The sky is grey today. My boots crunch and my body tenses when I first step out into this frigid January morning. I move slowly, huddled against the cold, still baring the gravity of grief and the weariness of long nights with too few exits and too many echoes.
Getting out of bed took little effort yesterday, my mind was alert, my movements fluid, and the sun was shining. I breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to recognize the promise of a morning without my mother in it. I didn’t have to force myself to leave my house, and I jogged and jumped and danced during my water aerobics class. My body felt light and graceful. It was going to be a good day.
Someone began to sing, “these boots are made for walking” and I cheerfully joined her in song, hands on my hips and legs lifting high. And then my eyes met those of a woman who is older than my mother and the pain slammed into my chest without warning. I was breathless as a memory consumed all of my oxygen. My young and sexy mother is singing that song while I prance around her in my imaginary boots. We are pointing at each other, warning that “one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you.” In that moment, all was perfect. The depression had not found her, she was cancer free – healthy, happy, and ALIVE. I was safe.
My eyes filled with tears and to my horror, it occurred to me that I could start crying in a public pool surrounded by perfectly nice and normal women. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw, called upon my well practiced will, and pulled myself together.
Rumi wrote that our lives are like guest houses. If my life truly is like a guest house, then grief, an unwelcome guest, has settled in for the time being. I cannot move out, and there will be no eviction. And so, If I’m to avoid structural and collateral damage, then I’ll need to make accommodations. Grief, I will make a place at my table for you, but I will not feed you. Instead, I will infuse my cooking with love and gratitude and nurture my family with them. And I will stop wasting energy trying to lock you out, instead, I’ll open all of my windows and invite beauty in.
My walk is complete. I return to the home that I now share with grief, close the door, absorb the heat, and resolve to not long for spring, but to listen to winter…
The Winter of Listening
“No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,
what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.
All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.
All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.
All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.”
David Whyte
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Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life 