Once a month I give massages in Traverse City, at the place I was working when we lost Isaac. The doctor is a phenomenal human being— courageous, powerful, and generous, and a visionary chiropractor. (Click here If you need her)
Anywho, today I was driving there at sunrise. It was perfection in neon; once it fully rose the colors muted into just meh… but wow! What a stunner during ascension!
As happens quite frequently, I just had to pull over and take it in. It isn’t really even a choice in those moments— I just cannot move forward or proceed with my day without giving thanks, or staying on the main line of connection I’m feeling, or just bow my head and cry.
I know I’m ridiculous.
I think this also when I’m driving down the road crying my guts out. I’m sure it’s a sight to behold. I remember after Isaac was gone his sweet friend/first love, Aly, shared a story with me that Isaac told her I cried when I saw a rainbow. She said he laughed and called me a hippie and giggled that giggle while rolling his eyes. If you spent much time around he and I together, you know exactly what I’m describing.
Anywho— crying over rainbows isn’t new. This is how I’m built, and I recognized this about myself early in my life. I think I get it from my Daddy. It’s a fondness, yes, but it’s also a deep sense of thankfulness for such a creative Creator— ya know? And that we get to witness it. I mean, shoot! I appreciate it. But the crying has certainly changed since October 25, 2014. It’s no longer simply an awe stricken free spirit moved to tears of reverence— it’s more like a combination of aforementioned reverence with a good measure of keening and “ET phone home” in there.
But I digress, I am diverging from a point.
Kindness has become akin to a shooting star, a perfect wave, an amber dawn. I see it in my life so frequently and I am taken aback, over and over and over again with the seemingly effortless gestures of kindness toward and all around me.
Women, in particular, go out of their way to connect with me, share their truths or just a hug or something they’ve read or watched that made them think of me AND they tell me so. I was so afraid I would fall off the earth without my connection to Isaac in the physical world, but you wonder-filled women have kept me firmly planted here with encouragement, solidarity and just love. All ages and stages of women, no matter what our connection may or may not have been before, have just surrounded me— some very near and some peripherally— but presence known and felt and understood and appreciated.
And there are some men out there that have my back in such tender ways it chokes me up just thinking about it. (Insert Isaac Eye Roll).
This grief I’m living is such a roller coaster. Every. Damn. Day.
Child loss is such a mind fuck that doesn’t follow any rules and every single day brings some plot twist that often times feels really fucking lonely in a way that I still cannot find words that even come close to describing. And everything Ive ever read about losing a child says this IS normal. How’s that hit you? It hits me hard right in the chest. The mind fuck is waiting to feel better but not wanting to let go of the pain it is to not have your child (as if there is a choice in the matter), or to ever be able to forget his pain that led him down that path and don’t even get me started about the pain he may have endured losing his life, but balancing that with extreme feelings of joy and gratitude for sunsets and birds and kismet. It’s probably enough to get you your very own mental health diagnosis…
Except that, it seems, the world I inhabit allows me space and grace to feel it all. And I’m so fucking grateful. My heart lights up like a disco ball when I consider all the love that has held me.
Thank you.
(I am not making light of mental health diagnoses, just sayin.)
(My camera just doesn’t do it any justice.)
Shine On 