Imaginary Ocean

My two-hour Thanksgiving yoga class ended with a half-hour shivassana/meditation. I love this part because I'm a fan of lying down quietly, especially after an hour and a half of feeling like I'm going to die in a series of rapidly shifting positions that have me holding up my own considerable body weight and trying to balance on my legs or my arms -- neither my strong suit. This kind of flow yoga is really helping me get out of my head and into my body in a productive way, but it's harder than what I'm used to.

Meditating can be difficult for me. My brain never shuts off with the chatter, no matter what kind of music is on or how tired I am. So today when the teacher started leading the meditation (with a gong for accompaniment. I'm still not sure how I feel about the gong. What's wrong with Enya? Chanting? Anyway.) I was surprised that my mind went as blank as it can get.

Sadly, usually when I'm in a quiet place and maybe someone is reading some guided imagery prompts, I'm making shopping lists or mentally reviewing tasks, listing off everything I haven't done that I should do to justify my existence. I'm basically a one-woman band of meditative insanity, volleying between "Look to the LIGHT! See the golden aura!" and "Oh shit, I forgot to buy bread crumbs. OF COURSE I DID."

So it was really remarkable that this time in the quiet I just...went to the beach. I saw myself in the ocean. I put myself in the best place I know to be, when it's late in the day and the water is warm and relatively quiet. I could see the sun and the waves, the water coming up and over me. I could see the exact stretch of sand I love the most in all the world, the place I would rather be at all times than anywhere.

And in the distance on the shoreline, I saw my grandmother, come to visit me from wherever it is that she is these days.

I miss her today. I miss her more than usual on every holiday, but I don't talk about it much. I think that's partly because I don't even actively think about how I feel about it very often. We talk about my grandparents a lot on holidays because they defined these events and a big part of our lives for a very long time and telling the same stories to each other about everything over and over again has turned into a family ritual.

But when it comes to my own personal pain about her absence, I think it's just been tucked away for self-preservation. It's so big, I had to make it malleable so that I could put it away where it wouldn't hurt me on a daily basis.

Regardless, today there she was, on this beach. My mind bounced around between images of her face and a weirdly specific mental tour of our old house. I was amazed at how I could remember things in such detail -- the cigarette burning on the kitchen counter, the turkey on a platter, the scuffed-up cigar box of crayons, the sound of the door slamming on the coffee table where all of the games and books were kept, the horrible shag carpet up the steep stairs, to the point that I could feel its loops between my fingers as I used to when I picked at them, talking on the phone or hiding on the stairs from my expanding brain and shaky grip on growing up.

I went upstairs and saw the plug on a chain that kept the water in the tub, the pink tile and the twin beds, the monstrosity of my accountant grandfather's adding machine, the fake wood paneling on the back addition.

She appeared in my mind in a series of regular situations -- carrying the laundry out to hang on the line, making coffee, lying on the couch watching basketball, eating cookies. She yelled at one kid or another on the porch and let her tiny Boston Terrier Bonnie out in the yard. I sat in my memory under the clothesline, looking up between the sheets, aging from a pre-schooler singing songs around the huge oak tree to a depressed 15-year-old girl loved beyond reason by a woman who -- only knowing what it was to parent sons -- made early crooked stabs at barrettes and ponytails.

I heard her voice in a typical conversation, let her presence come into my mind and body like it has not in two years, technically, but in many ways way longer than that. My time-traveling mind's eye saw her not at 89, the year she died, ten years after a stroke wasted her body and stole her physical capabilities and independence -- the things that made her her. I saw her strong, laughing and fussing at all of us on her two feet, making mashed potatoes for this dinner that has never once been the same since 1997 because she didn't do that one simple thing that she did better than anybody else.

Again in the imaginary ocean this insane grief came to life again, a realization of how it defines how I've walked through the world since she inevitably got sick and died, how much of my childhood and my perceptions of family and duty and life and love were defined by my daily interactions with her.  And more sadly, clarity came of how I haven't transitioned very well -- because I didn't really want to. Because I didn't know how. Because my life is a little unstable and the magnitude of that relationship makes losing it harder, and there is no guidebook for any of this but some self-help literature and a flawed and distractible human brain. 

At her viewing I was the last one in the room at the end and my uncle said I had to leave her sometime. And of course it was true but I dragged my feet away from her body like I'd be back tomorrow. I never knew how I was going to live in a world without her. The thought of her eventual absence was so dreadful through my life that I could never wrap my mind around it and in many ways I still can't. I realized that as much as I can gracefully let her go on the surface, and sometimes even in my heart, that the primal connection never goes away and it hasn't integrated with now, in this case, whatever that even means, however you even do that.

When my meditation was rudely interrupted by a class assistant who apparently thought I needed a leg adjustiment I hadn't asked for and that I immediately resisted, I lost the invisible thread. Irritated, I shut my eyes again and tried to get her back, silently, frantically imagining the ocean that I'd been in minutes before. It almost worked, although not quite as well. Somehow I was back in the water, she was on the shore, in the wheelchair that was her hated transportation for so many years. My mind let her age again, to gently take on her eventual frailer form. I integrated her selves, somehow, in a way I really haven't since she began to physically fail -- the most difficult transformation I've ever witnessed.

I sat by her on the sand. We talked. I tried to imagine her forgiving me for all that I didn't do in the years that she was sick -- all of the time I wasted on a man who would do nothing but find me inadequate and break my heart, and friends who in spite of varying value would never mean as much to me as she did.

She reached out her hand and told me to stop. She would never acknowledge my need for her forgiveness. She absolved me everything, never thinking she had to absolve me anything.

So instead I opened up the box in my mind where I put my inability to forgive myself, where I put what I know about what I did and didn't do for her. I waited a beat, knew I wasn't ready to turn the corner for that yet, no matter what she said. I thanked her again, a daily unconscious practice, honestly. I told her that I missed her, and she said, as she always does when I imagine her in my mind, that it was a real shame she couldn't stay. I pushed her with considerable effort through the sand, and that was that.

Off the mat and walking to my car, my mind blown, I said "I'll be damned" out loud because I really had gotten just what I needed in spite of myself, however painful, however bizarre. Amazing that she somehow showed up on Thanksgiving to help me deal, to recognize that grief isn't over and that's okay, that sometimes you have to let it in to let it go.

Brains are amazing. Life is very strange.

And although it will never be enough for my selfish soul, I took some comfort knowing that some bonds work their magic regardless -- that beyond death and the things we can't hold back with our human hands, that we -- she and I and whatever it meant -- still walk through the wet sand together in the only way we can.

 

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This accidentally turned into Day Three.

Following are the writing prompts for 30 Days of Truth, should you be interested in doing so yourself.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Comments

[Loralee]

I love this. In many different and profound ways. Really struck home to me today.

(And yes...the spirit moves me. Definitely. Tomorrow). xo

[Jennifer Cord]

Beautiful! You are a wonderfully gifted writer and were so able to put into words what we all feel for our grandmothers, yours and mine especially :) They were both very special ladies and two of many that seem to just have a special thing about them.

[The New Girl]

Oh, just beautiful.

[flutter]

This is so unbelievably gorgeous. You are phenomenal

[Nancy]

Amazing post. Beautifully written. Thanks to Loralee for sending me here.

[Holmes]

This is a really touching piece of writing. Thank you.

[Sarah]

That settles it.

I'm starting Yoga tomorrow.

But also - this is so beautiful, and so much what you needed right now.

[Wanderlust]

What a beautiful piece of writing. Just gorgeous.

[Vigrx Plus]

This is the best thing I could hear from a creative woman in this arid society....apparently there is not much space and time for creative people today!!