" This is the story of a blind boy who in a dream is told that bowing will open his eyes and let him see. He tries for several days to bow and open, everywhere he goes: in the grass, in the wind, in the soft hands of his mother. None of it gives him sight. He bows his face into the holiest of books, the one his father studies. Still nothing. The dream felt so real that he's now in despair, certain he's misread the gift of this instruction, certain he's lost his chance to see.
In his sadness, he wanders to the shore of a lake, where he wades to his waist. Depressed, he sits in the water. And as a child sinks in a bathtub, he holds his breath and drops into the lake, below the surface of things, below the noise of his blindness. He is surrounded by such softness and quiet that he begins to cry as the water from his eyes mixes with the water of the lake. In the slow, gentle wash of water meeting water, he begins to feel the bottom of the lake. He begins to feel the old fish swimming behind a rock. He can feel the oar in the middle of the lake slipping in and out of the cloud-reflected surface. He even feels a heron circling above, its shadow cooling pockets of the deep.
He returns to the surface and can feel the movement of air against his eyes, and the heat of the sun warming his face. From that day on, he can feel with his eyes, as long as he remembers to slip below the surface of things. And though he is blind, from that day on, he carries great vision. In time, he becomes a teacher that others seek out, and through his gentleness, others learn that whatever our blindness, the heart can sink below the noise of its memories and wounds. The sweet blind boy tells everyone who asks that the heart wakes slowly, and only our gentleness -- our willingness to sink into the depth of things and wait -- will let us see and make our way."
I have a new life. Mostly. I live in a new city, Yonkers, New York. In a new apartment with a new roommate who is perfectly nice and wonderful. My neighborhood is quiet and calm and Grace and I go out for long walks. The weather is changing and everything is becoming cooler and crisp. It's a new season. I go to a new school, with new classmates and I am learning new material. Last week we read the story of a boy named Jesse who died because of negligence in a clinical trial he was participating in. The story was written by his father and I cried for 40 minutes after reading it. There are new triggers. Today I went to a support group meeting, it was my first time since moving here. It was good to listen, and talk, but mostly listen. Because in my new life, with my new adventures, and new beginnings there is still the same old grief.
Most of the time grief is close by, a shadow I can sense but not always see. Sitting close to me, we are familiar, but familiar does not mean comfortable with. Sometimes grief sits next to me and sometimes it sits on me. All consuming and heavy and crushing.
This year his birthday falls on Thanksgiving. A day of thanks. It feels like a very tall order I am not quite up to. I drained my savings and bought a ticket home so I could go lay on his grave. I will bring him a birthday gift and lay in the grass for as long as I want to. All day. All week. All of my life.
Two years ago I held his little hand and kissed his little face and I want to fold over and collapse into myself when I think about how much I miss him. I can't actually allow myself to sit with missing him. The weight of that truth would crush my will to live into dust and the winds of time would blow them away and I'd become nothing. Literally dust in the wind.
I brace myself for the 3 days after Thanksgiving, the anniversary of when I said goodbye. Thank goodness vital bodily functions run on auto pilot since I often forget to breathe. I feel like I exhaled my last breath with his and haven't remembered to breathe in yet.
But I am breathing and living this new life. And I stay true to my commitment that if I am going to live with this then I have to be alive. I get to live for both of us. Only one of us can still breathe and it isn't enough for my body to go through the motions, I have to be an active participant in the inhales and exhales. The ins and the outs and the ups and the downs. I have to be here even if he isn't in the ways I want him to.
And so I have a new life but the same old grief. Here is to year three, I welcome you with a gentle heart <3
