When words fail

Tags

grief, impermanence, love

When words fail, there is music.

There is nature.

There is the memory of unspoken love between family and friends.

There is the balm of connection and reconnection through a hug, or a smile, or the touch of a hand.

The news from the world this past week has been excruciating – and here I am, saying things like ‘when words fail’ and digging in my mind for… words to write about that?

Yep, this is what I do.

My heart is broken by so many things.

And my heart is filled, too, by the tremendous generosity and compassion of friends – and that too of strangers who are comforting others in their corner of this beautiful and tragic world.

When I feel helpless, when I feel so overwhelmed with despair, I sing. I take an instrument into my hands. I write. I go for a walk. I ask Shawn for a hug or just some shared silence.

This week’s blog is overshadowed by the terrible current news cycle – and no matter when or where you are reading this, I am certain of two things:

• that there are things happening in the world that threaten to break your heart.
• that each one of us is capable of picking up the tools at hand to do the necessary and important work of caring for ourselves and others.

Whoever you are, I love you and I wish you well. Go ahead and let the words fail, and let the promise of love, the impermanence of all things, and the stunning beauty still left to be discovered and enjoyed in this life be the lights by which you find your way.

‘Just look at the photograph.’

Tags

grief, life, photography

While looking for something else in my storage unit the other day, I found two packs of pharmacy-developed photographs from last century. I grabbed the envelopes without opening them until that night after dinner. One of the gems was this one:

I gasped.

I never thought I’d see this image again outside of my own memory, due to the loss of most of my family photos years ago.

And then there I was, sitting in silence with Shawn, staring into the faces of my deceased parents.

My mind took off:

They look older here than I remembered them looking in this photo. I can tell that it was taken at the Hebron Community Baptist Church, and, judging by their clothes and the fact that my mom is actually wearing makeup (a very rare occurrence!) I’m guessing it was either for a wedding or a funeral. Or it could have been for an Easter Sunday. The colors make sense. But that guest book in the foreground…

After trying to assign a timestamp, I then tried to assign mood:

Wow, they both look so unhappy, or at the very least uncomfortable. I wonder how soon after this he was diagnosed? Hell, I wonder if he already had cancer when this was taken…and who took the photo? And how did it end up in this pack with others that are not related?

Then, some time later, I was remembering my old friend Tom Foley, and the occasion of us taking in a gallery showing of some local photographers’ work. He – a deeply gifted photographer, and framer too – was growing impatient with all of the chatter from other attendees and what he thought of as an overanalysis of the photos. He turned to me and said, a bit under his breath, ‘Forget all that and just look at the goddamned photograph. Do you like it? Does it move you? Yes or no?’

Yes, I love this photo. And it moves me. Very much.

So, I took Tom’s advice. I let go of all the need-to-knows and the questions and the attempts to make sense and assign meaning, and simply looked at the photo, which had been buried for years in the bottom of a cardboard box, now in my hands at my kitchen table, and I finally let the waves of memory and grief wash over me.

Which one of them didn’t like coconut?

Tags

grief, hiking, life

(the view from the top of Black Cap Mountain)

The coming arrival of fall is apparent here in New Hampshire, and its drier, cooler breezes were most welcome on a recent hike we took this past week to the top of Black Cap Mountain.

On the way back down the mountain, Shawn and I started chatting at some point about food, and the subject of using coconut in something bubbled up. Then, a random rumination floated across my mind: ‘Dad didn’t like coconut at all… or, wait… was it Mom that didn’t like it?’ I didn’t speak this thought out loud, as the subject of our chatter changed and then eventually fell silent as we took in the beauty of the forest around us.

Later on that night, as I was getting ready for bed, I thought of it again, trying to remember which one of my parents really did not like the taste of coconut, and I felt a deep sadness wash over me for a moment when I realized that an intimate detail of their likes and dislikes seemed lost to me forever.

I do remember how much my mother hated the taste of coffee, and of peanut butter. And how much my father really hated the taste of anything mint – even toothpaste – and of licorice. She loved cashews and cantaloupe. He loved raw onions and pickled eggs.

I’ve written plenty about grief before, about how it comes out of remission in these strange and unexpected ways. This whole thing about the taste of coconut may seem silly – until you realize that it confronts you with the preciousness of these memories, and with the impermanence of memory and of life itself.

Then a cascade of worrying thoughts can carry me down some mournful path: What else have I forgotten? What else will I forget in time?

And then – the call of a chickadee in the woods, or the crunch of stones under my feet, or the feeling of the breath coming and going and supporting my hiking and grieving and singing and remembering – something brings me back to this moment, to this chance to be grateful for the fact that my parents ever lived to either like or dislike coconut, and for the fact that I can remember and forget anything at all.

The see-saw of celebration and grief.

Tags

celebration, community singing, equanimity, grief, life

(The high end of the see-saw – photo by Jen Deraspe)

As I sat down to type these words, my heart was feeling full from leading an in-person community sing in Maine on Sunday afternoon. Bernice and I are bringing our work back out into the 3D world, and it’s cause for celebration! For some of us, it was the first time back in the warm embrace of shared vocal harmony, and all of our cups were overflowing.

When I got home and checked messages, I heard back from dear friends from New Orleans who are not in their city right now, who are wondering and worrying about what awaits them when they do return after the hurricane passes.

Then, another message arrives – photos taken at the sing, depicting happy, joyful humans creating and nurturing harmony and connection.

Then, a quick look at the news brings my seat on the see-saw back down – the pandemic, the wildfires, Afghanistan.

Life sometimes feels like a never-ending series of emotional roller coasters, like some strange theme park of the mind that slowly, sometimes agonizingly, lifts us up to the briefest moments of joy, and then in a flash sends us plummeting back into grief and despair. It can be a tough thing to remain open and caring, to be vulnerable, to turn towards suffering in the world.

Keeping in regular touch with the things that fill our cups – music, art, meditation, nature, knitting, reading, whatever it is that speaks to our hearts – is the key to remaining balanced, so that when we do get a little motion-sick from the ride, we have something to anchor us and nourish our hearts as we navigate how to respond to it all.

Yesterday, we sang a song that has helped keep me steady over the last year, and I offer the words to you now:

These hands will do the work
These feet will carry me
These arms will be welcoming
To what these eyes can see
This heart will stay open to the possibility
And the love in this heart will set me free

May it be so.

The black hole trampoline.

Tags

grief, life, Mother's Day

As much as my mother enjoyed certain kinds of attention, she wasn’t insistent upon Mother’s Day. Maybe it was her Scottish upbringing, maybe it was her aversion to overt commercialism (and ain’t that the truth about Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day, and…), but I don’t really recall ever going out for any big special Mother’s Day outings. No noisy brunches in crowded restaurants, no fanfare. There would always be a card from me, sure, and perhaps some small gift—like some little tchotchke to add to her miniatures collection, or maybe a Rod Stewart cassette that she didn’t already have or that needed replacement—but otherwise it was always just another Sunday morning at church, and then maybe a drive to the ocean if the weather was nice, just the three of us, but no big deal if it wasn’t. Nothing boastful or social—kinda like all the rest of our holiday traditions, actually.

My favorite Mother’s Day memory is this—that she always insisted (often in conversation with others) that my father never ever under any circumstances buy her any sort of Mother’s Day gift. Not even a card. ‘I’m no’ yer m’ther,’ she’d exclaim with a chuckle. To her, the idea of a husband giving the mother of his child/ren a gift on Mother’s Day made no sense.

Oh, and her feelings about flowers? Hard pass. She did love her flower gardens, though, and once in a great while, Dad would bring home flowers if he had screwed up and had run out of gestures to get things back on track. Otherwise, my mom felt how I have come to feel at times about fresh cut flowers—they are beautiful to behold and it’s depressing to watch them disintegrate.

She did, however, insist that Dad call Grandma Mary every year. ‘She’s th’ only m’ther y’ve goat,’ she’d remind him every chance she got.

And she was right, of course.

Dad’s relationship with his mother was troubled. Kinda like mine with mine. Misunderstandings a mile wide and probably, truthfully, only an inch deep.

Mom died 14 years ago, and I’ve written a number of songs about her, including a few that speak directly to the grief I’ve experienced since her death, like Did I Mention, Goodness Knows, Edith, and Lines and Spaces. I experienced a particularly strong wave of that grief as it came suddenly out of remission this past week—not because of the coming second Sunday in May, but… just because. Something, usually an unexpected something, will remind me of her—or remind me of her absence—and that black hole of grief in whose orbit I have spun since even before she died will pull me closer, until I cannot help but fall in for a little while. With lots of practice, I can think of that black hole as a trampoline off of which I am able to bounce, and as I come to rest again on the solid ground of this joyful, beautiful, tragic world that we all share, I am reminded of how lucky I am to experience grief—because it means I’m alive, and that I love with my whole heart.

Feeling grief and awe in one’s nose.

Tags

grief, life, songwriting, winter

It’s been really cold here in my neck of the woods lately, and it’s been reminding me of some moments from throughout my life, particularly from childhood:

• the radiator in my second floor bedroom that never worked all that well (despite all of Dad’s earnest tinkering)
• sledding and tubing in ‘The Bowl’ on the Hebron Academy campus and making that trek up the hill again and again and again after every sun-soaked, thrilling ride down
• watching the chickadees hopping about in the snow and feeding on the seed that fell from Mom’s beloved feeders (usually from the crafty hands of the squirrels)
• my feet and face and hands getting so cold from playing outside that stepping into the bathtub or the shower seemed like a form of medieval torture
• nose hairs freezing with every inhalation

This last image is one I remind myself and others of regularly when I introduce my song ‘Starlight’. It was a bitterly cold night that inspired me to write the song, and it’s a story that I’ve told from stage many times—still living in Maine and standing in the driveway and staring at the impossible dome of stars sparkling in the crystal clear night sky, pondering the words of Carl Sagan: ‘We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.’ It was a beautiful moment that I’ll never forget.

The part I’ve always left out of the banter is the circumstances of my life at the time. What my particular part of the cosmos knew at that time was grief—paralyzing grief over the loss of my mother and, with her, the hope that she and I would ever reconcile our deep and devastating differences. I was getting to know grief quite well in those days—because Mom and I had been estranged in the last couple of years of her life, I didn’t know that she hadn’t done anything with any of Dad’s, well, anything. All of his books, clothes, tools, his eyeglasses on the living room table—every last thing he left behind, along with everything of Mom’s, was awaiting my shaking hands and broken heart as I made my way through the impossible task of being the only heir sorting through it all, buttoning up their lives and life together, and cleaning and preparing the house for sale.

Throughout that whole ordeal, I was still working multiple jobs, including my job at the hotel playing piano. I was also grieving something that felt like a long, slow fall into losing my own hopes and dreams—I was longing desperately for expression and sharing of my deepest and most authentic creativity, and at that time, aside from brief glimmers at the hotel or at Norway UU, there was none of it, save for those rare evenings at home when I could work on songs like ‘Starlight’. The night I stood and felt the wave of awe that inspired ‘Starlight’ was a hotel night, and despite my state of utter exhaustion, I allowed myself a moment to put it all down before walking into the house.

And the driveway in which I stood was the one I shared in Fryeburg with an abusive partner who was slowly squeezing the air and the joy and the life right out of me. I’ve blogged in the past about this, so I won’t belabor it now, but the writing of that song—and the rare solitary moments I had to work on it and the others that would become my 2010 Make It Mine album—kept the flame of hope alive in my heart during that dark time.

About three years after that moment in the driveway, I broke free from those tethers of abuse and self-doubt with my heart full of songs and the overwhelming drive to, as I sing in ‘Starlight’: ‘let [my] light shine now for every woman, child, and man’. And though the grief is in remission most of the time these days, the cold January air freezing my nose hairs can bring me right back to that one starry night, drinking in that grief-stricken awe inspired by a world that can so easily and so completely both break your heart and fill it back up achingly to the brim.

Saturday Morning Musings – Rosie.

Tags

cats, death, dogs, grief, housesitting, letting go, life, pets

As I type these words, I am flanked by two canine friends, Lucy and Torro.

Here’s Lucy:

and here’s Torro (and Shawn):

Aren’t they adorable?

Their human family has been away this week on vacation, so Shawn and I have been house-sitting.

We were also left to take care of several tanks of fish and frogs, and two cats, Rosie and Dog:

Winter has had a strong grip on the Northeast and there’s been a tremendous amount of new snow in the brief time that our friends have been away.   In fact, when the temperatures reached the 40s on Thursday, Torro was having a grand old time and did not want to come in at all (as evidenced by this Instagram)!

It hasn’t all been lighthearted this week, though.

On Tuesday, Shawn had an apres ski gig, so I spent the day at the house snuggling with the dogs on the couch, watching yet another snowstorm from the window, and catching up on House of Cards.  As soon as I’d finished the last episode, I got up to bring a dish to the kitchen and Rosie walked by, bright-eyed with her tail up.

“Hi Rosie!” I called.

Just a few minutes later, I heard a strange thump in the front room.  “UPS maybe?” I thought, knowing that they were expecting a delivery that day – but it didn’t sound like a booted foot on the front steps.  Torro started to bark a little.  I got up to investigate.

Rosie – beautiful, two year old, black, impossibly soft Rosie – had collapsed.  She was lying on her side, breathing laboriously.

I immediately ran to grab a towel, then put on my coat and boots, scooped her up in my arms and rushed her to the vet.  By the time I got her there, it was too late.  She was gone.

“What happened to her?” I asked the vet through tears.  She speculated that, since she didn’t find anything in her airway or feel anything unusual in her belly, it was either her heart or her brain.  Some sort of unknown defect.

Poor Rosie.

I stepped out of the vet’s office into the snowy afternoon and gave in fully to the sobs that persisted for the rest of the day.  I had to calm down – I had to drive home!  But before I even left the parking lot of the vet’s office, I had to call our friends to deliver the sad news.

After that difficult call, I sat in the car, gaining my composure enough to drive the couple of short yet slippery miles back to the house.

Walking back into the house, the whole world seemed to match the gray and dreary mess that was gathering outside.

Until I saw the dogs, that is.

Torro, in his usual over-exuberant state, came galloping over to greet me at the door with a toy in his mouth, jumping up the back of my legs, whimpering with joy.  I didn’t snatch him up in my arms as I usually do when I see him like this.  I was still crying, still so shocked at the last forty surreal minutes, that I just didn’t have it in me to respond to his enthusiasm.

Lucy greeted me, too – and maybe I’m assuming too much here – but she was subdued.  She’s an older, wiser gal.  She had witnessed the entire frantic scene when I found Rosie on the floor.   She had to know something was amiss.

For the rest of that afternoon and evening, I struggled to pull myself out of my grief.  Lucy and I both curled up in balls on the couch.  (Dog has seemed lonely, too – I’ve been giving him lots of extra love and treats.)

But not Torro.

He periodically would try to engage me – even more than usual, now that I am reflecting on it – by bringing a favorite toy onto the couch, by licking my arms or my toes, by jumping onto the chair across the room and chasing his own tail.  Certainly he must’ve been bored with my inertia.

Finally, I began to thaw to Torro’s youthful warmth and began tossing the ball around.  My spirits immediately lifted.  Shawn got back to the house later that evening to share in both the grief of losing Rosie, and the joy of being greeted at the door by two lovable and awesome dogs.

Life comes and goes.  Good things happen and terrible things happen.  And as I reach the end of this week’s entry, Torro and Lucy are still on either side of me, snoring slightly.  How wonderful is that?

All that’s left to do now is to enjoy the moments all of us critters find ourselves in – and to take time to remember Rosie.