Coming Up For Air*

Like a swimmer coming up for air after a long dive, I fill my lungs and look around.

What can I say about loss that you do not already know?

The thing that amazes me most is how surprised I am, every time.

Is this innocence or arrogance- this forgetting that all things will pass- that we do not control the world- that other’s have their agendas, their struggles, their choices, even as we have ours?

Grief is as kind as it can be, coming in waves instead of all at once- surely a flood that would drown.

It’s hard to predict when the next wave will hit. I miscalculate and have to abandon a shopping cart in the middle of the supermarket cereal aisle to dash for home and lay down on the cool white tiles of the bathroom floor.

All those years of meditating and praying, studying and reading allow a kind of holy curiosity. I do my daily practice and I rest in the arms of the Presence that is always with me, and watch the ache change from one day to the next.
Like shadows moving over the landscape as the sun traverses the sky and clouds come and go.

I notice how the body continues to breathe even when I cannot remember how, and I am grateful to be a living organism. Survival is built into our cells, our DNA. An aching heart still pumps blood.

Off the coast of Louisiana an oil rig explodes and the ruptured sea bed bleeds thick black oil into the blue water.

And I wonder: what have we done with the precious and fragile gifts we were given?

Friends call. It is good to know I have not been forgotten.
Private pain can make the world shrink.

Some bring cooked rice, spiced salmon and fruit-filled muffins. For the first time I understand why people bring food to the bereaved. The smell brings me back to my animal body, reminds me to eat. The taste says, “You are not alone. You are not done. You are alive.”

And still the oil spews into the sea. Two hundred thousand gallons a day. Experts begin to speculate about the damage to marine life, bird life, human life. No one seems to know what to do. The company that was doing the drilling says they do not know who is to blame.

The trouble with lies is that they stick to the stories that give us meaning, they contaminate everything, make us doubt our own experience of what we thought was good and true. We stop trusting our memories, our ability to tell truth from lies.

I outrun the pain with work. This has always been so, but I am more aware of it now- I watch myself sort and pack and unpack without pause, knowing that when the work is finished the emptiness must be faced.

Time works its magic. Healing happens when I’m not looking, and I’m pulled back into the warm chaotic mess of life. I notice the children running in the playground, the tree by my window in bloom. I am surprised how life works within me, on me, without my conscious agreement.

We are life, choosing life. That is how we are made.

Engineers and crew work to find a solution, to stem the flow of oil, knowing the destruction is worsening with every day that passes. Minutes are gallons. Time is not on their side.

Shifting perspective I can see my loss in the bigger picture, can see the opening it creates in my life and my heart for being more of what I am. I feel something working in me, and dare to think of transformation. Faith carries me.

The oil slick is visible from the space satellite. The big picture is grim. Wind and wave carry the black cloud throughout the life-giving waters. Rescue workers try to reach oil soaked birds. Already they are predicting a “dead zone” in the ocean. The question now is how large it will be.

Will I have a “dead zone?” Or will I keep my heart open to myself and the other, to the world, to the oil soaked birds, the blue black waters, and our human weakness for half-truths, for short-term pleasures and profits?

We have a choice. We can shrink in the face of wounding- personal or planetary- or we can inhale deeply, link arms with each other and enlarge our capacity to meet it all- the joy and the sorrow.

I am alive. This breath, this moment. It is good.
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*For those who do not know I have recently experienced the dissolution of my marriage and the loss of my home in the woods.