life-death-life
As I've thumbed through my morning pages preparing to write this newsletter, I found so many different threads interweaving through the last (almost two) months. Sometimes when I let too much time pass between newsletters, I have so many possible leaping off points that I just wait and wait and wring my hands and can't figure out what exactly wants to pour out of me.
So, I tend to ask myself what feels most alive and then wait to see what surfaces.
And what feels alive now is that my grandmother is dead.
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Isn't it strange, awe-inducing, the way aliveness and death mash up next to each other, this one big cycle of life-death-life, where the boundaries between the two blur and fuse?
I've been working in the garden recently. It's what my soul needs this time of year and in these weeks after her passing. I prune back the dead branches and the still hanging on last season dried-up foliage. New leaves emerge and tulips announce the changes coming in the language of color. I prune back the death to make space for the life.
Just after my grandmother passed, I listened to a podcast* on grief, about how when we lose someone, there is both a loss and a gain present. How we tend to orient toward the loss more than the gain, but if we allow it, we can hold both in our bodies simultaneously.
The loss of my grandmother is the loss of her love, her stories, her wisdom, my primary connection to Pittsburgh and my Slovak heritage.
The loss is the feel of grass in my grandmother's backyard. The soft thin blades nothing at all like the fat and scratchy Kentucky bluegrass at home in Texas. The delight of walking barefoot, no fire ants anywhere.
The loss is catching lightning bugs in clear glass jars as day gives way to night.
The loss is city chicken, stuffed cabbage, nut rolls at Christmas time, pizelles, pierogis, freshly baked loaf of banana bread awaiting our arrival, stuffed peppers in tomato sour cream sauce, chipchop ham sandwiches.
The loss is food means I love you.
The loss is the way she stayed up late waiting for us to arrive every time, sitting at the kitchen table.
The loss is the look on her face when we'd pull out of her driveway to fly back home to Houston, her body wedged in the door jam, holding the glass outer door ajar, waiting, listening.
How when we left, we'd roll down the window, shout in unison to her, mom, dad, sister and me, Bye grandma, we love you.
Bye grandma, we love you.
We'd pull away, pretend not to see my parents tearing up. A love split apart over a thousand miles.
And the gain, what about that?
The gain for her is peace. The gain is the going-back-to-god she'd prayed for. Two months shy of 98, she'd wanted to die for at least the last year, tormented by hallucinations as her sight declined.
The gain for her is freedom, release from suffering.
The gain for me is the lessons I learn and continue to learn from her. How to carry on, even when life gets difficult. How to reinvent yourself, even if you don't want to. How to survive: through divorce, through retraining and entering the workforce after decades at home raising five kids, through ovarian cancer that she beat in her 60s.
The gain is witnessing how misunderstood and unappreciated she felt. The way the tools she had for vulnerably giving and receiving love failed her. The gain is seeing how her words and worry and “nuggets of wisdom” as she called them, often landed on her children as criticism.
The gain is seeing her in her full paradox, complexity, humanity. Knowing what of her runs through me, and what parts of those patterns I want to keep and which I can trim back and compost.
The gain is loving her even though she was flawed, and knowing I can love my own flaws, too.
The loss and gain mash up like life and death mash up and pretty soon they all sound like love, don't they? They all just feel like love, in its full power to knock the breath right out of us.
As always, I'd love to hear from you. Just hit reply and send me a note.
How has the transition from winter to spring been for you? What’s coming alive in your world?
*Also, the podcast I referenced above is called Holistic Life Navigation.