As it was a sweet note I recieved, and not prying, and it is on topic, I think. I will reply here. I mostly only know how to speak from the heart, from life. That's my way...
It was actually a long time ago. Mother's Day was the 12th anniversary. But some things don't know the boundaries of time, aye? I was reaching back to that, and to my granny's death, memories prodded by the conversation. Both times people found my behavior perplexing, and even discomforting... both for the humor I showed, and for the stoicism. Go figure. To watch over someone's last moments, last journey in the body on this earth, is a sacred task.
This is the first year I have not fallen apart. And, yeah, that would piss Autumn off that I did for so many years. :) But what I did right, imo, was never forget that joy existed, even when I couldn't feel it's touch. To me, the hardest thing is having a future you see, then seeing it leave. Damned confusing.
With A was my future world. Not lovers, but entertwined. It would always be us and S. S and I went apart about a year after that. We made no sense to each other without the third. With my granny was my duty, my seeing her through old age. So... future scrambled, job done... what then?
But my mother (of course) and A taught me not to look to others to react the same. I marvel at people who can lose their whole family and pick up quickly and go on to a new life. And I want to tell people who don't, that it is possible, that there is a new life, a new future. And not see them take so long as I did to open up to it. But we grieve in our time, and return to life in our time.
Yet my laughter, and then my stoicism led others to believe I did not grieve. It's odd to me. Yet all of them moved on more quickly than I. And that is a good thing.
With A, I laughed at her Memorial (which she found rather boring but realized that it was what people needed), and stood in silence, without expression as she burned. A witness. A last moment of not letting someone be alone as the vessel that carried her in this life departed. That's important. No one who sat in the other room and saw my face could ever look at me without something almost like fear in their eyes after that, except for one. The man who took care the creamations. He wandered over now and then and was so... normal. He told me about cultures that honored cremation. About it being a thing of honor. And his eyes, and his gentle smile, told me he saw me. That he understood the task of transporting someone, of standing by them. We had to fight to have me there. The "laws" say you are not supposed to watch. The body burns without witness. pfft. Try and tell that to a pack of dykes.
but I lost more than her that day. I became something apart from the others. Something scary and beyond understanding. As her lover put it, in a kind voice, "they will never be able to speak to you again. When they look in your eyes, they see the silence, they see the fire that took her. And so will I." So is the task of becoming something apart from the world, for the sake of the dead.
We all did share a laugh when the urn we had bought would not hold all the ashes. that was the best moment. A would have loved it. Then was the thought "where do we find a bigger urn now!?", but the man came through with a large urn in A's favorite color, and it held the ashes. It's good to have that moment. To look back together and laugh about a happening at such a sad time. "Do you remember when we tried to get her ashes in the urn?" But then, carefully, after the laughter, the urn was carried to the car by C, and I drove with great care than ever to where we would place them. Transporting. Honoring. Some crying. some without expression. Some with a lost look in their eyes. But all knowing... that we loved her, that she was a center of lives. And that we shared together, not our just our own grief and loss, but the sacred task of walking a soul from this life to next. Honoring her, in part, not with our grief, but with the care we gave to her passing to the next realm.
Seems we pay much attention to crying at funerals. And it is a good thing to grieve. To feel our emotions. And loss. But it seems odd to me that we spend little time, imo, to the soul that is passing. To stepping beyond our own moment and helping to let them go, to feel them go, to the energy of the universe. To honoring the energy they leave behind within us and around us.
Like my granny said, "we all grieve in our own way."
And like A said, "I know when your heart is smiling, you don't need to move your lips. that is for those who don't look inside."
blahblahblah. I'm gonna hit send without preview, or I might retract this. ::insert grinny face ;) :: |
