Yesterday evening, I took a walk around my neighborhood. I was hoping it would help my headache and my storm-cloud mood. Everyone was out with their dog for a walk and all the doggy antics made me
smile. Just being out among the living made me smile.
Then I passed the
yard.
There was something about this back yard that made me
crumple up into myself. Made my eyes brim with hot tears.
The raised beds overflowing with veggies and flowers so
similar to the ones I grew lovingly from seed every year.
The hammock swinging in the breeze.
The slight mess that made it clear that the owners lived a
life of fun and creativity.
In that moment, it represented what I had, what I can’t have
now, what I’ve lost and what I worry I’ll never get to experience again.
And then again, in the two years since Dave died, so many beautiful
things have happened (many of which I’ve created myself) that I’d never have
predicted. The experience has exceeded my expectations in pain, heartache AND in
small miracles. I think it might just be up to me to see the miracles for what
they are and not spend so much time gawking at what could have been and what
has been taken and instead spend a little more time appreciating what is.
It sounds like a load of bullshit and most days I both feel
that and will say that, but even on
the short walk I took, I had the chance to either breathe in the summer
evening, note the show-offy dogwood blossoms and smell the roses and jasmine,
feeling gratitude for them, or I could suffer and rail and inwardly pound my
fists and scream at the universe.
Or I could do a
little of both, which is what I ended up doing. I imagined going home and
smashing every breakable item in my house until the fury and frustration at
what I’ve lost burned out a little. I cried a little. I even played the tape of
the day he died in my head for a few seconds, feeling my chest tighten and the
sobs build steam under my sternum as I pictured the doctor telling me he was
gone.
But then, I turned up the music on my iPod, breathed in the
smells of summer in Portland, and headed for home. Where I am now. My home. On my balcony in the
treetops. I can hear a cedar waxwing whistling somewhere above me. The breeze
blows a complex mixture of summer blossoms and dinners cooking.
And I hold both the pain and the beauty together, inside me.
How I can fit it all in there, I have no idea. Every day, that’s my challenge.
To turn away from the bad long enough to see the beauty and then to look at the
bad and feel it, without censoring myself from it. Without feeling bad for
wallowing a little. Without judging
myself for still feeling it.
It’s there and can’t be denied, but so is that
beauty. Unlike the bad, the beauty doesn’t come looking for me quite as much. I
have to look for it. It plays hard to
get while the negative thoughts flirt mercilessly with me and are always there
for the taking.
Fortunately, I like a challenge.
