On New Years Day I drove from St. Louis to Chicago, corn fields and farmhouses to my left and right covered in snow and moonlight.
Little did my friend Jen know that I’d spend Tuesday sprawled out on her couch – my body desperate for stillness. After calling my oncologist’s office, my breast surgeon’s office, my radiologist’s office, my plastic surgeon’s office, my pharmacy, and my adoption agency (more on that later), I closed my eyes and slept. All day long. Didn’t even move a muscle when her cat named Pussy snuggled up next to me. And I *strongly* dislike cats.
When I woke up I felt like I was moving through mud.
In other words, my boots were heavy.
But I felt better enough on Wednesday to meet up with some of my old favorites from the Obama campaign.
And Thursday Jen and I drove to Iowa. It was my third pilgrimage to the place where Dad fell. It’s one of those sacred places where the veil between here and gone is just a little thinner. And if you stand quietly and pay close attention, you’ll feel your whole body start to warm up and vibrate. Even when it’s below freezing outside.
I stood in the very spot where God and my grandparents reached down and held Dad, then pulled him back to them.
I laid a rock down in the snow.
And I thought of the poem Scott shared with me at Christmas:
“‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”
(Yehuda HaLevi)
You all know I dove deep into my grief when Dad died. That was a holy thing too. And I feel echoes of that same sort of holy now. The perspective-taking, the internal rearranging, the focusing on what matters most –
Which, of course, is to love, and to let you love me.
