Remembering and Loosening

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
I wish I could write the entirety of what's happening inside me recently. Somehow words just don't seem efficient. Images...not even really there either. It's a felt sense inside me. A felt sense of something loosening. Let me try to language some approximation....

I walked the labyrinth the other day and connected with the season that has passed/is passing, the season of walking that same labyrinth seemingly everyday these last six months. I could feel the essence of that same walk underneath my feet and around me as I walked this time through the leaves that have dropped and beneath the sunlight that comes from lower in the sky. I could 'hear' the echoing tears of such deep despair of a woman who was/is me: a wandering, grieving me following the only path I could in front of me, guided by these stones, round and round, in and out and back in, winding me outside logic. I remembered a large white dog come to meet me in the winding path and walk beside me for a while, a companion. I remembered to touch the rock who calls me everytime I pass her, a large heart shaped rock that both of my hands fit comfortably on. My hands always smile at the warmth she's stored and shares. I have become this labyrinth and She, me. We have wound ourselves around one another these last six months. She calls to me, I call to Her. This loosens my heart.

I look at photos of Phoenix and I also feel a loosening...it's a sense of living on...not leaving behind or forgetting...but living on in Memory of. Because I have been so vigilant with this walk these last six months, I don't feel like I am leaving Phoenix behind or forgetting. We've walked this path every step of the way together. I have fought for these last six months to be exactly that way. And now...I am still together with Phoenix (he's let me know he's still here, just last night--two times when I called) and...the loosening has to do with maybe...something like acceptance? Not necessarily acceptance that Phoenix is no longer in the physical...that is still very tender...and it's not acceptance that everything is hunky dorry now, you know the 'it's all good' toxic brainwash that infuses every outrageous event. No, the acceptance is something like...accepting that I am still alive with a life to live. A sister sat across from me some time ago and spoke about 'letting go of the life I would have had'. She was speaking about a tremendous loss she survived. The phrase zinged me like an arrow because it cut to the heart of where I definitely was NOT and thought I'd never be. Maybe now, though, that is some of what I am experiencing as a loosening.

I still cry like I did six months ago, wailing at the incomprehension of it all, of the violence, of everything that was taken. I still am not sure what to do with my anger towards the injustice. I still pray for Justice and wonder if I am a coward for not taking it somehow into my own hands. I still go back to that night on the bench, Phoenix in my lap, the wolves howling at my back and me, changed forever through time, forwards and backwards...knowing I will never be the same. And, you know, all of that going back and staying true to everything about it in it's entirety, keeps me from forgetting.

Amnesia is a double edged sword...it can numb one from excruciating pain so that she can go on...and it can also be a fog that masks Reality, the ability to remember what is True. Here's a perfect recent example. My parents came to visit us in our new home recently. While they were here I invited my mother to walk the labyrinth with me. As we walked, she behind me, I could feel my mom's ordinary, unimpressed energy toward this extraordinary place. I felt myself go there too, telling myself this really isn't that big of a deal, this labyrinth. It's just stones placed in a pattern leading you nowhere special. I couldn't feel anything special at all about walking this thing. Then on the way out, I noticed that heart rock who made me smile and remembered a gesture I would do each time. I didn't do it then, with my mom, but I remembered it and felt more connected to my deep experience with this labyrinth. My point is that amnesia started to insidiously creep in. I started to forget and couldn't access what I Knew and have Known these last 6 months. When I look at Phoenix photos, I feel that slight fog sometimes--like a veil between the photo and I--like I am looking at someone who is just an image. It takes devotion not to let that happen. And I think allowing myself all of my feelings, as intense as some of them still are, is an important part of this devotion of Remembering. With the devotion, I remember who I am now...in this Present moment, with all of the Life and Death behind me and beside me. This Remembering is important/vital to me. When I begin to forget...I begin to numb out...or maybe it's the other way around. At any rate, all of this Remembering plays into this loosening I am experiencing now. Blessed be!

Finally, C. a dear sister came over a week or so ago and we raked the chestnut seed pods from the paths of the labyrinth--they are so spiky and not friendly to my feet. It felt like a dear thing to do for Her too. It was something I wanted to give back to Her, this labyrinth. Twas the least I could do.

Gently loosened,
Melissa