Pedaling the Bicycle.

Sometimes I cry for the clumsiness of it, the awkwardness of not understanding how to move forward. Like everything in life, grief is learning to pedal a bicycle without training wheels. A precarious exercise, a teetering balance that is sometimes exhilarating for a pace, but mostly dangerous and scarring. 

I am eight years old again, crying for my pain and pride, bleeding from different parts of me, angry that someone let go of my bike seat before I was ready.

[Photo.]

Poem : The Memory of You.

Recent past eclipses healthy memories, 
those days when your smile and skin glowed happy, 
what do we remember from before? 
all of us were young and unaware of a soon and threatening after, 
of a life later, 
when the living room is empty of you, 
when sad, silent objects sit in your void. 

Tears come, a slow tide of grief in the dark, 
or in a swell surrounded by a sea of strangers, 
an angry rock of grief grows in my throat as I flee 
to bathroom, closet, closed door.
I drive apologetic and repentant all the way to work each morning, 
all the way home at night, mascara running along the road with me.

And when I think that faith has failed me, 
"Take a deep breath," you say. 
The sun glows bright against glistening pavement, 
a sparrow flies fast and free above me, 

I breathe. 

"Until I see you again," 
       I whisper,
"Beatific, wholly holy, alive and well."

Writing Therapy.

“And even though their son will always be alive in their hearts, like Pammy and my dad will be alive in mine- and maybe this is the only way we ever really have anyone-there is still something to be said for painting portraits of the people we have loved, for trying to express those moments that seem so inexpressibly beautiful, the ones that change us and deepen us.”
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I found the poem I shared yesterday written on the back side of a scrap of watercolor paper, a painting I had begun that I destroyed entirely with too much of the wrong color. On Sunday evening I finally decided to clean out a bag full of things I had taken home with me that week before Christmas, when I knew that this was my last journey home to her. So many things were in that bag. Christmas cards, sympathy cards, receipts from the hospital cafe, a copy of mom's obituary, a Vogue that I flipped through mindlessly because I couldn’t bring myself to read the novel I brought, scraps of paintings that never turned out, scraps of writings from spare moments when fairly cohesive thoughts broke through my sadness. 

Two months later, I don’t even remember writing that poem. Was I in the hospital? Was I at home? Late at night or early in the day? Before or after she slipped and fell and hit her head on the cold bathroom tile and all the nurses came rushing in at once and I cried, but she didn’t?

I left all of that out, but the emotion is there. 

I’ve found bits and pieces of these experiences all over the place, scribbled on napkins and receipts and work notes. Like finding all the outer edges of a 500-piece puzzle I’ve been gathering them, trying to fit them together to keep the memories alive. Because sometimes, yes, I have to ask,

Did that really happen?

It did. 

And she’s gone. 

But she’s still with me.

Reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird has been very much like going to see my therapist, except that Lamott is like the therapist for my writing psyche. She tells me to write thoughts as they come to me on index cards or in a notebook. I think for a long moment about all of my notebooks and scraps of paper. 

“Oh yeah... I guess that’s what I’ve been doing, in a way.”

“Good,” she smiles. “That’s normal for a writer, whatever that means.” 

Guest Post | One Letter

I love what my friend Missy said the other day, 

"Never waste a good crisis." 

She was talking about Grammy winner Adele's breakup with a terrible, horrible, no good boyfriend that broke her heart, and how that breakup gave Adele the fuel she needed to write the album that changed her life and changed the world. It's a beautiful concept isn't it? It's not something we think about in the midst of pain, but creativity has the power to heal if we let it. 

What experiences in your life can you put to good use? How can sharing those experiences through your art impact the lives of others? 

I answer those questions in my guest post for Missy's blog in her "One Letter" series, and talk about my relationship with my mom, the letter she left me, and the one letter I would love to leave for my own daughter some day.

Inspired By.

I feel compelled to say something.

I hope that my posts this week didn't mislead you.

Let me explain.

I lost my mom less than three weeks ago, and yes, I feel totally different than I anticipated.

But.

I hope that my motivation and my words and my thoughts didn't lead you to believe anything other than that this grief is real. I'll be honest with you, I'm getting the "you're doing so great!" line a lot. Maybe that's my fault. I've been giving the blanket, generic, "I'm doing fine" line, too. And I appreciate the support and encouragement. Really, I do.

Yes, I have newfound motivation for my morning routine when I expected to be unable to get out of bed. Yes, I am writing now more than ever when I expected my words to run dry. Yes, I am focused at work when I expected to be incapable of functioning. Yes, I am making plans and goals for the new year when I expected to be stagnant indefinitely.

But this difference that I feel in my everyday, in my faith, in my self, is downright befuddling. Confusing. Strange. Surreal. It is not a "great" or a "fine" or a word that denotes anything close to easy.

I've encountered something, and it has stolen my breath away. I sense the vastness of life, and it feels so much larger and deeper than before. And it is a terrifying magnificence that evokes wonder and awe and worship and shock and fear. Maybe something like the astronauts felt the first time they looked back to earth from the moon. Or how a mother feels at the peel of an infant cry in childbirth. Or how a diver feels when he happens upon the Lions Mane Jellyfish. It is all surreptitiously heartbreaking and beautiful. I feel grief, and also peace.

And I don't get it.

But I do get it.

But I don't.

And so really, all I want to tell you, is that should you survive loss, like most of us have to do at some point or other, don't expect anything. Prepare yourself for the reality of life and death, but try to let nature run it's course, not just in the person you are losing, but in you. Let life overwhelm you and change you. I hope that you get that part of it, at least.

Meantime, here is some good reading for the weekend.

What makes me feel beautiful : wine and words.

"The real question at the heart of Harry Potter is, Can love win? And it’s answered in Snape, the second cruelest person in the world, next to Voldemort, who is somehow transformed by love." - Snape is my type of hero.

"Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you." Sound advice, no? House of Reps, are you reading this?

New level, new rules.

Here's to the mess.

Oh, and this photo.

On Losing Things.

I woke out of a sound sleep this morning to the ring of my cell phone. Disoriented, I answered to hear my brother's frantic voice. After spending 5 days in Boston for the Harvard Model Congress, he was boarding his early morning flight home when it hit him: he'd left his bag of newly-purchased vinyls somewhere in Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

"I don't know what to do! I retraced my steps, I ran all the way back to the concierge desk in the Hilton and asked around to see if they'd found anything, I talked with airport security. They can't help me find them and I can't remember where I left them," he said, his voice frustrated and strained.

I listened and tried to comfort him, but we both knew that his souvenirs were lost forever. Sadly, a $75 stack of vinyls won't wait around for the one who leaves them behind. If he's anything like me, he'll probably lose more than that.

I remember the feeling well. When I traveled abroad in the fall of 2008, it seemed like I left pieces of myself all over Europe. In the midst of doing something as simple as fumbling for my passport, I'd forget the item I set down next to me.

It started with a bag of fresh-market grapes I left in a train station in Slovenia, and then it was a stack of postcards (written and stamped), a pair of jeans, my cell phone, my camera, my laptop charger, and sometimes, I think, my heart.

Minutes, hours and many miles later I would realize that I was empty-handed and there was nothing I could do about it.

Mementos, possessions, they're replaceable, maybe even forgettable. Nevertheless, the moment you realize you've left them behind, a deep ache, an inconsolable sense of failure sets in.

Sometimes, life feels that way. Memories, bittersweet and vivid as they are, won't replace the tangible feeling of a weathered album between your fingers or the weight of a friend in your arms.

You're on a train, a plane, in the car, and every second is taking you further and further away from reaching back in time to that moment when you held everything in your hands.