On grief

I just wish
I could express what I feel so it reaches air.
So you can feel it, too.
Words don’t express that much, though.
And I can’t speak clearly enough to make anyone else feel what I feel.
All feeling is transposed by our own experiential lens, our memory
filter, our sensory makeup.
Moviemakers come closest. Or
is it musicians?

Do you see the same blue I see?
How do we know? What if my blue is your red?
We believe we are seeing the same thing
so we’re on the same wavelength. But are we
seeing the same thing?
My filter always tells me I see blue as does yours.
Even scientific instruments can’t distinguish for us
because we see their results through our own innate lenses.

So it could be with feelings.
I listen to a piece of music and want to cry.
You say it makes you sad, too.
I see your tears, just as you see mine.
I touch your tears, they are as warm and moist as mine.
Seems we’re having the same feeling.
But I don’t know what your “sad” feels like.
I only know
what mine feels like.

My "sad" feels icy and spiky sometimes, hot and deep others.
And those words barely scratch the surface.
Sadness feels like the end, the absolute “over” state,
done, finished, nowhere to go, surrender
and collapse.
Sadness is relief.
Sadness is unrequited.
There is nothing but it.
It is high and wide, long and deep, shallow and smoldering, obvious and
lurking, creeping slowly into
consciousness to take over as it has already
overcome all unconsciousness.

I am surprised by sadness. I start to cry
and know that I have been sad for a while.
It’s been rising like yeasted bread,
shaping my mood and reactions before I’m even aware that it’s there.
A little shortness here, a hesitation there. My throat
catches, David flashes by, and there they come
at last, the tears of release.
Release, relief, grief.

Does any of this sound familiar?
Does any of it resonate within your core?
Can you understand how I feel by reading my words?
Is your feeling of grief the same as mine?
Or do we just approximate our empathy based on
trust?

It takes a great leap of faith to voice a feeling. To admit to feeling
something to another is the most vulnerable of states.
For you cannot feel my feeling,
I cannot transmit it to you.
It remains within me, mine,
expressible only by words, movement, facial signs.

I trust
that you will have some knowledge of your own similar feelings,
enough for you to cast yourself somewhat into that state
and fish out a bit of compassion.
You cannot feel my feelings,
yet in re-feeling your own, you may approximate empathy.
You may sense my need by recalling your own.
You may give me the space and time and attention to fully feel my feelings
without envying me that experience.

Maybe those who have a paucity of feeling are envious.
I don’t know if there are people who lack feeling,
more that there are people who lack experiences of fully feeling.
I can’t stop to think of why that would be.
Just know that there are those
whose emotional vocabulary
is small
as yet.

Missing David

My twin sister's first child, David, died June 29, 2005.
A brain tumor grew and grew and grew and eventually
snuffed out his life.
He was 6 years, 1 month, two weeks old.
I found him.

His mom tucked David in, kissed him and told him
she was the luckiest mommy in the world to have him as her son.
And she told him he could go.

I wanted to be there sooner.
I knew. Something would happen that day.
When I saw my sister laughing on the telephone, I thought it was OK.
Nothing bad happened.

I went upstairs to say goodnight,
knelt down by his bed and kissed him, saying
"Good night, sweet David."
His eyes were half open.
I called his name a little louder, touched his shoulder, gently shook him, watching for him to wake up, to know that I was there.
He'd asked for me all day and evening.
I so hope he knew I’d come home.
His mommy says he knew I was and it was finally safe to go.

I can't sleep tonight for missing him,
for grief.
I opened a drawer and saw his little sweatpants.
I kept them because I need a piece of him with me.
He'll always be that size.
He'll never grow any bigger. Never.

It's beyond words.
I miss him so much.
I am engulfed by grief.
I'm free to cry, and I do.

I go to the cemetery and just cry so deeply
sitting on that beautiful bench,
looking at the footstone words:
"David Leland Coble, Best Boy in the World."

The worst thing
is that I don't feel entitled to this grief.
I'm just his aunt.
But that's not how I feel.
He was my boy. I was his "almost mom."
He called me Mommy a lot because
I look so much like his mommy and I love him like a mommy.
Like a mommy, I would have done anything to protect and save him.

I have been blessed to feel I would give my life to save his.
The futility of that wish, that desire is deadly.
I feel myself go numb.

I find it so hard to accept that David is really not coming back.
I know it, I see the grave,
I hear the absent footsteps and silenced voice,
I feel the empty arms and loadless back.

resentment, the silent killer

My resentments are holding me back, killing my dreams.
Moving ahead is impossible.
Cries of pain, tears of humiliation tug at my shoulders and waist
craving attention and resolution.

I hate those people, I hate those things.
And I feel it over and over and over again.
Refeeling, re-sentiment, resentment.
Over and over I hate.

I resent Judas and Weasel and Lower-Than-Dirt.
Hard to even think of Miss C.
The look of hatred in her eyes mirrored mine.
And I see it again and again, as charged today as it was so many months ago.
Painful to feel again. Heart-stabbing pain, in fact.

The remedy is to fully feel, fully express, fully accept, fully forgive.
Forget? Doubtful. But you never know.

After all the work is done to erase resentment, memory fades.
Without the sharpness of the pain, memory loses its currency.
So resentment keeps the past current.

A logjam of feelings dams me. It blocks the present flow.
Hardly optimal experience or even Good Orderly Direction.
How can I be in "the flow" with such obstructions?
Of my own making is this dam, with its carefully stacked and sorted hurts and hates and angers.

And yet it has an aura of neglect. Little visited, barely smoothed.
Sharp edges jut out harshly, nicking and cutting my heart at every infrequent pass.
So shall I dismantle this home-made wall, take down the fortress, risk the wounds already endured?

That is the point, isn't it? The worst has already happened.
Refeeling can never be as bad as the catastrophic unanticipated original.
My mind tells me differently. "It will kill you!"

My heart tells the truth.
"These resentments are killing you - and
your future."

about happiness

Stick this in your brain somewhere you can find it:
It takes time and effort to be happy.
Lots of time and plenty of effort.
And it costs something, too.
Usually the price is pain - emotional, mental, psychic.
It does not come easily.
It does come, though.

I held fast to some ideas,
still do, in fact.

If you can imagine yourself some way,
you can be that way. And actually
you will eventually be that way.
Really.

Hope exists in the sure knowledge
that this situation, this reality will change.
It truly will not remain
the same.

I am not the center of the universe
nor do I control my reality. I am surrounded
by independent actors, all
of whom can delight me, surprise me, disappoint me,
hurt me, affect
my course in life presenting me with opportunities.
Opportunities for
there are no mistakes, only chances to learn.

If I could be how and where I want
to be, I would. Since I am not there, I am unable
to be, obviously. I am where
I am supposed to be.
Really.

Langston Hughes wrote: Hold fast to dreams,
for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged butterfly
unable to fly.

I dream.