I am growing older and can't stop it. I feel more and more helpless, more and more overwhelmed by life, by the 6:00 news, by noise and clutter and flashing lights and honking horns, by the Internet, by too many choices and decisions, by the clamoring of my own inner needs. I am only in my fifties. If I'm feeling this now, what on earth is it going to be like in my sixties? seventies? eighties? Will I even still be here? It all gives new meaning to what it means to be "out of control." I'm realizing that its not just other family members who are beyond my control, or their choices, or co-workers or finances--it's every tiny parcel of every day. I do not know what is coming today or the next hour or the next minute. How do you stay open hearted and exposed to the good and the beautiful when you're startling and flinching whenever there is a sudden noise or that unexpected phone call or that physical sensation that you're trying to manage?
Late in the morning I felt hungry and I was out running errands and decided to get one of my favorite meals. I stood in line pretending that my whole life was in order, not letting on that I felt weak as a kitten and vulnerable as a naked baby bird. I bought my meal...have a nice day, the girl behind the counter said. I needed quiet, so I drove to the river and sat in the car and watched as people here and there fed the geese and pigeons.
I took a bite of my food and watched a man and a woman and three young girls set their picnic out on the picnic table. The girls threw bread crumbs to the birds. I chewed my food but felt a tidal wave of grief welling up and out of my soul. Stay with it, I told myself. Look at it. Feel it. I stopped chewing and stared at my food and let it come, swelling up and up like water filling a cavern, rising and suddenly spilling over the top until the tears were dripping down and I had to gasp to breathe.
It was my daughter and all that's been lost, it was my oldest's suffering I had recently witnessed, it was about my brother being gone--we are not five anymore, we are four--no more chances with him. He's gone. It was about the stress and relentless strain of the last three years. It was about aging and about loneliness--these moments that are lived out of the deep wells of our lives are always lived out alone. They can't be shared. The depth and breadth and the waves and currents are too much to get out in words.
I listened to the music playing on my car stereo. I listened to one song over and over. I pressed the replay button--three times, five times, ten times, and let the grief spill out. I listened and watched the three girls feed the geese and then the gulls--the gulls riding and sailing the wind, spiraling up, riding silently down, now this way, now that, a mass of gray and white living leaves riding the wind. I let what was sealed up inside come to the surface and gasp.
Having time alone and having the quiet and giving myself space and privacy to let the waters well up and spill out was what I needed. When the waters rise, the leaves and debris float on the surface and finally are washed out when the waters spill over the top. It leaves the basin cleaner. A clean basin is easier to manage--less debris.
It doesn't change any of the circumstances that cause me grief but it does allow me to accept them and make room for them without trying to control them. It allows for the co-existence of pain and peace. It takes that festering wound, sealed over with taut, red and swollen skin that's too tender to touch and brings it into the healing air, let's it begin to heal.
