Shooting Stars

My friend died in the earliest hours of the morning on August 15th. When we first landed in this spot on the planet, when Wimberley caught us and let us stay, she helped hold us here too. I have known her for almost as long as we have lived here. She supported our family, particularly one of our children. Our relationship has woven in and out of many events and circumstances, truly a beautiful reciprocation of our love and affection for each other and our community. I cannot imagine this world or this community without her. And, yet, here we are. I must imagine it and live it. We are here, and she is not. She left her body behind. It could no longer support her here in this human experience where we feel, see, smell, taste, hear, and sense into so many incredible profound and subtle fields of knowing. 

JBD, you will be forever in my heart and along the river and in the classrooms. It is not the same without you. I can still see you standing in our kitchen on one of the first harsh days of April after Edmond died on a morning when it was still cold outside. You stood there smiling gently upon us holding a bag of Mima’s tacos delivering us both nourishment and comfort. Your ripples will continue forever, and I hope to feel your smiling presence and gregarious stories living in so many people and places. Thank you my friend. I hope the mobile I made and sent over felt as nourishing and comforting during your transition as the tacos were for us in the aftermath of Edmond’s death. I love you. I miss you, too.

I imagine the freedom of being out of this body forever, like Edmond and like my friend Johnna. I also imagine how I might miss this body of mine that I have not always loved so well. There is a freedom of a different kind when we are soul-seated in our body. Sometimes, when I am solidly in my body and soul at the same time, I can feel my own soul’s light and delight. Our soul is surely the grace-maker for being human. It is what makes it all possible and tolerable and beautiful. 

My soul has always known you, E. We live in spirit eternally. It is our soulful connection that eventually comforts my body that aches and longs for your physical presence. My body finds some minimal comforts in the subtleties of your things left behind. My mind, though thrashes about. My mind struggles to believe it is true, to know it, and understand it.  

Like we all do, either by choice or necessity, I sometimes slip out from underneath the best part of me, leaning too heavily into my linear mind, letting it lead even though the rest of me isn’t following. I forget my connection to the divine, and I fall apart shattering into millions of pieces. It is not until the cracking to bits is nearly too far gone that I have the notion to call my parts back home. The process is not always clear, but it usually begins with a sight, smell, or texture. In the terror of questioning my own reality and foundation, there is a thread placed in my hand or one that I reach out to grasp. I begin the reassembling. Threads often look like cold water, the floor, or a friend. Slowly and sometimes with great resistance, repelling each other like the wrong ends of a magnet, the mind, body, and spirit do eventually return to each other. It is the homecoming needed for the human experience, for comfort, and for staying. 

Already feeling the rumblings of the next layers and currents of grief below the surface, I prepared or thought I had. Perhaps, prepared or not, the flooding and the storm will occur. Maybe prepared is worse creating a false sense of control.

It happened again the day after we stayed up late to watch the meteor shower. Dear friends who have loved us for a long time, and some of my children and I gathered in the pool after dark. We stayed out late looking up, laughing, and telling some funny stories. I saw the first one. The shooting star sailed in an arc across the sky for nearly a whole second. It took my breath away as I pointed toward the sky. The other streaks across the sky were shorter and not nearly as bright as that first one. It wasn’t the shower storm of shooting stars we had hoped to see, but it was a beautiful night sky reflected in the water where we were buoyantly held. I pulled my fingers across the surface of the pool water in an arc, and made a shooting star in the water. Stars on the water, and water in the stars.   

The next day was Sunday, and it is still usually the hardest day. And, even with the fair warning of the pattern in place about Sundays, the amount of emotion: sorrow, disbelief, and fear, that erupted and burst forth from me still surprised and frightened me. I was a bursting with too many large burning rocks of pain, a meteor shower from within, bigger and more stormy than the one we had seen entering Earth's atmosphere the night before. I felt like a body of craters even a few days later. When it was happening, it was bad enough that I had to call a friend to talk me through, to keep me here.

Intense grief feels like it is breaking your mind. It breaks mine. When it hits hard like it did on Sunday, I am separated — my mind, body, and soul feel scattered from each other. I question reality, my existence, and my sanity. Even with a friend on the phone, I had to stop trying to focus on making sense of what she was saying to me. Language, when I am in this state, is not understandable. I concentrated instead on the sound of her voice. I let go of trying to make meaning of the English language, and just connected with her sound. Our connection was the meaning in that moment. Sitting with my feet in the tepid pool water, in the ridiculous heat of the day, I attempted to catch my breath and focus my ears intently on the tone, textures, and volume of sound coming through my phone was my path through the shattering. All of me was not in the same plane of existence, and so I had to find another way to reach her and be reachable. It was not all that different than the feeling I have when I try to reach Edmond in the realm of his existence.

I was glad later when that same friend sent this story she had been telling me on the phone in written form. The words on the page were a deeper connection to being fully here, and I could derive meaning from words strung together in sentences now that I was settled back in, soul intact with my body and mind. 

Lately, I cannot tell if each shattering softens me or breaks me. I keep wondering if when I come back together if there aren’t some major cracks still left in the system— maybe the kind that let light in, but also maybe the kind that allow me to fall apart more easily, or that leave me without some of my senses or skills.

I wonder if coming to that edge of reality of our existence too often is possibly a danger to our sanity longterm. I am not sure I actually have a choice. This is just what is happening. The cognitive dissonance of intense and traumatic grief feels as close to crazy and mind-blow-never-coming-back as I can imagine.

If it is a softening and a looseness in the cracks that remain after those big shattering events, maybe it is reshaping me. The cognitive gaps might possibly allow me to reshape my reality of the mind so I can stay and be here even if I do not come back together as fitted as before. Perhaps there are gaps, and light leaks in and out of me, as I become a more liminal being who is partly here and partly there. Or is this the way of grief, the breaking us open, expanding us to be more soulful? Afterward, after the big storm and flooding, there is an openness and relaxing into the new space. It could also be pure exhaustion. But, it has at times been euphoric as much as it is exhausting. I wonder if the fiery meteors that we imagine to be falling stars feel this euphoria upon entering the atmosphere.

Here I am again the place I’ve always been, but now I bathe in my own soul’s light.