Goodbyes

There's still a part of me that feels there should be some cosmic bend toward justice. Bros in pick up trucks who cut me off should get pulled over. The woman who patiently allows another car into mind-meltingly-bad traffic should probably score the winning lottery ticket. 

The part of my mind that wants everything to be simple, easy, and good orients, by default, to these sort of explanations, as though the vast majority of our moments--the good and the bad ones--are not dictated nearly entirely by chance. One errant clump of cells which becomes terminal at age 29 or a series of numbers chosen at random which leads to sudden wealth or the kind of chance that your mother and father met at all and you became more than just a near-statistical impossibility.

Here are some good, easy rules for the universe to attempt to incorporate into life from now on:

1) Shitty people get a shitty lot and only hurt other shitty people.

2) Good, kind people live disproportionately blessed lives and die, peacefully, at 95 with their bodies and minds intact surrounded by loved ones and their passage into the next place is aided by the best, most body-loving pharmaceuticals to make everything good and decent and humane.

The only alternative to instantaneous implementation of the above two rules is a true embrace with chaos and the looming knowledge that tomorrow is simply a wish on our lips each night as we close our eyes. And knowing that we are all simply ashes and dust, there is the acknowledgement that every moment we have with one another is irreplaceable, essential, and deserves our full presence.

I wish we could stay here together without end. There is already so much missing to carry. Because I know without doubt that we can't have forever, I hope you know that I have loved you more deeply than should be permissible. I apologize if even a minute lapsed in my attention while you explained the most important truths of your heart. All of this, even the worst of it, was made lighter and truer and more beautiful because it was with you.

Plunge

Today you are at the top of a diving platform that is too large for such a small human. You passed the swimming test for the first time only a couple weeks ago and because I have thrown myself from the top and your older sister has followed suit, you insist you are ready. You stand there for so long, looking at me and then looking at dad and then looking back at me and peering over the edge, uncertainty fixed in your gaze.

You disappear from the lip, headed back down the stairs.

And then from the edge of the platform I see your banana swim trunks as a blur and your small body falls and falls toward the water. You did not just leap, you took a running start. I am equal parts proud and aghast, watching with bated breath until you kick your way to the surface smiling from ear to ear.

The distance from the top of the platform is vast and jarring and infinite and the plunge toward the water slows time so that you are falling for days and days and days. And when you do reach the water you go into the deep until the animal part of your brain starts to panic that you may run out of air before you can surface. Your ears alarm with pain at the pressure difference and for a moment you are weightless and lifeless and belong only to the water.

You are so brave.

I used to feel courageous, fortified somehow, against the kinds of things that now wake me in the night. The planet is warming. The supreme court has been hijacked and the politicians have all been bought. The last of our three dogs is old and dying and I see those I love less than my heart wishes. I can't protect any of our children from our gun problem and I see the blood of my neighbors as I shop for apples in the aisles of my newly-renovated grocery store.

I am desperately in love with people who will die. I will die. People can be so broken and when they are, they can do such terrible and dastardly things. I have been less kind and patient and generous than others deserved. I have bemoaned my body for its size, my mind for not being smarter, and my heart for its propensity to crack at the smallest slight.

But you stand there at such a great height, surrounded by gray clouds and drizzling rain, with the wind shaking your entire body with cold and when it looks most like you may concede defeat, you turn and hurl yourself with total abandon and glee into complete free fall. And then you proceed to do it again and again, the flush of novelty and pride enveloping your entire being.

You are so brave. 

Perhaps I can learn to be, too.

Fracture

I have been thinking a lot about breaking, about the ways that the pandemic has fractured me and the people I love. I've been thinking about intubated, ventilated patients who I scanned over and over again until suddenly their hospital bed emptied and filled with another body on repeat for weeks and weeks without end. I've been thinking about vaccine deniers who fought impossibly hard but died alone in our sterile rooms and the reverberation their lives and deaths have had on those who remain. I've been thinking about the way relationships have changed between strangers and at dinner tables and how so many of the things that fractured may be irreparable.

So many of the broken things cannot be repaired. They fill me with such sorrow.

And perhaps that is the lesson of this stage of life that feels different from that of childhood: some things which are not deserved happen to good people and they can never be put just right again. Sometimes people and things and relationships are decimated and the pieces never return to their original form. There is a physical losing of a loved one and the emotional losing of a loved one; sometimes the stranger across the table was once a dear friend who has, through infinitely tiny fractures, become unrecognizable.

Covid killed too many people, but it also altered sentiment and feeling about humanity and that chasm feels desperately large with vitriol and spite in equal volume on each side.

Growing up I held a firm belief that if one could climb from the darkness and begin to reassemble the pieces of trauma, the resilience and grit required in that rebirth could offer the opportunity for transformation, rehabilitation, and beauty. Climbing slowly from the darkness and death of the last couple years, I say a silent prayer to those who have come before and to whatever childlike piece of me remains that I can find joviality, kindness, and peace in a world that feels mutilated. 

I have recently taken to filling feeders for the birds in our backyard and delight in the red-breasted birds and the shrill of the hummingbird as they land and feast at the food carefully placed by my hand. The bushes I slaved over this spring have burst forth with flowers in pinks, whites, and yellows. The seeds I planted in the too-cool weather with the hope of warmer days to come have germinated; what was once barren is now lush and the bunnies feast on infinite green.

In the still of the morning, as I watch the birds devour black oil sunflower seeds, I am reminded that in early March I shorn our overgrown bushes six inches to the ground, saying a silent blessing to the slowly-warming soil that the prune would rejuvenate the plants rather than kill them. In the early days, what remained of those plants was nothing more than wooden stumps and browned leaves. As the weather has warmed and the days have passed, tiny shoots produced lush new leaves and the plants are more green and vibrant than they were prior.

Sometimes we are laid bare and exposed, reduced to our smallest self. But it is in this vulnerable, dormant form rebirth begins. Broken, perhaps, for a spell. If we can wait for warmer soil and longer days, we can stretch slowly upward, bend, and rejoice in the heat of the sun and the light of the day and the tiny bird which takes a rest on an outstretched limb. 

Perhaps many of these broken things were simply dormant all along, transforming silently and without fanfare, waiting for conditions to be right to stretch achingly toward the sun in an explosion of something wildly different but equally vibrant to the original.