Passage—Winter, 2006

Winter and loss seem inextricably linked to one another.  This time of year, we see death all around us; signs of nature in distress are everywhere we look.  Here in the northeast, the storms of the past few weeks have stripped the evergreens of many of their branches.  As I peer into the woods behind my house, I see tall trees askew and unhinged; the thin trunks of several young saplings are bent over in defeated arcs, like the backs of spindly old women.

It is not much of a stretch for us to internalize what we see around us, to feel the need to hibernate, to lick our wounds, mourn our losses.  To face our own mortality.

It makes me think of a particular ice storm that I witnessed ten winters ago, a few months before I was diagnosed with cancer.  I stood at the windows all that morning, committing to memory the image of the trees hunched and distraught under the weight of a harsh and heavy glaze.  Their grace and temerity seemed a necessary thing for me to remember—though I didn’t then know why.  But more than that, their exquisite beauty stunned and inspired me.  The trees were like elegant dancers caught in an exotic game of freeze-frame, their outstretched arms laden in thick wet snow.  They folded themselves down under the burden of their sudden, icy coats, uncomplaining and as open to the world as they were before the storm began. 

The world that morning seemed otherworldly.  Even the sky was a deep and mysterious blue.  As I pressed my gaping face to the window, I thought to myself: this is why we come here—the beauty, yes, but the harshness too, and the opportunity to stand up under both with equal grace. 

Nature is a great teacher.  It is always on the ready to provide a valuable metaphor or life lesson.  It is where shamans go to garner wisdom, healing and consolation in the face of challenge.  Shamans honor the soul in ALL things: the animals, the rocks, the wind and trees, the ocean and the moon.  They believe all are tied to us because all are part of this experience called Earth.  Each of us has an important role to play here and our own unique perspective.  We could not do this thing called living without one another.  That is why on a recent journey, I asked what parts of nature wanted to speak about loss and what they had to say:

A Rock spoke first. It said: As the very bone that holds this Earth together, I see many things go by my door, and I am a keen observer of it all.  To me, everything seems fluid.  What I see is not so much loss as it is change, movement.  An animal moves across the horizon, never to be seen again.  A branch falls and is carried away in the wind.  A person puts a piece of me into her pocket and walks away. A flock of bats nest inside me a whole season or more.  And then they are gone.  Not loss.  Change.

The Earth would die without such change.  We would all die.  When something moves aside, something else takes its place.  Emptiness is just an illusion.

I, too, have been known to change, with glaciers and earthquake, excavation and other forms of deconstruction, but I do not see this as loss.  Nothing is lost.  I can change form and space and shape and substance, but I still am.  And so are you.

The Wind, a rather boisterous energy, as you might imagine, put in its two cents: Will you not recognize how dynamic your life force is?  I wake and shake with this force.  I say hear! Look!  This is what is within you!  This is who you are.  Why are you just standing around?  Why are you sleeping?  Get up!  Get up!  Roar your voice and your gifts into creation.  And don’t be afraid to blunder, to sputter and fume as I do.  Dance across the face of the Earth like wild beautiful children and leave your mark on everything you touch!  Have I gotten your attention?

A Caterpillar weighed in:  When you look at me, you will know that nothing is permanent, nor was it ever intended to be.  If you could see what your own cells are doing right now, how busy they are, if you could sit and watch your own heart beating, beating, beating, it would make you weep to see such devotion, such love.  Do you ever have to ask your heart to beat for you?  Your lungs to breathe?  Your stomach to digest?  Your brain to store memories?  All this is done for you so that you can experience just how joyful it is to be alive, so that you can BE.  No, not just sit around.  Being is a vibrating, constant thing.  You think you are standing still.  I tell you, you have NEVER stood still.

Then the Eagle spoke:  Loss or no loss?  What is the difference? Are there not things that you are better off without?  What is the alternative? To sit in a state of constant accumulation?  I live, as you know, a very spare life.  Sometimes I soar against the wind only to blow off the accumulation of what has been: the blood and bones of what has already been consumed, of what is even now in a state of passage.  It’s not what is to be said about loss, because that is over and done with.  The question is really: what is there to be said about being present for the next thing and the next thing?  Will you be there?  Will you be ready?  Or will you be busy thinking about what you have lost?

Next came the Moon:  I’ve always thought of myself as a sentinel—not much escapes my notice.  Of course it is my nature to lose and find myself perpetually.  It is unlikely that you could do better than attune your own life to that cycle, and Time was when you did.  You certainly did.  But that is another issue.  Take me now as your model: look how effortless this is: becoming, becoming nothing, becoming, becoming nothing.  Your own breath tells you this is your nature.  That this is your life: you start from nothing, you become, you let go, you leave with nothing.  Each stage is as beautiful as the other, a full splendid cycle.  Where are you in your own bright, beautiful life?

And then the Tree:  I live and exist by embrace alone, holding the Earth in the fingers of my roots, clutching the sky in the fingers of my branches and sighing contentedly with the sounds and movement of the Earth, a crown of birds in my hair.  There is not a moment less than any other.  All are beautiful and rich.  I am honored to be here in this place, this square of ground that keeps me to this Earth.  Grab onto the Earth, this Life, as I do.  Breathe in its beauty, quake in its fury, sway in its wind, bathe in its light, sparkle in its rain.  And with every moment, realize once again:  I am here!  I am here!

And last, but not least, the Ocean spoke:  I hold so much life, so much vibrancy inside me, I find it hard to contemplate loss.  There is both life and death here. The same can be said about you.  Your cells are born and die a thousand times a minute.  Yet, you go on.  You have lost and birthed more than you can count.  Why look at only part of what you are?  Is only winter to be pondered?  And how can you consider winter without contemplating the spring that rises out of it?  You are all ocean—a great teeming, swimming miasma.  How can you not be if you are here?

What I liked about these messages was how connected each speaker was to the human experience.  How we are reminded again and again that we are like every part of nature, that we are ocean and rock and wind, tree and animal and moon.  What would our lives be like if we could keep that in mind?

Perhaps we hold too fast to limitation.  Perhaps our perspective is just too small.  If we broadened the scope of our existence, would our losses seem nearly so real or so devastating?

I sit and make a list of the things I have lost:  the locket my father gave to my mother on their wedding day; the brother I lost to brain cancer; the part of myself I lost to surgery; the faith I once had in things that have failed me.  I try to look at these losses through a different lens.

If I imagine the locket still hangs around my neck, I don’t care that no one else can see it but me.  Its significance was only ever real to me anyway.  It was not a fancy locket; no one with fine taste would have coveted it.  But its simplicity and sweetness made it a rich and beautiful thing to me.  I liked to imagine my father buying it for my mother—this thing that said something about the two of them, the time they lived in and the shyness that existed between them in that moment he gave it to her. I realize it is my sentiments about it that give the locket its preciousness, and those cannot be lost.

I look for the places my brother Don still exists: here in my heart and my childhood memories.  Here among my thoughts and the pictures that line my dresser top.  I have a nephew who looks so much like my brother, it gives our family members pause.  Sometimes I feel I cannot stop looking at that face, that I will never get enough of its presence in this world where I feel little more than my brother’s yawning absence.  My brother’s son, to his credit, gamely tolerates the attention from his fussing aunts and cousins.  Perhaps the resemblance to his father comforts him as well.  No, the world is not the same as it was when my brother was only a phone call away.  It is changed and different.  But it is still full of possibility and surprise and if you look in the right places, it is still full of him.

Ten years ago, I gave away part of myself to cancer.  But then, cancer gave me a lot in return.  I think maybe I lost a lot of my fear when I lived through cancer.  I look again at the scar and the dented flesh behind it.  It has an odd kind of charm.  I think about the wisdom that came from staring my own death in the face.  Yes, I guess all and all that was a fair trade.

And then there are the let-downs and betrayals—my lost faith in things that once mattered.  Well, not everything is perfect, no.  Sometimes the bucket has a hole in the bottom.  I have painted myself into more than one corner with the expectation of perfection.  It’s not life though; it’s just pretend.  Given my druthers, I’d much rather live in the light and know the truth.

Maybe that’s what winter is about.  A time to take stock of the losses, make your peace and put them away for good.  To bury the dead.  Because it is really, as the Eagle says, about being present for the next thing and the next thing. 

And that means Spring.

For the next few weeks, try this exercise given to me at the end of my journey by the Bear:  Everyday, square and place yourself upon the Earth.  See yourself connected to earth and air, to the trees, the wind, the sun and sky.  Reach out your arms to hold it, to feel it hold you.  Feel the Earth move inside your bones.  Feel the ocean surge inside your blood.  Anything you have ever lost is still within you.  It is like the seed of spring in the winter earth.  Where else would it be?

Peace and blessings to you all,

Jane