Thursday, November 22, 2012

Giving Thanks

Dear Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

On this day, Thanksgiving of 2012, I remember you and give great thanks for your love continued from across the veils.  I miss your sweet body and love incarnate.

Always and all ways, my love,
Me

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Many Miles

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
It's been many miles now since you were taken. Today in my heart,  I've been in those last days with you because I taught that class on Women Who Run With the Wolves again today for the fifth time since then. That was the last class I taught before that night, in fact, it was the night before you were shot when I taught this material. This evening, after class, I've been shedding many tears, missing you, wishing I knew what was going to happen before it did so I could stop it. Wondering in looking back at the 'signs' or what seems like they may have been signs, why I couldn't stop it, why the signs didn't tell me exactly what was going to happen. Why being on the WEb didn't serve me enough to stop it, save you, interrupt the violence.  Why my last goodbye was not more focused.  Why the week before I was so bereft without true understanding that perhaps that was because I may have sensed what was coming.  I mean I was feeling crazed; I have it all recorded on my calendar for some reason.  It was that unusual.  I don't understand.  And all I am left with tonight are the tears and the words to a song called "Many Miles Before I Go": "I will try but I will stumble, I will fly, you told me so. Proud and high or low and humble, many miles before I go".   Plus today in class one of my students talked about a dream she had with her beloved dog who recently died this year.  She was with him in the dream like he was alive just like it was real.  She didn't want to wake up and come back to this reality and cried all the way 'back' awake.  I wanted to drop and curl up and remember those kinds of dreams with you and not come back either.

Later as I was able to quiet and be with myself more exclusively, all of this has surfaced, all this reliving.  The chaos and meaninglessness of it all then and for all these many miles since.  I've let myself just go wherever with it all: the guilt, the powerlessness, the victimization, the collapse all over again.  I wrote about it in my journal, spilled out all the self-doubt and the complete madness of it all.  Then something else happened.  I am not even sure I can articulate the felt sense of the 'it' of it. There wasn't even a sequence, I don't recall.  Suddenly, though, if there were a timelessness to 'suddenly', another awareness/consciousness came.  She was not in the middle of things, she stood on the edges.  She didn't shame the repeating.  She didn't comment at all on that. It was simply an eye that sees from many miles away, that has lived these many miles since you were killed. She has a keen knowing of this pain still and isn't dislocated from it at all.  She also carries the many miles since you've gone. It's like maybe how the stars feel sometimes to me.  They blink at me so I know they register my presence but/and it is not important to them that everything make sense, even that I make sense.  They are there regardless, steady and present moving in their cycles across the sky. 

J. sent me a card this week that simply said on the back of the photo of a heron: Be Happy.  While I wish it were enough for someone to say that to make it so, I have to admit that in a way it translated inside me as "Be Free" of guilt.  Go on with your life.  I set you free.  Maybe even, but not likely, but close enough: I forgive you.  How does one thank the one person who can gift you such a thing? Whether it's right or not, she IS the one person who could gift me that.  And she did.  I think, Phoenix, she freed me to turn a corner, to experience this new consciousness of She of Many Miles Who Stands at the Edges.  She who holds all of it in the senselessness of it.   She who lets go of the need to understand.  And yet, still understands deeply so very much.  Mostly though, she wears the many miles.

So, that line: "I will try, but I will stumble" seems to resonate after feeling set free, released from something of the pain of the past.  All of this has come together inside me tonight after this fifth anniversary class. "I will fly, you told me so" I sing to you, Phoenix and to J. 

I hope you hear the love and gratitude for you, Phoenix. I will never not want to feel you close and am grateful for the opportunity to remember those dreams of you.  I am grateful for you, for our many miles together while you were alive and now, after you have gone. 

My love to you many miles more,
Me