A Place of Existence

For years, I have wandered outside.  When I was very young, on through my teenage years, I would often times find myself on my Aunt's cattle farm, traipsing around the back lots, playing in the creeks, or just generally exploring the land and finding interesting spots to spend time with my brother and cousins.  We were always outside.  We camped, fished, shot at old oil cans, roamed, watched birds or squirrels, built little shelters or dammed the creeks with a shovel and time, stared at the stars, and generally didn't have a care in the world.  I was a kid...that's the way it should be.

The farm is no longer in the family, but now, I have my own place.  It's a place that Megan never knew about, nor did Shelby.  It's a place I can go to to just "exist", and be that kid again, playing in the creek, listening to birds, or staring at a beech tree in winter, with its white leaves just barely clinging on while they flutter through the cold winter wind.  I found it one day maybe 7 years ago by glancing at a topographic map, looking for a sea of green and picking an interesting looking spot.  This little glade at the outlet of a small spring caught my eye, and I decided to explore.

It amazes me that I forgot about this place until last weekend.  Megan has been dead almost 4 months, she was in the hospital for 6 months before that, and had been diagnosed with rejection in early February.  That was the last time I visited my place...February 16th, 2014.  I read my journal entry from that day, and it might as well have been written the day she was going to die.  The terrifying feeling that I was going to be on my own had already crept in, and it was just as suffocating then as it was later on in November.

I packed my backpack, hopped in the truck, and decided that it was time to exist.  It's an odd thing for me sometimes to want to write something down, but predetermine that whatever I write is going to be more honest, raw, and meaningful if I wait and disappear into my place.  After a few miles of plodding through that late-winter crusty, creaky snow, I had finally returned to my place of existence.

I set my little stove up to make some coffee with snowmelt, assembled my mini chair, grabbed my journal, and started writing in my own little Walden that I had constructed.

There is something about being outside in an isolated spot in the woods that clears my head and fills it with thoughts at the same time.  I put pen to waterproof paper for awhile, every so often adding a little bit more snow to my pot until there was enough water in it to have a nice cup of coffee.  Once it was ready, I took a break and "existed" for awhile.

That's when it hit me.  Here I was, in a place that I had always come alone, but always had someone to return home to once I cleared my head.  Only now, I knew I would be returning to an empty house, and I was happy.  Not happy about having an empty home, obviously, but happy that I could still come to this place.  Happy because I was that skinny, nerdy little kid again, outside, building things out of sticks and snow and imagination, and not having a care in the world.  Happy because I was outside. 

Happy because after years of walking with Megan, I still had somewhere where I had NO memories with her, and the only footprints leading to it were mine.

I stayed for about 3 hours total, but I really didn't want to leave.  I could have continued happily existing for what felt like years. Finally, a small snippet of my own instruction manual for dealing with losing Megan wiggled its way into my head, oddly, from a comedy special that I had seen on Netflix.  I feel anyone dealing with any kind of stress, not just the loss of a partner, would find this advice useful:

Go outside. Remain.

Grieving Mindfully

                                                                      from here



This little, unassuming book has been such a comfort to me since I've been reading it.  The section on identity and grief, especially, put to words what I've been feeling.


We grieve whenever an anchor in our understanding of our identity is lost. Picture your identity as a necklace of precious stones that comes undone and needs to be restrung. If some stones are lost, new ones must be added to replace the old ones. Grief can be understood as the process of picking up the pieces of your identity (the stones) without the help of someone you had assumed would always be there, or without a relationship that was a crucial part of your life (the string). Grief is the process of finding out who you are in a world that is barely recognizable because of the tremendous change that has taken place. You may not be able to answer the question, "Who am I?" for a long time after your loss.


So much of my identity was lost with Dave. Not a wife? Not a Mrs.? I had been a part of a "we" for 15 years, since I was 20. It's difficult to imagine that I'm edging closer and closer to a year of life without him. My identity is still being rebuilt, of course and I'm learning, bit by bit, to let that unfold without trying to rush it. But it's true that I won't be able to answer "Who am I?" for a long time and it's difficult to accept that. Difficult, but necessary.


The section on permanence was also especially meaningful to me.


We long for permanence in all aspects of our lives, often to the point of missing the present moment. You may yearn for youth long gone, unaware that your life today is what you will see as your youth in the future. You may wish you could reexperience some of your happiest moments, and in so doing prevent yourself from making new ones. You may wish you could stop thinking about someone or something, and thereby lose your experience of today by holding on to an unpleasant feeling. You may even imagine permanence where there is none. All these efforts to seek permanence are, in the end, futile. It is true, but hard to imagine, that in one hundred years, you and everyone you know will not exist. 


I recognize this tendency to long for permanence to the point of missing the current moment. It's a recurring lesson for me. All of this makes me think more and more that meditation and mindfulness in general might really help me. It was never before quite as clear to me until Dave died just how much time I waste worrying. I miss out on the present because I'm so fixated on permanence. It's just no use wishing things were different. Natural and understandable, YES, but my energy could be better directed.


I think the ability to be more mindful and live in the moment is like a muscle that can be strengthened with use, thankfully.


Strengthening this ability, according to the book, requires practicing mindfulness through meditation and one of the reasons I love this book, is that the author does a good job of debunking some myths about meditation. Instead of emptying your mind (which the author claims is fruitless), you focus on not engaging with the constant flow of thoughts that flit through your mind. You focus on the breath, the moment, whatever it is you're doing, and let those thoughts pass right through without letting them run the show. You practice staying HERE, in the now, even if it's only for 21 breaths. Eventually, Kumar says, you will notice it becomes easier to not engage those thoughts and focus more on the current moment.


I think those of us who are grieving could really benefit from the ability to detach from those thoughts long enough to be present once in a while. We have so much going  on emotionally as we grieve. We have our memories of our loved one's last moments and the guilt/fear/shock/terror that go along with those moments. We worry about our future without our core person. We try to make sense of things we truly can't make sense of. We struggle to figure out who the hell we are now. It's probably pretty crucial for us to give ourselves the gift of mindfulness occasionally as we do the hard work of rebuilding.


And we know, first hand, just how tenuous life is. The next moment isn't guaranteed and the past is over. All we have is NOW, after all.


Anyone else read this book and have some thoughts on it?
I highly recommend it, even if, like me, you think meditation/mindfulness is a little too "woo woo" for you. This is like mindfulness for the practical-minded!