Lost and Found

A calm came yesterday afternoon. There are strange gifts of peace that cover me. The waves of pain do have their counterpart. I must sit in those too, with presence, taking them in and knowing this too is where I am. I remind myself that while I know the waves of anguish and pain will come again, so will these moments of calm.

Sit with me. Wherever you are today, sit with me for a moment. Pause the world.

I cannot believe Mother Earth still spins on her axis. But she does, she continues to hold all we cannot fathom. She holds me and all of us who miss him. Even when we feel stuck, immobile, She moves for us in her rotation and orbit.

Please do not hide your pain from me. I know you miss him too. Your pain does not make my pain any greater, but it does join us together. When the pain makes our perspective a pinpoint, we can be each other’s eyes and ears. We can widen our view together. It will become a shared wisdom. It is a wisdom beyond this moment and for the next loss that one of us will endure. It is a wisdom we can hold communally.

Sit with me on this day, the seventh day as the world will be made over completely in this cycle we call a week. This day that is also my youngest child’s eleventh birthday. She came into this world on the heels of her grandfather’s (Edmond’s father) death. He died when I was seven months pregnant, and it ripped a hole in our reality. Elaine seems to walk this world with a knowing beyond her years. She is, at a young age, comfortable in the liminality of birth and death. Our family will gather both to release Edmond’s body today and to embrace Elaine’s.

Many who know me, know that on a daily basis, I lose my keys, coffee, phone, and shoes. I leave them someplace other than the hook or counter or purse or closet. And, now apparently I also lose my reading glasses (older eyes insist). I have stories of being lost both as a child in a mall separated from my mother, and internally lost, unsure of my place in the world. I found my mother that fretful day, and I found myself over and over again when life flipped upside down. I am lost again.

I also love to find what has been lost. I really do. It is a fabulous hunt for me when a child of mine cannot find their baseball socks, a book, an earring. I collect the clues of its last known use or location. It feels like magic when I almost feel myself drawn to the area of the house or to the car, allowing my mind and body to lead the way to the shiny, tiny earring under the passenger seat that must have fallen out during a hurried departure for school.

As a lost-one and a finder of what has been lost, I want to find myself with E again. I want to find the entrance to his world. Surely there is a door, a place where the veil is thin where we can meet. If there is a door, I will find it.