Just a Monday

Dear WEb,
It is just a Monday...and I have felt so sad again. Again I am struck by moment after moment of disbelief that Phoenix is gone, that something this terrible has truly happened. In the shower, my sobbing almost took me to my knees. If I'd given into the collapse, I may not have gotten up to ready for work. We've past the 6 month mark and have moved into the next half of the Wheel turning for this first cycle since Phoenix was shot. I can hardly still believe it. And it slips farther and farther away from the present day and I keep reaching, reaching for Phoenix.

The holy day that is coming up is Samhain. This is the day those who have come before us are honored. It is a day of grieving the losses of the year. I have spent 6 months in this energy of Samhain and still I feel there is more grief, the same grief, deeper or not. Grief.

Allison Kraus sings a song that I played over and over and over this morning. The lyrics that still ring in my mind are: "The smile on your face let's me know that you need me. There's a truth in your eyes saying that you'll never leave me. The touch of your hand (paw) says you'll catch me if ever I fall..."

I am falling, Phoenix. Again.
Melissa

Beetle and Mommy

Dear WEb,
If you look closely in the top left corner of the large photo of Phoenix that is beneath the title of this WEb Log, you will meet Beetle. She will be 10 years old on December 7th also known widely as Pearl Harbor Day. Beetle is fierce in her sometimes aggressive behavior towards other dogs, though she is getting better as she ages. She has been struggling for four years now with digestive absorption issues, so she is thinner than most dogs and stronger, actually. Being part Plott Hound (the state dog of NC who was bred to hunt bear) and Lab, she has intensity that is unmatched by many dogs I've known. She takes most everything very seriously!! Between the two of them, Phoenix most definitely had the sense of humor!

The other day in the car, Beetle spoke to me. I know, I know, there are those of you who think that is crazy projection. It might be. And...sometimes it just feels so real. Here's what she said quite matter of factly, "Mommy, do you wish it was me instead?" I knew immediately what she meant--do I wish she was killed instead of Phoenix? I immediately responded with what I thought she or any surviving sibling what want to hear, "No! Of course not..." As I began to babble on, I stopped myself--or maybe she stopped me, in my tracks. Tears welled in my eyes and I spoke the truth to this brave girl: "Phoenix was my Guardian. You and I have a different relationship. So, yes, I wonder why it wasn't you. But we never have a choice about these things." Bravely, she continued: "I can be your Guardian." And bravely I continued, "We are getting to know one another again. Let's see who we are."

Whew! I am so touched by the direct honesty of that exchange.

Since we have moved and Beetle has settled more into her place as "only dog," she and I have had some interactions that are new. We've sat together by the pond, laid in the grass together in the warm sunshine and walked our daily rounds. I've noticed how our calmness can feed one another--when I hear her sigh, I find my own breath deepening and vice versa. We have established routines in our morning walks that make me smile. She has grown to respond with eye contact when I say, "Look at Mommy." This is very important when I notice she's beginning to tense up around another dog or some uncomfortable situation. And, just tonight, I met a sweet Being in her as I planted bulbs on Phoenix grave site.

I sat at the site for a while. Beetle stayed in her fenced in area, even though she could have been free. I cried and talked to Phoenix for a while and Beetle watched. When it was time to begin, Beetle followed me to the shed to get my tools for raking and clearing the old growth. She happily followed me back and sniffed around the area. After I raked and cleared, she found some chestnuts and began to snack. I laughed at her and she wagged her tail, delighted that she was making me laugh. As I dug each of those 50 3"-4" deep holes, she began to get interested in the smells coming up from them. I wonder if she was smelling Phoenix and I envied her ability to be so close to him that way. She was very curious for a while and then...then she settled and laid down, just outside the rocks that marked the border of the grave. And she watched. She watched me place a bulb in each hole. She watched as I planted 50 promises and prayers for Phoenix. Beetle watched. Calmly. With intent.
When I finished, she followed me inside. Our work was done. For Phoenix. And for one another.

What is unusual is not once did Beetle wander off, which she is prone to do with such a strong nose. And, she did not pester me to throw something so she could fetch it. She was WITH me each step of the way. A companion. And I honor her as such. Relating is not easy for her. She doesn't really like to hug, definitely doesn't like to snuggle--it's not in her genes as a hound. I recognize that now. So, when there are moments of intimacy like this experience in the garden, Phoenix's garden, they are worthy of respect.

Thank you, dear Beetle, for surviving with me.
I do love you.
Mommy

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

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

At the Crossroads

Dear Web,

I am
I am a nest
I am a nest of dried herbs, rose petals and the shell of single monarch butterfly in a cauldron.

I am.
I am a match on fire.
I am a match on fire igniting the nest.

I am.
I am smoke.
I am smoke rising.
I am smoke rising and drifting through the air currents.

I am.
I am a Priestess.
I am a Priestess Doula with a snake shaped athame.
I am a Priestess Doula with a snake shaped athame casting a circle around the burning cauldron,
fiercely on guard and speaking the truth: "The Fire has begun."

I am.
I am smoldering, my body heaving and curling
through the heat.
I hear the chants that
I cannot turn back.
I heed them
and
I also know
I can halt
this birth.
With my will to die.

I must know this place of will,
I tell the scared voices.
I must know I have weighed my options
so as not to be another unconscious living
dead.
I must know my own Will here
at the crossroads,
the most honest place I know right now.

I am.
I am here without Phoenix.
I am here without Phoenix and
this may be as far as I want to go without
my Beloved.

The Priestess Doula firmly reminds me to consider,
"If you do not want to go any further,
the new life will die with you."

I am.
I am sitting.
I am sitting at the crossroads with a burning cauldron,
knowing all life must pass through this threshold.

Love,
Melissa