to go is suffocating. So abrupt. 

I longed to talk about the depths of motherhood. But depth became off limits. Wasn't this just a season of life? Weren't we just getting back to dates? Planning our first getaway early next year for just the two of us? We had just begun. Barely at three years of marriage. I couldn't even have three, and I would have given every single one I had left. I am forever altered by this. 

How could so much be taken from me? This is a low, low grief. 


And when I see him...how will I ever look at him and not see my husband? I will miss him forever. I will love him for always. I move forward off-kilter, housing something broken inside. 

It is gone. It is all gone. 

Maybe this was never mine to keep. This is not the first time my heart has been shattered by my Great Love. The one who left me behind once for eight months. From that I barely recovered. Here we go again. 

My Great Love who talked of our future up until the moment our lives exploded. My Great Love who tried to leave me so many times. It was inevitable. How many times must I be left, or told I'm going to be left, before I believe it, and act on it as well? How many more days can I stay, scared? Physically, mentally, and emotionally declining? Scared of an anger that my Great Love came with, and one that seems to be amplified by life with me. 

Yet my heart still screams: Stop this! Stop all of this! End it now! Fight for this! This is can't be how our story ends! Don't run away! Look ahead! This shattered life is not for us!

Grief is just love with nowhere to go. I've been broken, but my love stayed intact. 

Thank goodness for our son. Our beautiful, magical son. He is a bit of what was, of what I believe should still be, and all the reason in the world to press on. The brightest spot in my life. The boy who I'm said to love too much. To me, there will never be any such thing as too much. 

Thank god for my capacity to love, and my role as his mother. 

This tiny boy has saved my life. 

The boy.

I can recall where I was four years ago instantly. Physically, I was wrapping up a temporary stay in NYC. I'd gone back for a few months to remember what it was like to be a student again, and immersed myself in classical training. Emotionally, it was the worst time of my life. 2012 wrecked havoc on my heart, head, and soul. We'd lost my uncle that May. He was lost to me in a slew of other losses that year, varying for me in degrees of devastation. I'd been shattered, and I was trying to rebuild. His birthday (the first he would not be there for) was November 9. On November 10, I saw a play. I left on a high. I came back to where I was staying only to find out via face-time that my Grandpa had just died. I could't get home fast enough. I'll never forget that feeling. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. 

Four years later, everything I've lost has come back to me in a new form. All that loss cleared out space for me to gain so much. I truly believe that must happen, and I am left even more amazed at the way birth and death are, in fact, one. 

But there's a final piece from 2012 that I've never shared, because it didn't click for me until recently. And four years later on the birthday/departing day anniversaries, here it is. 

Four years ago I had what can only be described as a vision. I wrote bout it here.https://theshapeshiftingpoet.blogspot.com/2015/04/neither-here-nor-there.html I was in Southern Utah for my my grandpa's funeral. Falling asleep, I saw as clear as day my grandpa and uncle outside in a beautiful clearing. The sun was bright. The sky bright blue. The grass and trees around them a vibrant green. They were young, and they looked so good! They had with them a toddler. A boy. He was as blonde as can be. They were all so happy, playing with him. Doing that thing you do with little kids where you hold their hands and spin them around so their feet are off the ground. It was very real. It was happening, or had happened, wherever they were. I didn't know who the toddler was, but they seemed to be taking care of him. 

I thought about it from time to time over the years, but it didn't hit me until recently who that boy was...

For the Squirrel and the Bluebird, who continue to give. 

DM 

Four.

I'm holding my newborn son in my arms, rocking him to sleep. I'm standing over his bassinet when I remember it's almost the 27th. I have to count it out on my fingers to really make sure that this will mark four whole years. Four suddenly seems like a lot. 

I try to imagine as best as I can, you as a baby. My grandmother holding you in her arms, rocking you to sleep exactly as I am doing now. I can't quite see it, but I know it happened. It's so hard to wrap my head around the fact we all start out this way. We've all been held in the arms of a parent, or by someone who loved us. 

I think about how you, Charles, lived in this very condo before my baby Charles did. You have the same residence. You have the same bedroom. You share the same name.

I remember the first time I came back here after you left. Everything exactly as you'd left it, and the air still smelling of you. My mom said I could take something, but I hardly dared to breathe let alone move a thing. I chose only the tiniest object, and the one that seemed most you. An itty-bitty baseball magnet off the fridge. 

I don't let myself linger in this memory too long.

I come back to the present, and think about how the baseball magnet then traveled with me, only to end up back on this fridge. How Charles ended up back in this place, and while he is not you, nor supposed to be, this all feels connected. Inevitable. Strangely whole. This circle of life. 

Into my head pops the Rumi quote, "Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form." 

I get it. 

I leave my heart at that, and put my son to bed. 

Grief, three years later.

Today is the 27th. That number is burned into me, but I manage to survive it okay.

I wonder why I can, if I should be something other than okay, but I remind myself to let go of a should or shouldn't. I am where I am, how I feel, today.

Today is okay.

I woke up next to my husband, did the dishes, sent him off to an interview, hopped in the shower. My mom came over, because it's the 27th, and we talked in my living room while my pup took turns sitting on our laps.

My husband came home, I made him something to eat.

We worked from home, we ran errands. We laughed. We ate. We kissed. We said I love you. We spent the evening playing nintendo.

That's what I did on the 27th, three years later.

I haven't cried. I don't know that I will. I feel healed. I feel whole. I have to know that it's okay.

Time is so surprising. Three years ago today I remember leaving my house in the morning to get back to my aunts, where he and his hospital bed had been set up in the living room. I thought I'd still get to see him. I pulled up mere minutes too late. My dad out front to meet me, "he's gone". "What?" Feeling everything sink. Purple pajama pants, blue flannel shirt. Running in. How profound. The first death is the most profound thing a person can go through. His bed surrounded. A spot now taken by me. His things at his bedside. What becomes of things? You can't take them with you. How he looked. He was, and yet he wasn't. We are not our bodies.

The reaction of my grandpa when he came in and realized he was also too late. Three years ago, I also still had a grandpa.

The blanket that had been keeping him warm. A kids blanket. Navy blue, with clocks. The time was frozen around the 10 o'clock hour. Very near the time he left.

At some point, he left us, entire. I don't know what happened then.

Three years ago tonight I sat in my backyard looking at the moon and questioning everything. Everything was new, and open, and vast, from the moon to my heart. I was reborn. I drank three big red cups of vodka and soda to drown out the world and cried myself to sleep wondering why I should get to sleep in a bed if he couldn't.

Those are the most vivid memories of the most surreal day.

Time blurs from there. I will always remember spending that spring and most of 2012 shattered. Before that, and after that. For so long, so terribly broken. I still carry that weight with me more than I'd like to, and find myself angry at times I ever had to go so low.

Crushed. Heart smashed.

Sad, sad, sad.

I did everything I could to keep moving and continue the rebirth. I shaved my head. I was so open. I read everything. I expanded. I learned. I saw omens. I saw heaven. I saw him in the form of animals. I ran. I ran, ran, ran. Anything to keep moving. I was afraid if I sat still something awful would happen to me.

I thought I was dying. I also had nightmares and began to feel sick all the time. The losses piled up and I could barely breathe.

I thought maybe I too, wanted to die.

Get me out of here.

I kept digging, I kept being buried alive.

I am mad at that time.

Mad, mad, mad.

But yet here I am, presently. So whole. Parallels exist at any given time. Extreme opposites. Both are true. I learned this then, and it still holds today.

Today the number 27 is burned into my brain. The contrast from three years to today feels like it might as well have happened to someone else.

I don't feel guilty for my happiness. I don't know how I should behave, or pay tribute, or not, on this day. I haven't cried, but I still feel it all. It happened, and left its mark all through my insides.

I still don't know what to make of it at times. Sometimes it's still not real. Sometimes a wave rocks me for no reason, death it says, he died, and the permanence takes me over for just a second. My brain can't process it for long, and my soul goes into protection mode.

It's another heaviness that simply is. Inside.

I thought of asking him for a sign today. Just like the first Christmas after he left I asked him to throw me a snowball on Christmas eve. "Make it hit the window outside", I said. Nothing. Today? Nothing. But today I also feel like I'm too closed off to it to see it anyway. Because if it happened, if it really happened, I think deep down I couldn't take it.

So that's it. That's today.

The third of these 27's so far.

And I have to stop now, because if I go on I think I might cry.

And I think what I need today, is to let myself be okay.


P.S The views on this post are quite high. I'm not sure why, but I'm glad people are reading. I find I am most comforted by words. I am so thankful there are writers, bloggers, and people living with open hearts who are willing to share their words. We all teach each other. I hope this entry is comforting to you if you have experienced any kind of loss. I have so much to say on the topic of loss, lessons learned through loss, and rebirth. If you go back to May of 2012 here on my blog and read up through about the first part of 2013, you might find even more that can hopefully be of comfort as I went through my journey of losing myself, and finding a new normal. Things turned out better than I ever could have hoped, but I had to go through darkness first that I never dreamed was possible. 

I also hope you subscribe here, bookmark, or look around through other posts. This is the place where I pour my heart out. 

~DM

Two years.

"What I want you to know, you, yes you, is that there was a time when the people who are not, were still in the world. Made of earth. And they were vibrant and alive. Life was localized and it was musical and smelled of cinnamon and spice. It was loud. A vibration of generations connected by our invisible dewdrop spiderweb. I was so conscious of it then. It was tangible. I could almost see it. I can hear it still. It echos in me." 

-Deena Marie, 2012


Two years ago today, almost down to the exact hour, my uncle chuck left earth.  I don't feel like posting pictures.  But I can't go without words on this day.

The first experience with this thing we call death.

If you could peek inside my head and heart you'd see why that was the moment.  From then on, nothing would ever be the same.  For me, for any of us.  I could never have imagined that that was the beginning.  The beginning of the shift.  The new normal. Nothing would remain the same.  My internal makeup would completely change.

I've been thinking a lot about that, and while I've mentioned it here plenty of times since then, how do I try to explain what that means? My internal makeup would completely change.

I wrote this blurb the other day,

"Ever since, I worry my eyes can't see.
Won't focus, will stop seeing, have blurred.

I worry my breath is running out, has become too shallow, 
no longer supports me.

I feel myself flicker and worry I keep trying to transcend.  
Involuntarily, my consciousness slips in and out and I have no control.

I wonder if in fact I don't exist."

I thought my soul was going to jump right out of my body.  I felt like I could barely contain it.  "Here we go", I'd think to myself as the feeling would come on.  I could be anywhere.  Driving in the morning.  Sitting in front of the computer.  Getting ready to meet a friend for coffee.  I could barely focus.  I realized how serious it could be the day I rear ended a car coming off of the freeway for no reason.  I knew I was slowing down, I knew there was a car in front of me.  I simply didn't see it.  I kept leaving myself.

And my dreams.  If only you could have seen my dreams.  I've seen the brightest lights as I'm falling asleep.  "Here we go," I'd think to myself.  "Transcending again." I've seen visions. I've seen heaven.

I've felt my heart race to the point of panic and my brain go fuzzy.  My body kept betraying.  Now I realize it has a name.  You can call it anxiety, you can call it PTSD. I call it the new normal.  And it's getting better.  Patience.  Time.  I am feeling less connected to the physicality and other worldly-ness of two years ago.  

I no longer worry I don't exist, have died, will slip off the earth and into the blue before it's time.

I'm here.  I'm meat and bones and thoughts and feelings.  I am temporarily tangible. How lucky.

Two years later.

What was your journey, my family? Where are you now? Are you who you want to be? Did you find your truth? Are the last two years still teaching you? Are you still learning? Have you expanded? Are you where you wanted to end up? If not, go get it.  Run. Look how long, and short the two years were.  Waste not.  There are no rules now! There is no fear now! There is only love, only this moment.  What a gift.

Heal.  Heal now.  I will if you will.


Deena Marie

One Year. May 27th.

One year ago yesterday I went to work.  I called them ahead of time to give them a heads up I might need to leave, should I get a call from my mom.  If I got the call, the call, I would know it was serious.  Serious enough to go.  A couple hours in I thought I was in the clear.  Then the phone rang.

I remember what I was wearing.  A black tank top, black blazer, black tights, black flat slip on shoes and a stretchy pink skirt.  I had a gold owl necklace and my long red hair was in curls, parted down the middle.

What was unusual was the winter parka.  My biggest and warmest, and needed this May 26th.  I ran to my car, or tried.  The weather made it hard.  The wind.  The gloom.  Was it raining? And the slipping.  Slipping all down a sidewalk the length of one long city block.  Berries had fallen off the trees overhead and it was so slippery.  I shuffled and slipped and surprisingly didn't fall the whole way to the parking garage.

I think the sun was out at times during my drive on the freeway.  I kept talking to him, out loud even, telling him to hang on.

What I remember most is the sound of his breathing.  Labored and loud and unlike anything I'd ever heard.  I remember the circle of family around his bed.  It was strong and safe and sacred unlike anything I'd ever felt.  The wind was getting louder.  The universe was howling and orchestrating for our story.  It was crying for us.  It was taking him.

"Seven Spanish Angels" was played over and over.  I don't know if I will ever listen to that song again.  When my family began to tell him to "Go to God" I don't know if it was the fact they were releasing him, or the thought of not knowing what was meant by talk of this God that bothered me more.

I slept, the wind screamed, and the circle around him was the eye of the storm.  I've never felt so solid as in that space and so aware of the elements out of control around us.  We would not budge.

I went home.  I woke up in peace the morning of May 27th, in sunshine, the earth had stopped spinning wildly and it was silent.  Purple pajama pants.  A flannel shirt.  My hair was still long, still in curls.  I was on my way back.  Back to the same, I was sure.  But this time it was different.  I would never go back to the same.  What had been was no more, and just like that, it was over.

I'm stopping here for now, as I've exhausted this story for one year.  One year today.  I don't know what I expected to feel, what I should feel, or even how I feel.  I am here, you are here, he is not.  It feels like yesterday.  It feels like this morning.  Yet a lifetime passed me, taught me, broke me, and healed me in this year.  The year of firsts.

The year of firsts is now complete.

Maybe that's all there is to say today.

Thumbs Up

This is the month.  On the 27th it will be the one year mark.  One year since Chuck left.  There's one story I've had and haven't been able to share.  I've wanted to, I just couldn't write it.  I wanted it documented and out in the word but could never find my own words to tell it.  So, I asked my mom.  It took her awhile to be able to do it, but over the weekend, she did.  Here is a very special story in her beautiful words.  May is definitely going to be about honoring our Chuck.

Thumbs Up

I want to share with you a small moment in my family’s life, that made a huge impact! Maybe I should say a moment between my daughter and my brother.  My handsome, humorous, brother Chuck, left us last May. So here we are at almost a year, still contending with shooting pains in our hearts.

What a unique guy my brother was, and I mean that in a most loving way.  Chuck was the prankster of the family, how he came up with some of the jokes he pulled on us is still a mystery.  We were his personal guinea pigs! This teasing also extended to his nieces and nephews.

I’ve told Deena she takes after her uncle Chuck that way.  The have the same humor, and they shared an invisible, mighty bond. 

Chuck was so proud of Deena, from the day she was born, until his last minutes on this earth.

As I ride that hideous roller coaster of sadness, certain memories linger.  One of my favorites happened while he was in the hospital for the last time.

Chuck was rushed by ambulance to the emergency on May 10^th, 2012.  He would be in the hospital for the next two weeks, all but one of those days in the ICU.  There the medical staff hovered over him and did their difficult jobs, and there were many.

Now my Chuck, this bigger than life guy, was on the brink of death.  He lay in his hospital bed, intubated and unconscious.  He was our sleeping giant.  This was a hard part for my family, we hugged and cried and dealt with our crumbling hearts. 

I existed in my stupor, wearing boots made of lead, seeing through gray lenses, and carrying an internal ball of fear.

That was how I functioned last May. 

Around the fourth or fifth day, the doctors decided it was time to wean him off his medications.  This would help determine how sick he really was.  This is the time the silent worry began, if he did wake up, would he be our same Chuck? Had he been oxygen deprived?

The nurses encouraged us to talk to Chuck and touch him during this time.  He began to turn his head toward the sounds of voices.  Or any loud noise.  He became restless, letting a leg hang off his bed.  But we needed more! Please Chuck, just open your eyes! Please give us a sign!

This process lasted maybe two days, it felt like years. 

Deena was on her way to the hospital when I suddenly had this feeling or premonition.  There was going to be a connection between Deena and Chuck! I JUST KNEW! Deena knew it too, she felt it as she walked down the hospital corridor. 

Deena walked into the room, stood at the foot of his bed, and said, “Hi Chuck”.  He raised his arm in the air and gave a big Thumbs Up! Oh my god! Did he just give us our sign?! He had reacted to her after all! I KNEW IT! That darn thumb caused so much emotion and elation at the same time!

Deena and Chuck were truly connected!

My mom burst out crying, which caused a slight domino effect.  But they were tears of joy!

Later mom would say it reminded her of a fairy tale, when the Prince awakens the Princess.  In our case, it was the niece, that woke her uncle!

I can only tell you, that in my minds eye, I relive this miracle moment, over and over. 

And so, to my daughter and big brother, I give you both, a Thumbs Up!

- Lauren Manzanares 

April, 2013

Make Room

I planned to do some kind of year in review blog, but I'm not sure how to approach that one this time.  I was a word alchemist this year more than ever.  At least publicly.  I translated my guts to the page time and time again.  Many of those times I felt as though something else was speaking through me.  How do I fit eternity into one post by a certain date? What I can best say about my journey of 2012 has already been said.  By Rumi, of course.

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
~Rumi 

That says it all, but here's my attempt at a bit more:

This was the year.
This was the year I saw death.
It racked my bones and broke them to dust.

I said goodbye.  Loss ran rampant over me more times than you'd believe,
even if I told you about each and every one of them, The Losses.
At times so big, so shatteringly big, I am in awe of my survival.

My heart broke.
Again.  And again.  And again.  Ba boom! 
I got a new tattoo.
I am.  I am.  I am.  Ba boom! 
It was the worst summer of my life.
It was the summer of animals.
It was the summer of running.  Anything to keep moving.

This was the year my limits were lifted.
I saw my confinements clearly.  The invisible labels and restraints only I had placed.
I saw them lift.  Like a shutter, up they snapped and dissipated.
The one great gift death and death alone can bring.
There he laid, there I sat.  There they went. 
This was the year I saw with my own eyes we are not our physical bodies.
I am not my weight, my height, my hair, my age.
I am all, and all is me, and always has been, and always will be.  
I am enough, and you are, too.  You are another me, I am another you.

This was the year of the soul.
The only thing I'm now sure of.
My eyes deceive me, my body betrays me, but my soul...
My soul has never led me astray.
I was let out, I transcended.  I saw heaven.

Psychosomatic as it may be,
I experienced my Uncle's sickness for months when he left.
My heart hurt and my hands went numb for my Grandpa when he was gone.
My imagined fear let out, I went on a six week artistic sabbatical.
I gathered up all I could to add to my Big Life.
To expand myself and bring it back to keep.

This was the year of The Winter's Tale.  A sad tale was best for winter.
Hermione found me and gave me the ultimate healing,
and Shakespeares words patched me back together.

Death came a second time.  Nobody told me how greedy Death is. 
The rug pulled out from under me and all my comfort shattered once again.
I spiraled in when it should have been out (but deep down this time I knew better),
and so I saved myself one sunday night.
Promising myself that even though people always leave me on the weekend,
Monday I can chose to come back to life and throw myself even deeper into the opposite of fear.

I will chose.
I will chose to give my moments Meaningful Shape.
I choose the better story.

I will respond to you, soul.  To the call from the stars.
To the Athena's before me, and Comsic Alchemists who follow,
I will pave your way with a golden story in which you'll remember you're not alone.
You've been here before, and will be again.

There is only hope.
There is only forward.
And I am free.


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