Hope

As an undergraduate studying sociology in the early 90s, I wrote a paper for my social movements class on the The White Rose, a courageous and powerful youth-led opposition to the Nazi forces in Germany. The White Rose was an intellectual, non-violent resistance group whose members included five Catholic youth and a professor. They produced leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime’s persecution and mass murder of the Jews. The youth were eventually executed for their courageous acts. The White Rose always calls to mind images of extraordinary courage, hope for a better future, and right action in the face of evil.

About a decade later in our beginning, Edmond often brought me a single white rose. When I asked about it, why a white rose, he told me that it was a gift to honor our friendship. It felt like a gift of hope between us at the time, too. So many things seemed impossible in my world at the time, and the fact that I was even entertaining a relationship as the single parent of three young children, and that the desire to begin a relationship was being reciprocated was hopeful.

Just now, I looked up the symbolism around white roses. They signify new beginnings, hope, deep respect and devotion, and everlasting love. We were definitely a new beginning for each other, and hope was hard for him when we first met. For various reasons, he was unable to see very far into his future at all that first year. But there was a sliver, a tiny bit, a morsel of hope. Maybe that is all it takes.

The white rose feels like an important aspect of our relationship. Our relationship from the start was a sliver of hope that miraculously bloomed against the odds in some instances. We shared a deep regard for one another. Hope grew between us, and we dreamed big dreams and some of them materialized. Even through the waxing and waning that occurs in any relationship, there was hope, love, and friendship. We thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.

I miss my friend.

I miss him so much, and I hope I can find a way to be here without him. I hope I can find a way through this despair. I hope I am not alone forever. I hope I see him again.

There really is no one else I would rather be with than Edmond. I am doing that thing common among those who experience the death of a loved one, especially an intimate. I reach for the phone to text or call him, and remember that I can’t. The loneliness is insurmountable sometimes, and very much so lately.  

What we created together, a home and a family and businesses, is still here. Cooking, swimming, fixing, cleaning, sleeping, and playing are lonely without him. I am doing them all anyway, and his absence is heavy next to me as I do. Half of everything feels quieted, silenced.

It has been eleven weeks since he died. Eleven weeks is too long for him to have been gone hunting or on a trip or out of town for trial. The reality of hours, days, weeks, and nearly three months without him is settling in, and I feel such deep sadness. 

Since our return home, there is less anxiety the last few days and more sadness and despair and sorrow. Perhaps this is the body’s way of balancing things. Anxiety cannot go on for ever, and what goes up must come down so says Newton. Maybe, the deep sorrow and despair are balancing the anxiety, panic, and shock. Things are not as they could be, should be, or would be if Edmond were still alive and well. And he was alive and very well, so said his doctors and the lab results and his Fitbit. He did all the right things, ate all the good stuff, took excellent care of his body, mind, and heart, physically, emotionally, and psychically. He was so well. We were so good. But that is the data from the world of the logical. I live in another realm, the one of non-sense where things do not add up, and what goes up does not necessarily come down. Gravity is a funny, tricky thing where I live where tears flow upward. Hope is a precarious thing. Loneliness is real and alive here.

I lean against trees just to feel a steadiness and strength, but it is not him. I grab onto the lower limbs, the ones that overfill my grip but that I can still hold firmly. I remember how it was to hold his arm when we walked. He would sense my hand nearing his upper arm and flex his muscles. It wasn’t to show off; it was his way of greeting my touch. I loved it. It made us both smile. I miss his arms. 

I long for his hand on the back of my neck that aches from all the driving, loading cars, and writing. He used to take care of all the knots and tight spots. Now I do it myself or wait until I see my friend for a massage.

I miss how he looked at me, smiled when I walked into the room. He wanted me there, looked at me and saw me, and longed for my presence next to him. He waited for me. Now, no one looks, smiles, or waits. It is just me and two of our children and three dogs.

I once hungered for alone time, to paint or write or be without distraction or interruptions for a few hours or a day. E would sometimes take the kids to the hunting lease or out for the day to give me the respite, and I would drink up the slowness of the hours and feel the nourishment of not being needed. 

I have only ever lived by myself for a year. After roommates in the dorms and in an apartment for the first few years of college, I finally had my own apartment in Montrose in the art district of Houston. It was fabulous and a time of freedom. I owed no one, and made my own schedule for work, school, and play. 

Then, I got pregnant at 21, and that was its own kind of wonderful of the opposite type— being with a being who was tiny and powerful and amazing who needed me, wanted me close. And, so it began, motherhood. I would not trade it for anything at all. These people are my tribe, and I love them dearly. For the last 28 years, I have not been alone. Still, I am not alone—but it feels lonely. Partnership, my love and friendship with Edmond have spoiled me. Now that I know what I know, I cannot un-know it. One day, in the not too distant future, these last two children who are tween and teen will move out and into their adult life. The knowing that this day will come is the aloneness that waits in the room to greet me.

I had been dreading returning home from our trip without Edmond, returning to a home where he wasn’t waiting for us. So, when we walked in the door and were met with a balmy, stale 85 degree indoor temperature, I was not upset that the three of us quickly decided to sleep in my studio-office where the mini-split could keep us cool through the night. Honestly, it was not a difficult decision or a discomfort; it was a relief. It was easier to be in my studio, a waiting chamber to postpone what felt too heavy and sad in the too hot temperatures of our home. 

The day we returned form our trip was also Father’s Day. The day before, we had stopped in Lafayette to stay the night with my aunt and uncle. Lafayette was the half way point, and we got to visit and rest. We also procured four crawfish pies. So, to honor Edmond, the father of our family, we ate them with a side of salad which would have made him happy. If only there had been broccoli readily available in our nearly empty refrigerator, he would have been happier. He was serious about his greens, broccoli was his favorite green. 

The A/C repair person came a day earlier than expected. He is the nicest of humans, and now our house is cool again. You would think since we are in the midst of a heat wave I would be delighted. I am grateful. But, I am feeling the sadness of my aloneness in this world and in this life without him here next to me. 

When I came up to my studio to meditate today, I felt the heaviness of my body. Settling in more deeply, breathing, tears came from the depths of my pelvis, up through my abdomen, like a volcano’s steady flow of seeping lava. Tears of longing and sorrow flowed up through my center, like a river moving against gravity, and out of my eyes. I followed it, allowed it. It was not the meditation I had intended, but it is what happened. 

Is crying intentionally for 10-20 minutes meditation? If I sit on my cushion and focus my attention on the flow of the tears instead of the breath, is that mediation? If I breathe through it, is it a meditation? Whatever it was, it was an enormous release. I still have more that is ready to move as soon as I say the word or someone else does. 

There is no real consoling me at the moment. There isn’t a consolation that remedies this loneliness, this missing-him. Yet, I know I am loved and held by so many, and that is something. That is a belonging that matters, that carries me when I cannot walk.

Drinking my coffee this morning, I stood out on the upper deck that is even with the tree tops. I looked out and saw the very spotted new baby deer with his/her mama. They spied me too, and we took each other in, sharing the field of belonging within the landscape. As much as I feel relational with the birds and beasts that roam and live where I roam and live, I wonder if it would be enough? Would their company and companionship keep me from loneliness?

There is, at least in the early or late parts of the day, a comfort in the quiet. Without a need to speak or be heard, I often love these times of day. I used to even insist on them by sneaking out of bed early before anyone was awake. Edmond and I sometimes woke early together to be in the quiet next to each other over coffee or bird songs. He rarely stayed up late like I could or would to write or paint. I usually reserved those late nights for times when he was out of town. I suppose I could do that now as often as I want. Is it because it is readily available, not finite or precious, that I turn away from these endless opportunities and instead crawl into bed to go to sleep at a sensible hour?  

David Whyte writes eloquently about many things, including loneliness, and his words on the topic provide a sliver of hope, a white rose to my moment. There are many lines Whyte writes that I could easily have bled from my body onto the page too. My bleeding would not be eloquent at all. I feel exactly the words he knows to say to describe the painfulness of loneliness. And, I am not yet all the places this poem goes, but I will read and re-read his wisdom lived until I believe it or know it for myself. I hope I can fulfill the prophecy of his words with my life.

LONELINESS
is the doorway to as yet unspecified desire. In the bodily pain of aloneness is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real friendship, from a proper work or a long sought love. Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that great, unknown someone or something else we want to call our own.
Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation, the far horizon that answers back.
In the grand scale of things, loneliness might be a privilege. Human beings may have the ability to feel aloneness as no other creature can; with a power magnified by intelligence and imagination. Animals may feel alone in an instinctual way, moving naturally and affectionately toward others of their kind, but human beings may be the only beings that can articulate, imagine or call for a specific life they feel they might be missing.
Loneliness is the substrate and foundation of belonging, the gravitational field that draws us home and in the beautiful essence of its isolation, the hand reaching out for togetherness. To allow ourselves to feel fully alone is to allow ourselves to understand the particular nature of our solitary incarnation, to make aloneness a friend is to apprentice ourselves to the foundation from which we make our invitation others. To feel alone is to face the truth of our irremediable and unutterable singularity, but a singularity that can kiss, create a conversation, make a vow or forge a shared life. In the world or community, this essential singularity joins with others through vision, intellect and ideas to make a society.
Loneliness is not a concept, it is the body constellating, attempting to become proximate and even join with other bodies: through physical touch, through conversation or the mediation of the intellect and the imagination. Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power in the other. The shortest line in the briefest e-mail can heal, embolden, welcome home and enliven the most isolated identity. Human beings are made to belong.
Loneliness is the unwanted single malt taste of the very essentiality that makes conscious belonging possible. The doorway is closer than we think. I am alone; therefore I belong.
‘LONELINESS’ From CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
© David Whyte & Many Rivers Press