it's the last day of my very lovely vacation and i just read a beautifully written 'perspective' piece in the new england journal of medicine. the author Grace Yi, has just finished her intern year, full of trauma, death, sorrow, grief, and overwhelm with little room for processing and she goes on a week long buddist silent retreat prior to starting her next year of medical training. she wrestles with the concept that pain is inevitable but suffering is not- that suffering comes from wanting the world to be something other than what it is, from not accepting that some things don't work out, children do die, people who are mean win, things are often unfair. for the author, seeing all of the pain with eyes wide open, she hopes, expands her capacity for caring well for others, for tapping into our shared humanity, and ultimately feeling more alive and united. the silence of the retreat is broken when they are asked to share their mantras, the woman near her who had lost her husband recently said, 'it's now like this'.
i was reading james this week, and annie dillards 'holy the firm' and trying to be quiet and be out of doors - in the green and by the sea and closer to God. i've been trying to sit with sad feelings of a strange stage of life that seems surprisingly scattered with losses- aging, dying parents, children moving out of the house. big shifts in family culture come with those things maybe especially when when the family was rarely defined with a consistent address and only by the 6 of us who often found ourselves in the same room of whatever house we were living in- doing our life together, in very close proximity. so i've been sitting with this.
august is the month we are now in. the month that will mark the 1 year anniversary of my dad dying. the month of my 32 wedding anniversary. the month my 3rd born will go off to college for the first time- leaving us with one at home- we've gone from 6 to 3. poor rose.
i'm sitting with the anticipated silences. the awaited spaces at tables. the known longings. it's hard. it's now like this. and will be and will continue to be as we will lose more parents, as rose will get ready and leave the nest too.
for most of my life i've avoided sitting with these things. i've filled up my days with anything that could distract me- we are getting ready to do a home renovation project, that would be the ideal candidate for occupying control, order, to do listing, busyness, obsessiveness. so intentionally on this vacation, i didn't do any of that - i read and walked and ate good food and had good conversations and wrote letters to my kids at camp. i paused and let tears come when they wanted to and talked to girlfriends who are saying goodbye to their babies too. feeling the feelings is hard when the feelings aren't just happy- but i'm learning.
i'm learning and it's like this now.
