one year

i feel that i have less and less to say. she died a year ago, yesterday. we had a sweet walk on the canal, and we spread the rest of her ashes. it was a beautiful day, and i felt her everywhere.

The Name of a Fish, by Faith Shearin

If winter is a house then summer is a window
in the bedroom of that house. Sorrow is a river
behind the house and happiness is the name

of a fish who swims downstream. The unborn child
who plays the fragrant garden is named Mavis:
her red hair is made of future and her sleek feet

are wet with dreams. The cat who naps
in the bedroom has his paws in the sun of summer
and his tail in the moonlight of change. You and I

spend years walking up and down the dusty stairs
of the house. Sometimes we stand in the bedroom
and the cat walks towards us like a message.

Sometimes we pick dandelions from the garden
and watch the white heads blow open
in our hands. We are learning to fish in the river

of sorrow; we are undressing for a swim.

the day we laid in the backyard on blankets

i keep going back to the days immediately following my moms death and funeral. i talked to my friend joe the other night, really he is my second brother. he has been there since the beginning. and he was like a son to my mom. he flew in from colorado when she died, as did a few other close friends. i have a few memories from that time.
her funeral was april 15th.
i remember joe talking at the funeral. i remember his pin-stripe suit. i remember feeling that he spoke to who she truly was.
i remember being enormously pregnant, standing in the middle of a circle of people trying to get to me to express their condolences. and as i stood there i felt that i was there to comfort them. that i was the strong one. that i represented my mom, and that she was holding me up. i was in a state of shock and disbelief.
and in some way when i walked into that room that day and saw a set up for a funeral, with an enlarged picture of my mom at the head of rows of chairs, it was as though i had already seen it, and in another way it was as though i was living someone else life. how does one explain this paradox? this paradox that is my life all of the time now, that has me feeling like i am living in a dream.
i remember walking into the building, holding steven's hand. dakota was there. of course. there were so many people there. i was so shut down. i believe it was that day that my emotional body went to sleep, in an effort to rally for the ensuing birth of my daughter.
but what stands out to me most is the day we all laid in the backyard on blankets. and it was like we had stepped back in time. time was suspended mid-air. my mom was just out of town, and we had all woken up late from the raging party we had thrown the night before. ta, joseph, laura, hannah, ryan, sara, and steven... we laid barefoot in the sun and soaked it up, like you do on a spring day when you have been long craving its warmth. and i could almost convince myself that she would be home any minute. and i knew that every one there would truly miss her deeply.
she was their dear friend too. she was their mother. she was the mother we all wished we had.
and i did have her. she was mine. i had her in the way that only children have their mothers. in the way that piper will always have me.
i had her, and she was the best. the greatest. and everyone that knows her knows that this is no exaggeration.
and when she was dying i felt that it was the cruelest thing that could happen on the planet, for me to have had her, my soul mate, the best mother on the planet, only to have her taken away from me. and what i feel today, as i sit here with the deepest sadness, is that i was the lucky one. the luckiest one. i am grateful to have ever known her.
and what i would give to go back to that day. to lay on that blanket with my best friends, bare-foot, basking in the sun, knowing that she was just out of town, that she would be back any minute, and that she would make us dinner,
and we would kiss her face.

our hearts

when we choose to have children we unknowingly make the decision to rip our hearts out of our chests. And then those little hearts go walking around in the world, on their own, vulnerable to all of the elements of our big universe. Even before they walk, before they start to make decisions for themselves, they can still die. By having children we become vulnerable to the deepest grief possible, loosing them.
a week ago my friend lost her heart. she had him for one year. he grew inside of her for almost nine months, came into the world a little early, and four months later, in one fleeting moment was gone.
i was forever changed the moment my mother died.
my world stopped for one moment, and my entire being was changed.
changed forever.
grief does not go away.
it becomes a part of us. it is an integral part of me that functions and breathes right next to the joy and the gratitude and the excitement about the future. it has a life of its own, and i don't seem to have very much say in how it functions. it comes up to the surface and subsides as it needs to.
like an undertow i am pulled under with its force, brought back up for air, only to be pulled under again.
and somehow my life is still full and so rich and saturated with joy and gratitude.
i am absolutely and continually astonished at what we are capable of living with.
we learn to live without.

silence

this weekend has left me with little to say. my dear friends lost their four month old baby boy. i cannot stop thinking about them. they fill my entire being. the pit of my stomach aches for them. the world stands on my chest. i have felt the depths of grief, and yet i know that what they feel today, i have not felt.

the vastness

i am aware that there is less writing from my darker moments. i started this writing in an effort to alleviate some of the grief i was experiencing, unsure of why i was making it public, yet followed my intuition. as i sit here i can remember many of those moments. there has been a big shift in the last few months, but there is a deep sadness that i believe will never leave me. i believe the same of the joy. just because i cannot see it all of the time doesn't mean it is not there.
in any given moment i can get in touch with either emotion. and sometimes i am swept away by them. and frequently i am afraid that i will be left out at sea to die. this really only applies to the sadness. i am not afraid of being overcome by joy.
just yesterday i sensed the the vastness of my moms absence coming in, and immediately the anxiety came barreling in. It is not always this way. It comes and goes in and out of consciousness throughout each day.
But sometimes i feel the hugeness of it all. the reality that she is gone. the vastness. the depth. in a moment i have a glimpse and it is shocking. so many times it feels like experiencing it for the first time.

dream

i just woke up from a dream. i was in pipers room, standing in front of her crib casually talking to my grandmother. and then i realized that i was talking to my grandmother and i grabbed her and held her tight. i was so happy to be with her. my mom was there too, but i could not see her. and i remember thinking that it made sense that i could see granny and not my mom. as i recall it it feels very real. i could feel my grandmothers body structure, her shoulder blades, as they really felt in life. i have not dreamed of her much since she died.
it has been a remarkable year. i was pregnant by august. my grandmother died in september. my mom died in april. i had piper in may. my family was a matriarchy. i became the top of the line overnight. a single exchange. my mother left and in came my daughter.