I am the second to rise from the bed each morning. I hear him stir, but I bury deeper under the covers and return to sleep. Later, he tiptoes in to say goodbye, and I stand at the chilly window and wipe away the moisture on the single pane of glass enough that I can watch him walk to his truck and wave goodbye. I only have a few more minutes to fully awaken before it’s my turn at the morning.
For many months after the loss of my niece, these moments were the hardest of the day for me. There is this feeling of suspension in those few moments before dawn. Time moves at a different speed, and the requirements of the day ahead feel less concrete, more fluid. Grief interrupts this suspension, or maybe it rests in it, thrives in it. It’s a daily relearning of what this day means outside of the sleep world where reality is briefly suspended. Those moments would fill me with dread, and then anxiety. I would watch him walk to his truck and trace the lines of the taillights’ red on the damp glass. I would picture the car that would barrel through the next intersection against that other red light in my vision, hitting his truck near the rear of the bed, spiraling him into the light pole on the corner. I’d shake off that thought, return to the covers, and then picture him drowsy in a warm car, slipping over the white line into another vehicle, and I’d wait for the phone to ring. By the time my own wake up call would sound I would be a ball of taut nerves, unable to unwind into the day ahead. He would send me a note to let me know that he was at his desk and not a ditch, but I already knew that. I understood these things to be irrational, but they were no less vivid to me in the moment.
I sought a new practice for how to handle this anxiety, and I found the most help in a yoga class that I joined. It took me awhile, but I learned the techniques I needed to help me release the tension of the day as I headed off to sleep, and it gave me a structure for greeting the new day without immediately lapsing into that same pattern of anxiety. In time I was able to fully stretch into the next day. The best way I can describe it is this – I feel a sense of gratitude for another day rather than feeling like I narrowly grabbed the day away from an impending, but certain, doom. It isn’t perfect, and I have to work a little harder when his commute involves a plane. I breathe into the nerves and visualize our dinner table, warm and loud, with oft-forgotten manners and occasional spills, but also all three chairs filled, plus that fourth one we drag in from the dining room each night and wedge in around our tiny table.
…..
That practice was working well, but it feels as if it’s lapsing a bit. Each day brings a new onslaught of dread and anxiety and frustration. It feels like punches are coming from a dozen different directions, their delivery is jagged and painful, attacking the fundamental pillars of this country. It’s hard to focus our outrage, our action, our work. Now when I stir in the night everything snaps into focus, and sleep is gone. My mind is running at top speed again, and that slowing practice, that breathing practice, is a challenge.
Last weekend was a whirlwind of activity. Saturday I moved from task to task at lightning speed, and during the in between moments I ran through the notes in my head for a talk I was scheduled to give on Sunday. I spoke them aloud in the car, practicing what I might say. I was confident in the message, but nervous about the delivery, unsure about the vehicle, tentative about my voice. Even now, on the flip side, I still am, although I was graciously welcomed and warmly received. This feels like another transition for me – and transitions aren’t my forte. My instinct is to pull back, to say maybe next time, and observe a little longer.
In the middle of these thoughts on Saturday, I received an email with this poem. It was read at the kickoff of the Educators for Social Justice conference, and my friend sent it out to the group of us buzzing around from event to event that weekend. I pulled into a parking lot and parked my car in the last row and read it a few times.
To be of use
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
One of the nicest but strangest compliments I ever got was when one friend was introducing me to someone else and said, “Brooke loves people who are fully themselves.” It seems like such a weird thing to say, but it’s true. I love people who wave their freak flags, who own their flaws and foibles, who give zero effs about what others think because they are focused are something else–being useful, having fun, making a difference. Immersion in an activity that is so important and vital that we don’t have the time or energy to be self-conscious about it–that’s awesome. I want to see that and be that. And I love that poem. I teach another Piercy poem called “Barbie Doll” that I love unpacking with students.
Brooke recently posted…Little Girls: The Musical Numbers
Oh–and the early morning hours of first waking were a grief pit for me, too. I like what you wrote about gratitude versus narrow escape.
Brooke recently posted…Little Girls: The Musical Numbers
I offer Sheenah Pugh’s Sometimes —
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune included this last stanza in her column recently. I thought it exceptional. Breathing, breathing.