Spring Returns amidst

Dearest Beloved Phoenix on our WEb,

Today is the day three years ago, I, and three other women, returned you to the Earth.  I remember C. (and I think J. though so much of some things were a blur) dug your grave there beneath the pines while I laid on the ground beside you in the sunshine, crying and looking over your body, sounding and singing.  It was the first day of Spring, the threshold of moving from the Deep into the Outertime, the meeting of Persephone/Kore and Demeter, the beginning of an entirely new level of Deep for me.

Last night, I read through my first journal of 2010 that included this experience three years ago. As I read, I remembered writing much of it and I felt such compassion for myself and my commitment to stay true to my grief, no matter the cost.  I read things about how the awareness at the time was some on the potential cost of my partnership, how I was not comforted by it/her in the ways I needed. That I did not remember writing, though it is not a surprise I wrote it.  I was immersed in the grief and devastation and only found ways to go to work work, to Priestess my class and to C. for support.  The rest was collapse. I know this WEb log has chronicled that. And today, I am sitting much with the collateral loss of my partnership that began in that year you were murdered and my inability to recover that relationship from the wreckage.  During the course of that first year, my heart closed to J. because I did not feel like she could meet me in the deepest wreckage.  How much that was true I do not know for sure.  I know she wanted to go on with our life together way before I could even decide if I wanted to.  I am being really careful to not sound like I am blaming her or myself (though that is certainly easier to do).  And, I feel like I am walking through some ruins again that are important pieces to the demise of things, some that were my 'choices' (ie shutting myself down), some that may have been hers, and some that feel out of my hands and hers simply because of the enormity of such a crime against us.

Currently, as it has been for three days now, there are men outside in my neighbor's yard taking down trees.  The sound of chain saws and cracking of big limbs is right now in the background of this writing.  In fact almost all the trees in front of her house are being cut down because my neighbor is afraid that they will fall on her house!!  Instead of trimming them, she has decided to categorically destroy them all! (by the way, she is ex-military!)  The impact that has on my nervous system is too much to try to articulate, especially in light of this anniversary.  Here again, I have a neighbor who has such little regard for Life and is simply having them mowed down.  It's insane, simply insane. I am trying to stay calm. And, I feel depressed.  Very depressed today.

I'm not sure what else to write.  It is the first day of Spring.  I am not joyous at this threshold.  I am quite deeply depressed at the state of the world around me.  This last weekend I was at a retreat and at one point I was stretched out on a bench outside the house looking up at the warm sky.  There towering above me was a tree, growing right up against the deck.  Tears flooded down my face feeling the calmness of having and trusting trees so close to the house.  What is happening to this planet that many like my neighbor have moved so far away from Relations with trees.  This is SO disturbing to me right now.  I feel uprooted by the whole thing and am having trouble finding some settledness.  The energy outside is so aggressive.

I need to stop now.  Phoenix, while they are on their lunch break, I will go tend to my land, particularly on your grave.  I don't know what else to do.
I love you so.
Me