Stay.

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

Today is my day off. I have done most of my 'day off duties' (ie housekeeping and cooking and such) and I look ahead at the "so- much-ahead of me" in this next month beginning with this weekend into next week and the following long weekend. I am at a pause place right now, taking stock...or not. Actually, just pausing before the storm...or whatever this flurry of movement ahead is in the next month or so. There is nothing I will be doing that I don't want to be doing...it's not busy-ness I will be involved in. All will be things/doings that are heart-centered. And...there is much. And now, for now, I am pausing, turning towards you, my dear Beloved Phoenix.

I miss you. Still. Always. Forever. I am being with how life is without you, how a relationship with Beetle is without you, who she is without you, how a relationship is with Myrrh without you, who Myrrh is without you, who I am without you and who/what my partnership is with J. without you. Sometimes I am delighted at what/who I find, sometimes, terribly disappointed and sometimes just neutral, unimpressed, gray. And the most challenging thing of it all is compassion for myself, for the other and for the situation as a whole. Shame likes to creep in and put a body cast on me, making me feel trapped, fixed, without choice and freedom. I slip into ways of being that are not honoring of any Truth, they are ways of fear, shame, and guilt. I forget who I've known myself to be in my Integrity and I become obsessed with two things: hiding and pleasing. It often is such a familiar disconnect that I hardly recognize it anymore until I suddenly begin feeling checked out, depressed, depleted, dull and uninspired. I have found myself here this week again after such a big opening last weekend where I felt a prolonged sense of happiness in the Living. Dark and Light...moving through the shadows....of the labyrinth.

Meanwhile I am seeing myself in all of my complexities, all of my depth and all of my breadth and trying to hold all of it, all of me in tender arms and hands, cradled, with gentle eye contact and humming or rocking. Like I would and have held you, dear Phoenix, through those nights of loud thunder and bright lightening...trying to calm and reassure you that no matter what, I will not leave! And I recall too that sometimes on those nights, it was important for me to be firm with you and tell you to lay down in your bed. It was almost like sometimes you got so freaked out by the sound and light, you forgot where to go, what to do, where to seek some ground again. And when you did come to your bed, I sometimes would have to just firmly hold you there, saying nothing but "Stay" feeling your whole body tremble with each next clap or flash. I must be like that for myself now too: reminding myself to go to my bed, to my room or outside by the pond, or to walk the labyrinth, or write to you, my Love, here on the WEb, telling myself "Stay" firmly and with assurance that this will change, my body will settle.

I love you, Phoenix. I am here "Staying" with myself without you.
Thank you for "Staying" with me in the ways that you do, both that I recognize and that I don't/cannot.

Melissa

The 25th Friday

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

I am home tonight early from work so I am here at the time you were shot 25 Fridays ago. I look at your photo on my dresser/altar and what I remember in my body is what I have come to name "The Life that was you and I." The relationship: the eye contact, the inadvertent leaning against, the reaching down and feeling your ear in my hand when our we walk side by side, the feeling of you racing around the corner when I call you and your weight into my arms and against my legs as I lean down to greet you, the leaping of all four of your paws in the air when I arrive home, the love beamed back and forth, back and forth between us, no matter what.

Someone at work this week was recalling the time her father dropped dead right in front of her. They tried to revive him at the hospital and while she waited, she prayed to Jesus for one of two things to happen: first, she prayed that he would be healed, and if not that, she prayed for the strength to bear it. When she told me, I wanted to just weep right along with her. Her father died twenty years ago and she said that she still feels broken by it. I cannot believe how we go on on with such seemingly normal lives after this kind of loss. How do we do it?????? How do we have the strength to bear??? And this from women who live in a relatively peaceful, very privileged life? I can only imagine how it is for women in places and situations far less privileged than mine where the violence persists day after day. HOW DO WE DO IT? HOW HAVE WE DONE IT OVER MILLENNIA??It's astounding. I don't understand it really.

So, here I am 25 Fridays later, changed in ways that are noticeable and changed in ways inside that no one will ever really understand, including myself. And Phoenix...your body is gone, forever. Buried in my back yard, probably decomposed beyond recognition now. Your Spirit...well, it's somewhere...occasionally makes appearances through particular songs, periodic dreams, a sense of you sleeping in my room (or is that just really strong wishing?), synchronistic sitings of deer, heron and fox, and through this palatable Love I call "The Life that was You and I." I don't know much about death, really. I know something more about life because of death. Maybe that's all we will ever really know until we go ourselves.

Living the Life that is me forever missing my beloved Phoenix,
Melissa

Both And

Dear Web and Phoenix on the Web,

I have passed through the threshold again...the one that says I must choose to live or cease to thrive. This time I reached a place of deeper recognition of myself: Because of my Beingness, I choose to Live. To extinguish my life is not my Will. Not because someone says 'it's wrong' or 'bad' or 'selfish' or whatever the doctrine is. I choose to Live not because I am expected to or because it's 'the right' thing or the 'good' thing or the 'selfless' thing. It is my Will as the Beingness that I am.

After that...I cannot say anything else for sure right now. Phoenix has remained elusive in my dreams. There have been few signs of his presence. I am worried about our connection. I do not know what 'to do' about it. I've begged, asked, prayed for something...some way of knowing we are still together. It's not the same sense of absence like in the beginning of things. It's more a sense of his silence and/or withdraw. And I wonder if this is him helping me shift my focus to Life.

And I say to you, Phoenix, if that is why you are withdrawn: "My beloved, thank you for your Love, for wanting to help me along. Can we do this together? That is, why wouldn't it be possible to have focus on Life and on us? I cannot let go of you, of our connection, ever. And I cannot fully let go into Life without our mutual exchange with one another. I need that. I want that."

I will never let you go. And I Will to live.
Melissa