Onion Skins

picture from go.funpic.hu

Layer by layer,

our onion skins

peel away

until,

in the center

of our hearts,

lies only

Love.

Love is the Open Door

Captives of love,

we circle

the enclosure.

Trapped by our hearts,

we need to stay near,

yet long to fly.

I see you yearning

for the freedom

of wild places.

I hear your 

mournful howl

under the moon.

How can I bear

to ever be

without you?

Yet how can I hold you,

when you're longing

to be free?

One long look:

I know you love me.

A pang in my heart:

always,

I will love you.

You need to gallop, now,

those far wild beaches.

You are

 a wild thing

and you are

no longer tame.

I click the lock

that keeps you

from your freedom.

I take the step

that is so

hard to make.

Off you go,

bounding into

Forever. 

One last look back:

always,

we will

remember.

Life moves us

ever towards

the far horizon,

the gift of love,

finally,

 the open door.

I am reading a book Part Wild, by Cierwidwen Terrell, about her life with a wolfdog, who was always escaping his kennel, in his urgent need to run free. As I read, she and I are coming to the same conclusion: wild creatures pay too high a price to be with us. I remember Pup's joy when we lived in wilderness. I remember his grief and anger when we were in town and he had to be tied. And his gratitude when the fence was finally built and I unclicked the lock and set him free. He did a little bow to me, and danced in a light-footed circle.

In this poem, it was getting through his death I am talking about. His hind end gave out, time after time. Each time, he got back up, until the last time. He didnt want to leave, I couldnt bear for him to leave. But his suffering was too much. He tried so hard to hold on for me. I had to set him free, take him to the vet, let him go. 

I am still missing my boy, so much. But this book is helping me to know that now, his spirit is running free, as it was always meant to. In each of our journeys, love is always the open door.

Don Quixote and Blueberry Muffins

[image from google: QUIXOTE.tv.zazzle.com]

This poem was inspired by Fireblossom's poem Sunday Bookstore Cafe, about a blueberry muffin and the loss of love. A universal theme, it appears :)

I am re-posting it here in response to Mary's Mixed Bag challenge today at Real Toads : to write a poem that includes a conversation. This one sprang to mind. If you click on the link to the prompt challenge, you will find some cool examples of poems containing conversation at the site.


He was addicted to
beginnings,
to conquest,
to the thrill of the chase.
He had perfected
the bedding of women,
the cute little schticks,
the crafted phrase,
the poetic verbiage.

She was a romantic
whose life had held
precious little romance.
She had been alone,
it seems,
forever.
She felt like
the Dickensian  character
sitting in her parlor
draped in cobwebs
waiting for the phone to ring.

Alas! they found each other.

He believed he was
Don Quixote,
always off on a quest.
He wooed her wary heart
with words of forever,
cajoled her past her fear
with honeyed phrases.
Her heart, starved for love,
for romance,
for this to be true,
responded
while her Inner Wise Woman
was thrown into fearful panic
and did not feel safe.

Her head, however,
refused to listen
as the ground shifted
beneath her feet,
and she clung on.

He spoon-fed her promises
and butterscotch pudding.
To others,
he said he was
"keeping his options open".

Too soon
he grew bored.
She had toppled too easily.
She wasnt "playing the game",
her sister said.
Confused, she replied,
from her honest heart
"I dont play games."
"More's the pity,"
said her sister.

On the side, he was already
lining up
the next glorious
breathtaking
adventure.
There were two women
in his sights.
He "kept his options open"
in case one of them
didn't work out.
To her,
he said,
he was "confused."
He "needed time."
Then, he must "follow his truth."

He dumped her on Valentine's Day.

And she?
About to go into
the full-blown shock
of betrayal,
devastation,
and, quite soon,
some healthy
invigorating anger,
before she left
she made him a batch
of her wicked blueberry muffins,
to remember her by,
because he'd
"miss her muffins".

Good God.

She'd never see another
blueberry muffin
without an ironic
grimace,
the thought of him
bumbling about
the scattered
landscape of love,
tilting his sword
at all the pretty ladies.

Wild Woman, on Love Among the Aging

[image from google]

Wild Woman
doesnt remember from Erotica.
It was all so long ago.

At her age, when people get together,
there is such a clattering of walkers
and clicking of false teeth knocking together
that it is daunting,
and we scuttle back to our recliners
in dismay.

The Wild Woman On Love

[Love Cats from p4poetry.com]

for Poets United's Thursday Think Tank prompt: Love

When I was young,
I dreamed Love
was out there
somewhere
just waiting for me,
and one day
it would find me.

When I was young,
I was tame.
I had been
trained
to stay within
safe confines,
trained to dream
standard
Technicolor dreams,
of boundaries
surrounded by
white picket fences.
Trained not to think
for one moment
that life could be
an adventure,
could be More,
could be
wild and free.

Marriage,
babies,
divorce,
single motherhood,
all hard work,
too exhausted
to do much more
than survive,
and yet,
somehow,
I did.

Love had been
a disappointment.
I did not find The One.

But I began to realize
you can't find
the love you need
Out There,
only within.
Instead of
looking for
The One,
I had to learn
the harder task,
of learning to value
and have compassion
for The Self.
Instead of looking
for the person
who would complete
my life,
I needed
to be that person,
and complete it
for myself.

It was a hard lesson,
accompanied by
tears,
but it was the lesson
I was meant to learn
this lifetime:
how to go it alone.

In time,
I began
to dream
a very wild
dream.
It involved
the universe,
and trust,
and one gigantic leap
out of my comfort zone
and into the
life of my dreams.

Wild Woman came alive
with an excited howl,
finally freed from
her fetters,
and we plunged into
frizzy-haired
wolf-howl
West Coast
living,
liberation,
life without limits,
where Different
was welcomed
and normal,
where life was
as big or as small
as you wanted
to make it.

In time,
I had to leave
that place.
But I brought
Wild Woman
with me
when I left.
She was rather quiet,
and tired,
bone-weary
from the long fatigue
of living.
Every now and then
she rattles my bones and
gives a long howl
to let me know
she is still in there,
still up for
another adventure,
for newness,
for dreams
with no limits.

We are still in love
with the land,
with the wind,
with the tall and  
toppling trees,
with night skies
and morning dew
and the smell of earth
stirring
in springtime.

Love? It never was
what I had been taught.
It never did come in
as a gift
from someone else
in the way
I had expected.
Instead, it goes out,
constantly,
from within
to all that
surrounds me:
babies, old people,
dogs, horses,
the sky,
forest trails,
the sea,
eagles and herons,
humanity itself,
transcendental heroes.
Love is in the living.
Love has never been
in the receiving,
nearly as much as
it is in 
the giving.

Here To Love

[Double Rainbow from lookingtothesky.com]

for Real Toads prompt: "Even love unreturned has its rainbow" by J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

She was in a deep, end-stage coma,
lying motionless
in her extended care bed.
On the wall were photos
of her life
Before:
her wedding picture,
hopeful eyes,
self-conscious smiles,
children, grand-children,
little girls with happy eyes
looking out of the frames
from that long-gone life.

Now she was here,
in this bed, alone,
and I was sitting with her,
a hospice worker
accompanying
her dying.

I wanted to give her
something,
not just be there,
so I opened
the pages of my book
and read her
some excerpts
from a poem about life,
and love,
and the world,
and death,
a poem about
Everything.

I felt the energy
in the room change,
and knew somehow
that my words
had traveled
into her heart.
My gift had been
received.

When I walked out,
that early summer evening,
there was a rich golden
light on everything,
at that gilded time
the minutes before sunset,
when all is radiance
and, in the sky,
not one,
but TWO rainbows,
arching across
the illumined sky
like prayers,
like an answer
to the question:
why am I here?
And the answer was:
to Love.

All the Christmases That Were

Stephanie, Jeff, Jon and Lisa

[I actually wrote this some years ago, but 'tis the season, so will post it here. Nostalgia all the way, kids!]

This year, for Christmas, I decided to make each of my four children an album of their childhood photos. I spent one evening on the floor, poring through my albums, revisiting those busy years which seem, in retrospect, to have flown by at the speed of light.

There were all their faces, alight with laughter. Kids playing, mugging for the camera, on jungle gyms, kids grinning out through tire-hole climbing structures, one face atop another, Baby Steph's at the bottom. (Steph's favorite saying in those years, "I'm NODDA Baby!") Lisa and Jeff, hanging upside down by one leg each from the metal bar. Jeff and Steph, upside down, butts to the camera, grinning at me through their legs. Jon with his first rocket, his new bike. Jeff and Steph, arms wrapped around each other, beaming. Jeff and Steph dancing, faces aglow with gaiety too great to contain. Lisa leaping into the air, her mouth square, shrieking her joy at getting the new clogs she wanted so badly. Jon fishing, hiking in the hills. Jon on a roughly made raft, poling up the lake in the dead of winter. Lisa cuddling a furry little pet under her chin, looking out at me with the same tender softness I see in her eyes now, cuddling her children and her kittens.

Jeff and Jon, plastic swords over their shoulders, marching to the Tolkien-like music we liked during the winters when my boys read Lord of the Rings over and over. Jeff, tongue hanging out comically, his head inside the mouth of the concrete Ogopogo statue in City Park, pretending he was being eaten by the monster.

All of us, up Knox Mountain, flying kites. All of us strung out in a row on bikes. All of us, having a winter picnic at Gyro Park, on ground white and frozen, grinning around our sandwiches.

And there were all the Christmases, when somehow, against all financial reality, magic happened in our living room, and the wee hours of Christmas morning resounded with happy shrieks and an orgy of gift-opening. Now, I dont know how I did it, but I remember my determination that, on that one day of the year, my kids would have everything they wanted. I was trying to make up for the daily reality of never enough money, never quite enough food, and all the times they wanted things in silence that they never asked for, because they knew our lack of money by the contents of our fridge.

That Christmas magic lasted until my children hit their teens, when our family hit rough waters for a time, as my children, like so many others in our culture,  explored drugs, alcohol and paths that took them away from me and any magic I might have available. As I looked at their shining pre-teen faces in their childhood photos, my throat closed over a massive lump.  Back then I could still afford some slight protection, or so I thought. I had not yet learned the most perilous years lay in wait, full of dangers far scarier than my childrens' worst childhood nightmares. We entered those years all unaware and unprepared, and none of us came out unchanged.

What the photographs don't show is the other side of Christmas, in the years when my heart was aching for my children, when I valiantly traveled from place to place among them, bright smiles and cheerful wrap belying the hidden pain, the unspoken words one or the other of us was not yet able to say. Christmas lost its magic for me in the years when one, then another child was away from home. And in the years when Jeff, who had been so sunny a youngster, made his lonely trek through the valley of despair.

I remember the Christmas concert just after one daughter left home too soon, and the depth of sadness in my heart as I watched the two children who were still with me, up on the stage, the sweet sound of children singing piercing me through like a lance. Another year, another Christmas, and Jeff, wan and pale, fragile and shaky, singing, "If I were a swan, I'd be gone," me encouraging his talent and brilliance, at the same time trying to anchor him to this earth he had such a fragile hold upon.

Some Christmases we spent scattered, me traveling among my children. Some we spent together, with inner distances between us we didn't mention, our smiling faces turned to the camera, our secret pain and memories within.

There are no photographs of the fractured Christmases, when one or another of my children was either physically or emotionally distant from me. No photographs mark the passage of those years of family unraveling and reweaving. Years when I learned to stay steady,  cling firmly to my life and carry on, believing in the power of a mother's patient, steadfast and unconditional love - and the healing powers of the passage of time - for my children to make their inner journeys away from and back to me.

Back and forth among my children, as the years passed, I traveled, a little shorter, a lot tireder, a little more frazzled with every year. Encouraging, supporting, trying to instil my belief that life holds goodness and wonder, once we are ready to let go of all the pain and anger. For a time, I thought the Christmases we once had only came with small children, and were forever gone.

For years, I could not bear to look at the photos of those young faces, knowing the pain we all had gone through since. There were years I took photos mainly of scenery and tried to heal myself from all the pain and struggle. This year, I could look. This year was the right time to give my kids back some of those happy childhood memories, remind them there were many more good times, much more laughter, than there were times of trouble. My children are on their own journeys now, have made peace with the past, embracing the present. They have become spiritual warriors on the path, and I watch with amazement as they grow in strength and wisdom and awareness.

And I am traveling too, to the season of my life when time becomes more finite, when there is a lot of looking-back and summing-up, and a wish to pass on all the love and gifts and wisdom one possesses while one still can.

While my children were growing, I was growing too, willy-nilly. I did some growing whole, some seizing of the reins of the galloping wild horses that were my children in those years. There were times when I felt utterly unable to cope, knowing I had no choice but to cope with what felt like too heavy a load. When my children were floundering in treacherous waters, somehow I had to encourage them from shore, throw life preservers, guide them through. Sometimes I felt like I was hanging onto the tail of a lashing dragon, that was wagging me.

Those years have been past a long time now. My children are no longer children. Some time back they assumed the reins and tamed their own wild horses.

Grandparents' faces are now missing around the table;  I find myself the matriarch and wonder how it all happened so fast. But my children have been coming home for Christmas most every year, and  some of the magic has been creeping back into that day.

This year was like the Christmases of old, kids disappearing under a sea of wrap, their heads poking out above the surface. Jon, giving me the best gift he could possibly give, in gifting his brother with a ghetto blaster to play his music. Jeff, more himself than he has been for years, hovering protectively over freshly caught fish Jon was cleaning, like a young priest, telling them "It will be okay." Lisa filling with new strength and awareness of her worth and rights as a human on this earth. Strong enough to hold her head up bravely under judgment of those who do not know, in order to live her truth. Gifting me with the honesty of her communication. And Steph, who for so long  sought family outside of our family, now finding it with her brothers and sister, as the family mends and re-weaves itself, growing strong at the broken places.

My friend had a similar Christmas with her children, her son giving her the verbal gift of forgiveness first thing Christmas morning, reducing her to tears. As we remark on the growth we are seeing in our children and the richness of our new relationships with the adults they have become, she remarks, "Our Christmases will be different from now on. Consciousness is growing in our children." And she is right.

I feel less lonely on my path, now that my children are so strongly embarked on theirs. Our conversations have new depth and recognition. I feel proud of the journeys they are making: journeys of the heart, of finding and living their own truth, pride in their heart and courage and honesty.

This year, once again, we took the Christmas photo. This year I have been privileged to see deeper into who my kids really are. We are now a mutual cheering section for each other, comparing notes on the journey. My health is faltering, exhausted from decades of pain and struggle, wanting only rest. But my childrens' light is outshining the darkness, and it is an awesome sight, brighter than any yuletide tree. Sometimes I feel it is by my sheer determination that we all made it safely through.

If I had one gift I could give them, it would be the incredible gratitude and reverence I have always felt for life, just life. I made it through my dark times because there was always blue sky and sunshine and trees, filling my heart with thankfulness, to keep me looking up. I wish that heart-lift for my children, that gift of seeing past the pain to all the beauty that is available when we are ready to reach out for it.

Sometimes I worry about what might yet lie ahead,  knowing I dont have the strength for much more. I feel the deep tiredness of someone who has been paddling hard for a very long time, whose arms are growing weaker. My mother's heart is always braced against the possibility of unbearable pain should anything happen to any one of my children.

This year the difference was, my children were helping me and easing things for me, instead of me helping them. And it felt really good, like we're all in this together, so maybe I dont have to be so strong any more.

As I lose strength, my children are gaining it. With what pride I survey my life's work: four very special young people who emerged from some very perilous passages with the mark of the wayfarer on their faces, and knowledge, compassion, caring and strength shining from their eyes. We are now journeying together, and can recognize and applaud each other's progress as, by different paths, we find and live our truths. The cycle of life is turning, turning, and my children are leading me Home.

The Big Four: Jeff, Lisa, Stephanie, and Jon

Because I Believe In Life....

[image of Afghanistan refugee camp taken by photojournalist Kate Holt~
see kateholt.com]

[I wrote this poem in 1998, but feel the need to repost it today, after a weekend of reading postings by all who participated in the Blogblast for Peace, at http://www.mimilenox.com/. Most especially the story of the Iraqi refugee family being helped by one young woman on one street in one city in the United States. Allie  saw the family was in need and did not turn away. She extended her hand in friendship in a truly remarkable way and turned things around for this one confused, displaced family. This story is told at http://www.watergatesummer.blogspot.com/

Through telling this family's story, Allie got them help. People from all over began sending warm blankets and coats. The family is blooming as a result of this friendship. I believe people do want to help, when they can address a specific need. When we are hit with huge numbers, we feel helpless, as if nothing we can do would make any difference.

I read that five million Iraqi families have been displaced by war, and my own brain glazed over. I had to jerk myself awake and go back and read it again. Five million families, just like this one family, whose story so touched me. A family to whom one hand reaching out  made a HUGE difference. Allie is one fantastic human being.

So here is this poem again, this sunny November morning, with apologies to those of you who have already read it. I continue to believe in life, no matter what.]

August, 1998

Yesterday my sister called me up
to say they were dropping bombs
on Afghanistan:
peasants bombarded under a morning sky
another slice of toxic political pie

Instead of turning on the news
I walked the beach -
dogs frolicked in the waves
with loopy grins,
as another radiant west coast day begins
All we can do is send out
love and light,
no limit to how far
our love can reach

A young woman,
huddled under quilts,
says her life "sucks"
while outside her bedroom door
a little miracle
with jam on his face
needs to know
the world's
a happy place
A child of hope
striving to survive
his mother's pain
living childhood days
of fleeting grace
that will never
come again,
waits for her
to look outward
and see
we are all part of
the glorious mystery,
life unfolding
when we stop
withholding

This morning I read
a polar ice cap
the size of Connecticut
is slowly breaking
and when it does,
whether three years
or five hundred
in the making,
the sea will rise up
in a single night
sweeping the coast
away
that's what they say

But all we ever have
is this one day
to be grateful for
each moon
each morning star,
each song
that opens doors
to who we are -
We all travel so far
to find that place
of love
within
where we finally
begin
to now we're not alone
and let love guide
our footsteps
on the journey
home

My friend is
dreaming of babies~
a little soul is asking
to come through-
She wonders
how can she bring
a child
all sweet and new
into a world
so sadly helter-skelter,
so askew?

Because I believe in life
and life believes in life,
I say -
we open our eyes
to miracles
every day,
are only asked
to give back
what we can
along the way

This afternoon
a young couple
playing music
in the summer sun
set all our toes
a-tapping
to the beat-
gracefully, two women
started dancing
on the village street
We all were smiling
because life is fun
These are the moments
when we most feel
as one
each bringing gifts
to the universe's table
as we are able

We all want life
our souls all long
to fly
We bring our babies
into a world
of starshine
and blue sky
of song and wonder
rainbows
love and laughter
and they will thank us
after
for giving them
the chance
to love and live
to share the joys
we know,
give our souls
a chance to grow
while teaching us
how much
we have
to give

No matter
what is happening
everywhere,
life holds
a million gifts
we still
can share
as simple
as the sun
warm on our faces,
as profound as love
in the most unlikely places-
love enough
to plunge our souls in,
fill ourselves
right up
with plenty
spilling over
to fill
our children's cup

Oh how they teach us,
as we share each day,
that the love that makes
us happiest
is the love
we give away
In them is our re-birth-
we send them forth
with love too deep to say
trusting that
the beauty of the earth
will carry them
the rest of the way

L'CHAIM

[This is a fictionalized account of true events I read about some years ago, about two people who met at a grief group, and wound up falling in love and getting married. And the toast made at the end is true as well. That is the bare bones of it. I invented the story around that situation. But way cool to think this stuff really happens!]

At 3:17 on a snowy Thursday afternoon in November, Keith Govnell fell over his desk, dead of cardiac arrest at thirty-eight. Life as his loving wife and two small children knew it was appreciably over at that moment.

When they came to tell her, Karen reeled with shock and incomprehension. How could this be? Keith had hugged her goodbye that morning, smelling cleanly of toothpaste and his morning shower; they had shared a casual, distracted smile over the heads of seven year old Jared and six year old Samantha, who were noisily slurping their cornflakes and arguining over toast, and he was out the door. Not long after, his wife shepherded their children out to the car, dropped them off at school and proceeded with her normally busy day.

That night, after the police, the hospital corridors, the watchful nurses, the weeping friends and relatives, after all of that horribly unreal day was over, she stopped short at the door of their bedroom, staring at their marriage bed. It now was an alien and unthinkable country, and she retreated, closing the door quietly.

For months, she would sleep on the lumpy couch with a fuzzy blanket clutched around her. She wondered if she would ever be able to sleep in a bed again. She was certain she would never again know the joy of being loved, of being held, of sharing the comfortable darkness and the coming of a new day with a lover and companion, her soul-mate. It was cruel enough that Keith was dead at thirty-eight, that they had had only eight short years together. It was harder to be her, to be left, knowing her one shot at love, at happiness, had been and gone. It was for the children that she remained; for the children that she got up every morning, to make breakfast, to start them through their days, the days that yawned emptily before her to infinity, the days she would somehow have to live through, breathe through, move through until her useless stump of a body finally withered and she could be with Keith again.

A huge weariness moved in, once the initial raging grief subsided, and it took up residence in her sluggish limbs, her hopeless heart. It looked out through her tired, unseeking eyes and the absent smiles and abstracted murmurings with which she tended her children. Sometimes she'd give herself a shake; the childrens' grief and loss was terrible too. They needed her, desperately. Then she'd clutch them to her, almost too tightly. Sometimes their hot tears mingled together and after, as she dried their faces and wiped their noses, she'd promise them - and herself - that they would make it through. But how were they supposed to do it, without Keith?

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

At 9:54 on an icy Sunday morning in December, on a country road not twenty-five miles outside that same small city, not far from the farmhouse she shared with her husband Peter and three year old daughter Ariel, Amy Fraser felt the icy road under her tires suddenly fall away. In an instant, it had turned into a glassy skating rink. It felt like the wheels were toboggans that lifted, lifted her off the lip of a mountainside, then spilled and spilled her back to earth again, landing in a pillowy soft cloud of snow, brilliant with sunlight, where she could feel and hear nothing at all but peace.

Afterwards, as people repeated what had happened, how fast it had all occurred, they hoped the velocity of the crash had spun her safely beyond the physical realm on impact, sparing her any pain.

Pain was what was left behind for her loving, grieving husband and baby daughter. Peter lost, in that instant, his wife, his companion, his best friend and childhood sweetheart - his soul mate.

Bewilderedly clutching his uncomprehending little daughter, rocking her back and forth in the nursery chair Amy had used nightly to rock Ariel safely into the land of dreams, Peter's broken heart spilled out of his eyes and ran down his cheeks. The house, once so alive, was suddenly big and dead around him. It was so still, he could hear the whispery breath of his sleeping child, the eeriness of the wind outside, every creaking stair and dripping tap and ticking clock. So silent he could hear icicles cracking under the eaves. As he stared emptily and unseingly into the dark night, he wondered how on earth they were going to make it, Ariel and he, without Amy, who had been the laughter and sunshine of their days, the light of both their lives.

***** ***** ***** *****
Hovering close by, concerned, Amy's radiance was tinged with a hue of sorrow. She now understood life and death were simply other sides of the same reality. But her heart ached for her sorrowing husband, her innocent and unaware baby daughter, for the depth of her husband's grief and for all her child had lost.

Wistfully, she held back from her journey beyond. She could not quite let them go, could not move forward, until she knew that they would be all right. Through the days afterward, through the dark nights of the soul when Peter's tears soaked Amy's pillow, clutched tightly against him in the suddenly cold and too-large bed, beside him as he walked gravely up the aisle at the funeral, (the same aisle they had walked, so radiantly in love, at their wedding), and in the evenings after, when Peter had put his child to bed and sat staring into the lonely dark, Amy was never far. She longed to comfort him, to help him understand that her love, her presence, was still there, that this was all part of the plan, the divine mystery whose meaning is only revealed at the end of life.

Another had made the crossing with her; a young husband and father had suddenly found himself on the other side. He, too, was worried about his wife, his children. Because both had left so suddenly, so abruptly, in the time of their lives when they thought their married lives lay long before them, there was unfinished business keeping them attached to the earth plane. There was no way to say goodbye, with their loved ones in such pain. These two remained close behind the veil that separates the living from beyond, and in moments whispered hints of their loved ones' presence comforted Peter and Karen, in a way neither  could fully understand, yet neither  would deny.

***** ***** ***** *****

At first Karen wanted only to be home, hidden from others' eyes, from the rushing, bustling noisy world that was an affront to her, whose life had stopped that snowy afternoon. She drew the children close to her; the winter evenings found them all sharing the firelight, talking quietly, eating popcorn, watching television.

But by spring, she saw her children responding to the natural life cycle that was happening outdoors. And she knew she needed to get some help to pry her out of her armchair, out of her reverie. She would never get over Keith, never. But she had so many years ahead of her. She needed someone to help her, to tell her how she was supposed to manage to live out the rest of her life.

She was quiet and shy for the first while at the grief group. There was a vast tiredness on her face and living inside her body, the certain knowledge that her last chance at love had been and gone, too soon, and somehow she had to make something survivable out of the years ahead. One night she finally found her voice and spoke.

"Help me," she asked simply. "Help me to know how to keep going."

And somewhere, not very far away, her husband smiled.

***** ***** ***** *****

Peter resisted friends' suggestions that he turn to the local grief group. No use talking about it; that wouldnt make the pain go away. His tendency was to withdraw, to not talk. That certainly was easier than baring your grief in front of strangers.

But in the months that followed, there was no one he knew that he could relate to any more. His family, his friends were sympathetic and tender, concerned. But they didnt understand, how could they? How could they know that simply coming across Amy's scarf unexpectedly plunged a knife of agony into his innermost being. She had always been there; now she was gone. And how was he ever - ever! - going to get over that? How could life - that glorious taken-for-granted happy ease of daily life - ever get back to normal again?

Finally one night he opened the door of the church basement meeting room, and peered inside at the circle of people. They made him feel welcome, they gave him coffee, they didnt expect him to speak and so, of course, in time he did.

"One thing I know for certain: Amy would want me to go on. She was so alive, so vibrant. But the only trouble is, I'm having trouble figuring out how to do it."

Beyond the shadows, two spirits smiled at each other, and linked hands.

***** ***** *****

For six months, Peter and Karen related particularly to each other, as they shared their journeys of love and loss and tried to find their way back to life in the support of the circle. Their situations were so uncannily similar, their losses so recent. They were feeling so many of the same feelings. And they both feared they would never love again.

Then Karen found herself one day thinking, idly, "He's cute!" and, stunned, a moment later: "If I think he's cute, then I must be alive!"

Peter saw the great weariness in Karen's face and told himself, if it had to be, he preferred being the one to be left. He would not have wanted his wife to go through what Karen was going through. He began to feel protective and supportive, wanted to help ease her burden.

By the time the first year anniversaries of the deaths rolled around, they had begun to meet for coffee to talk more privately, to share their common experiences more deeply than they cared to in the group. They began to phone at odd hours, when the nighttime lasted too long and was too empty; each knew the other would understand as no one else possibly could.

After a while, they dropped in at each other's homes, made friends with each other's children, began going out on joint outings. Out of the broken pieces of their lives, they began to find a way to pick up some of the pieces and move forward.

It was in the second year that they knew that they would marry, would make a home for the most precious legacies their mates had left behind: their children.

It was a wedding of joy and tears. Each of them remembered other faces coming towards them down the aisle; each ofthem loved the new face in a way that somehow included the beloved former partner's face and encompassed all the pain they had passed through together. It was like the four of them somehow united on this day, all soul-mates.

When Peter rose to thank family and friends for their support through these hard years, he told how their coming together brought he and Karen the companionship and strength they both needed and wanted, and brought Jared and Samantha the father and Ariel the mother the children so badly needed.

As he raised his glass in a toast to his bride, the tears came and his voice caught in a sob, as he added, "I raise my glass also.....to Amy and to Keith.......for gifting us with three beautiful children and making us a family. To Life: L'Chaim!"

"L'Chaim!" everyone echoed, clinking lifted glasses, wiping away tears.

Somewhere, not too far, two spirits glided ever so softly away.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Hope and a Little Sugar

image from compassionconnection.org

I just watched a touching movie called Hope and a Little Sugar, about a forbidden  love between a Muslim man and a Sikh woman in the days surrounding 9/11 in New York. It was apparently based on true life events and, as such, was real  and touching and very human.

I was most struck by a line a wise older man spoke during the film:

"This is the world we've got, my friend.
We make it what it is, one choice at a time."

So true.

It's All About the Love

It turns out Jasmine's injury is serious - a cruciate ligament rupture - that is the big ligament within the knee socket (on her rear right leg), so with its padding gone, every step she takes, the bone plates rub against each other, causing severe pain.

Surgery is needed. I have few resources. Between a rock and a hard place right now, as I gather information, and wrap my brain around the path ahead of us. Best case scenario, it can be done locally, will be successful and she faces a very long recovery period of at least a year. Worst case scenario, a specialist has to do it down-Island, she has the surgery and then blows her other knee from putting so much weight on it.

I was not expecting such a shock and there was a moment in the vet's office when I thought I might lose both my dogs this year. That's when everything started swirling and going black and they had to revive me with water and cold cloths.

But this little dog......innocent and trusting, and so undeserving of what has happened to her, in pain and hobbling.......this is the face she turns to me, this is the smile she gives. She is a gallant little dog, and she is  all about the love, every minute.

THE PRINCE OF COMPASSION

The night my son collapsed with schizophrenia, I went to the shore. My heart was aching; the familiar, resigned stoicism with which I had endured so many crises was creeping over me again. I was bracing myself for certain heartbreak, clinging with all my strength to the comfort I found in the sound of the ocean rolling in, wave on endless wave, upon the sand.


Pacing up and down the water's edge, nervous and shaking, I thought of my gentle, happy-natured son as he had been when he was little. Jeff was my third child and he was born laughing. His disposition had always been sunny. In our noisy house of four children, he was my quiet, sensitive one, the one I felt was most like me.

Jeff is an Old Soul, one who lives gently and kindly on the planet. He seems to have brought wisdom with him from wherever he was before he came to me. Now that laughing, tender little boy was a lean, fragile six-footer, seventeen years old and in the psych ward.

I had just moved to Tofino, and was working to get us re-established. Apparently, he had run out of my mother's house in Vancouver, where he was staying for the summer, and raced through the darkened night-time city streets to the hospital, where he had checked himself in.

He was psychotic, suicidal. They needed me to sign the consent forms, they could not begin treatment until I came.

*** *** *** ***
I didnt know what to expect when I got to the hospital that first time. In the modern front lobby, I was directed to a separate ancient-looking building across the alley in the rear. The psych ward was old and dreary, its nicked walls needing paint. I walked up the scuffed and shabby stairwell. It felt like the abandoned ones lived here. At the nurses' station, asking for Jeff, I felt them sizing me up, with my frizzy hair, thrift store clothes and natural temerity. My seventeen year old son had broken down, was in desperate shape. What had I done to cause it?

I signed the forms. I asked to speak to the doctor. He would be in this morning, they told me, pointing me down the hall to Jeff's room.

Peeking into the darkened room, I saw the usual evidence of Jeff's occupation: clothes and belongings strewn all over the floor, blankets ripped off the bed, dirty and clean clothes and wet towels all together in a tangled heap.

On a bare mattress, wrapped, head and all, in a blanket, was my son.

"Jeff," I called softly, and his shaggy head burrowed out from underneath the blanket, long tangled reddish-brown curls in disarray. He smiled, the same big smile, our eyes met, his same blue eyes. He got to his feet, tall and thin and tousled, and we hugged. I felt relief. This was still Jeff.

We went down the hall to an alcove, where two chairs sat by a window.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I couldnt take it any more. I needed help."
"I am so glad you did this, that you came for help. That was a really smart thing to do."
He nodded.
"What do you want them to do for you?"
"I want them to make it stop."
"Make what stop?"
"It's like a bad trip that hasnt stopped. I've been scared all the time, it's like living in a nightmare, like being in hell. There are voices, clamoring and shouting. It's scary."
His eyes turned on me once more. When he was little, he had the round untroubled blue eyes of an angel. Now they were haunted by the visions of his waking dream.

"Is it from the drugs?" Jeff had taken LSD fifteen times the previous winter, but I hadnt found out until he was already in trouble.
"I dont know. I havent done drugs for six months, but the last bad trip never stopped."
"Well, you're in the right place." He nodded. "They'll be able to help you. We'll get through this."

I felt a difference happening, the beginning of real communication between us, in the midst of a crisis, a breakdown. The son I thought I had known was now a son who was openly suffering. All the hidden demons lay revealed. My response was to roll up my sleeves and muster all my strength to help him. We would talk our way through the next twenty years, but we didnt know that then.

For now, my son was tired and retreated back to bed, pulling the blanket up and over his head. While he slept, I paced the hospital halls and waited for the doctor.

I saw people in various stages of depression, locked within their lonely worlds of pain. People of all ages were making their solitary treks through the labyrinths of their own minds. My son now inhabited this landscape. It brought very close to home the fragility and, at the same time, the incredible resilience of humans, that in a nanosecond, any one of us might topple over into that land of rain-speckled windows, tears and no more hope.

My son, brilliant, talented, a writer, a mystic, a dreamer, a musician, a lover of life, with all of the suffering soul and sensitivity of the creative artist, had walked the fine line between daybreak and hellfire, and had fallen. He now paced these drab corridors, his hours marked out in paper pillcups, naps and hospital trays. Where would his beauty ever find a place to land, in halls so bleak and bare? How would his tender heart find its way home from this land so strange and new? And where was home, now that I had packed it up and taken it away?

How had I helped to bring him here? And what could I do now to lead him safely out?

*** *** *** ***
Dr P came rushing in, white hospital coat flying, and raced down the hall. I lurked around the nurses' station while he ran in and out of rooms, conferred briefly with nurses, pored over medical files, barked short commands. I hovered, saw the nurse telling him I was Jeff's mother. He glanced over, sizing me up. Once more I felt my general inadequacy, both as a parent of a boy who had fallen apart and the responsible adult who somehow had to deal with the situation.

Finally, he called me into a small office. The doctor peered at me, shuffled some papers, then began.

"Jeff is suffering from a psychosis, a psychotic break. This may or may not be drug-induced. It may have happened even had he not done drugs. Jeff is going to need medical help, his medication has to be monitored. First we have to get him stabilized. There is the possibility that it may be schizophrenia. In any case, the treatment is the same. We will try him on anti-psychotic medication and will try to stabilize him."

"I hope this is drug-induced then." I said. Schizophrenia was an illness of intense suffering. The thought of my gentle son suffering for months, perhaps years, was too starkly terrifying to consider. I wanted the magic pill that would restore my son to himself, so we could all go home and get on with our lives.

It is good we did not know, then, the long road that lay ahead of us. Life is merciful that way.

I still had questions but now the doctor leaped up, rushed down the hall and was gone.

I left some money at the nurses' station for Jeff, then tiptoed back into the room where he lay sleeping. On his bedside table was a scrap of paper, with a few lines written in Jeff's distinctive, quirky script, a sort of spikey printing with jagged downstrokes. I read what he had written and my heart turned icy with fear.

"I am Cloud.
Someone blow me away."

I walked out of the room, down the gray hall, the gray, drab stairs, out into the noisy brightness of the city street. Life roiled around me, normal and noisy, while my son lay in the psych ward, his life hanging in the balance.

I couldnt get the words out of my head and still recall them frequently, two decades later.

"I am Cloud.
Someone blow me away."

*** *** *** ***

Next day and many, many times after that, I went back to the hospital, to the city, to Jeff's side. I remember walking down the rain-washed dark city streets beside my tall, guant, suffering son in his long black trench coat, as he cried.
"It will get better," I'd say.
"I'm afraid it never will."
"It will." It had to. "I couldnt handle it if anything bad happened to you."
"I know. That's why I'm still here."

*** *** *** ***

Jeff writes some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. He composes beautiful classical musical fragments; one wishes he were able to complete the entire opus.

All of his beauty and loneliness is evident in his music, all the sensitivity, the genius that somehow got its wires crossed, his youth which should be flowering, on hold, as he sits alone at his keyboard and sings into empty rooms where no one hears him.

Except me.

He phones me every day or two, sometimes in tears, from the psychiatric group home where he has now lived for a dozen years. We talk, we say 'I love you', we hang up. I picture him, drifting back to his room, his messy sanctuary, lying down on his bare mattress, bedraggled blankets strewn all over the floor. Awash on his boat of pain, steering his solitary course towards a horizon he cant see, no route markers, no compass, no hope, no dreams, no one to hold him and tell him it will be all right. Truly, he is the loneliest person on the planet.

He is as in-the-moment as a small child, and as lonely as a coyote howling at the moon. He calls himself Jeff Siddhartha Crazy Horse Marr. He has the gift of appreciating the little things. I recall buying him a little ninety-nine cent violet and how tenderly he carried it home. Peeking into the bag, he whispered, " Come home with me." And when we got there, he made it a little altar with a soft piece of cloth, so its protruding roots would not be hurt.

Though Jeff is one of the poorest of the poor, his generosity is legendary. He gifts his brother and sister-in-law on their wedding day with his favorite Nein Young cd. "My gift will be my ambassador," he smiles.

When I visit, I shake my head with mixed chagrin and pride as we walk down Granville Mall together. Jeff, in his raggedy clothing, impoverished, cannot pass a homeless person without emptying his pockets - those pockets I have just filled with hard-to-come-by cash. The Prince of Compassion, freely sharing his largesse.

"How're you doin', man?" he asks, dispensing coins and cigarettes. "Take care."