Place

Place. Location. Belonging.

Continually circling and rising to the top are the questions, the needs, the desires for placement and belonging.

The surviving spouse group on Wednesday night talked about coming home to empty homes. How do people do this?

The woman yesterday talked about planting a tree and placing a plaque with her deceased husband's name so those walking the path would know he'd lived.

The friend struggles with where to work, where to live, where to be because those who'd made this place so good and sweet have abandoned her.

War refugees don't know where to go.

Place. Location. Belonging.

Feeling guilty because the place we created nine years ago is not looking so good right now because my time and enthusiasm for maintaining it are lessening.

Feeling anxious because the future might be right here and it might be somewhere else.

Ambiguity doesn't sit well with the need for security.

And yet, this is where most of us are asked to live, to find our home, to make our place in this world.

On challenging days pieces of our external and internal worlds become shaky as we pine, we yearn for what and whom gave us a place, a location, a belonging in the past.

Bombs explode on the outside destroying places where families have lived forever.

Bombs explode on the inside scattering our plans, our securities, our beliefs.

This is the story of being human.

We write our stories in specific places with certain people and expect the first story will never change, and yet, this is rarely how it goes.

The story, the place, the location, the belonging can change all the time.

And yet, we strive to keep it the same because this is how we're wired, this is how we're built.

Place. Location. Belonging.

As surely as it can be taken from us, we can participate in making it anew.

We can echo the promise of Jesus when he said I go to prepare a place for you.

We can claim the remnants of what was and shape them into what will be.

May each of us create something new today and offer it to someone writing and rewriting their story as surely as we continue to write and rewrite our own.

This is what humans have always done and will continue to do.

Let it be so.

Making Space

In my work, we make space.

We make empty spaces for others to safely place their grief. It sounds like we're magicians with secret formulas to bend physics and create like God creates. And, in a way this is true, although God does a far better job and God is much more patient.

Space is created and held during phone calls and bereavement counseling visits with very distressed human beings. In the physical space of the support group meeting the leader's speaking and silence indicate when the space is open to all and when it's being held for just one.

Although the space we create is empty, it collides with everything cluttering our worlds and demanding our attention. Grief is like our worst relative who rings the doorbell with all their luggage in tow demanding the entire house be theirs to use however and whenever they want. There is no longer space.

This is how I feel about my work and this is what I try to extend to everyone who crosses my path; however, within the actual physical walls of my working space this has become much harder. There is simply not enough desk space or conference room space for all the staff it takes to serve such a large census of hospice patients and families. If everyone were to come in at the same time, there'd be three staff to every desk. 

So, making space for our collective grief as hospice workers continues to be a challenge. Staff want and need a place to remember the dead, to place their pain; but that physical space hasn't existed for a very long time. However, a few days ago we claimed a wall and the corner of a conference room for this purpose.

The wall now holds a large, empty grapevine wreath and the corner has a small table with items for remembering, such as ribbons, slips of papers, and stones.

In order to set up this room we had to ask a nurse to relocate her "office" so we could clean and move tables. When I checked on the new arrangement late yesterday, she was back in there working with the door closed so she could take her mask off.

It was the perfect picture of how we keep going, keep doing our work, keep serving the living while our need to grieve and remember the dead is kept in the corner of a room where the door is literally closed.

Her choice is very understandable because it's quite uncomfortable to work in the office with a mask on, but it's required when others are around. Finding an empty space where the mask can be removed and a worker can be in silence is the ultimate. 

It'll be interesting to see how this goes -- if the various staff using this room as a private office will make space for their colleagues who need to engage in the grief ritual and vise versa.

This is another iteration of the ongoing struggle to make space for grief in a world that has to move so fast to meet so many heart wrenching demands. This has become the exhausting reality of healthcare workers since the pandemic began.

May each of us extend the little reservoir of space inside us to the next person we meet in need of compassionate sheltering:  Whether they be serving the living or remembering the dead.

This we can do.

This we can do.

Manage and Choose

When I sign into my blog the word Manage pops up and I suppose it wants me to check my settings, etc., but as soon as I see Manage another box pops up saying my account is unknown and I need to Choose a different one. Every time I have to Choose a very old email address in order to make this blog come to life which then gives me the option to Manage.

This seems like a lot of silly steps just to put words on a page. 

Lots of work here when all I'm trying to do is share the thoughts of my heart because, as I'm learning, when I do this on a regular basis the words of my mouth and the things I try to do for others go so much better than when I don't.

Manage. Choose.

Sounds like lots of autonomy and freedom and control. Sounds like a world that really doesn't exist.

I'm not being negative here, just stating a fact that we can do all the right things to manage what we believe to be our life and then something completely unexpected occurs. 

A dear friend had a massive stroke last month and now she's bed bound in an adult family home.  People in Ukraine thought they'd celebrate Easter last Sunday, like they always have, and instead they were hiding in bomb shelters.

Manage. Choose.

We try to do this within our beliefs, our faith, our history 

AND

We must do this inside the heart of compassion. 

Stories of human atrocities and pain, big and small, are endless and always will be. Absolutely endless.

These things I cannot stop or particularly influence

But

I can Choose to Manage my own life, my own existence 

In such a way that when I leave the house this morning I go inside the heart of compassion, of peace, of patience ready to receive and bless whatever and whomever graces my path.

Lots of work here..

Matching Easter Dresses

It was 1965 when my Mom made us matching Easter dresses. The photographic proof is in a big box in my garage, but the picture is in my memory.

One Mom-size and one Little Girl-size sleeveless A-line shifts to the knee made of a light fabric with dark blue polka dots. Each dress had a matching short blue jacket, too. 

We were super cute together. I was 7 and she'd just turned 30 the month before that Easter in Modesto, CA. 

When my Mom sewed she took over the formal dining room with her sewing machine, ironing board, and fabric.  I can't begin to count how many hours of my childhood were spent in fabric stores. She was an excellent seamstress and made beautiful clothes when I was a child and even a stunning long blue gown for a college dance. I think she was her happiest in her "sewing room" which could be the dining room, an extra room, any room in the various homes we lived in during my growing up years.

In particular I remember the one in Danville, CA, just off the family room. It was 100% her room and no one else's. She sewed, she painted, she did needlepoint. She did a lot in that room.

And then, when I was in high school, she went back to work and eventually started her own business. Now she had a room to herself in the house and her own office. I didn't think much about it at the time, but I do now. It seems a bit crazy that I live in a three bedroom house, but I do and one room is my studio, my study. It invites me to reflection, to writing, to art. 

My Mom was a spitfire who made her own way as much as her background and time in history would allow. At the end of her 83 years she didn't remember that she'd sewn beautiful clothes and made art, but I know those impulses were still deep in her heart. She didn't remember that she had her own room in our homes and her own office. But, I remember as I now have my special spaces.

Clearly, I can still see the scene of the messy dining room at 2705 Sunrise Avenue in Modesto in the Spring of 1965 that turned out matching Easter dresses for a beautiful Mom and a cute girl.

The photograph is buried in a box, but the picture lives in my heart.

The Weight of My Heart

My beating heart. It only weighs 8 ounces. In two days it will have been beating outside of my mother's womb for sixty-four and a half years. I am very grateful.

My glass heart. It only weighs 8 ounces. It fits perfectly within the clasped palms of my hands and its red, blue, green, clear and glittery glass is made of ash. The ash of Mount St. Helen's that erupted 6 months before I got married in 1980. 

It calms me and soothes me and grounds me when held in my hands. When held against my anxious, beating heart.

Each heart weighs 8 ounces. Each is extremely durable and each is extremely breakable.

The one inside of me carries so much, as do all human hearts. In my work I caution people to be mindful of their physical hearts in grief because they can very truly hurt. Sometimes we need to seek medical care for such pain. The heart carries all that it means to be human.

AND.

A very full heart can explode with joy and wonder. Such is the case when an absolute picture of Triumph is set before us. Such was the case last night when I got to see and speak with and listen to an extended member of my family. A younger member who has endured so many challenges in her life and, yet, there she was on the screen telling me about her very good life now. A Triumph in itself. A Triumph of her heart and all of those who love her.

When the heart inside my body is going too fast, is carrying too much, is truly too tired for its years, the heart on the outside of my body, when held close and tightly helps regulate me. It grounds me. It reminds me of the solidness of earth, even when it explodes, and it reminds me I am here, I am needed, I am loved.

Eight ounces. Half a pound. That's all. 

That's all it takes to keep us going.

Triumph.

 

About Eight Feet Away

Over the past six days I've spent 33 hours in an online conference about grief, death, and dying. I had to do this to retain my certification in Thanatology for my position with Hospice AND I had to do it to regain stamina for the work itself. Providing a compassionate presence for people in all sorts of grief distress from death in all sorts of ways is a daunting task. 

Now I'm on my backyard deck for the first time this season because yard therapy was the order after such a long and intense week. Today my yard encounter began with greasing the bird feeder pole with olive oil to keep the very hungry and pesky squirrels off the feeder. This was met with minimal success as they began to catapult themselves from the deck onto the feeder. Plan 2: Move another pole, pound it into the ground in a different location and move the feeder.

The next part of my yard therapy included crawling around on the ground itself to take out weeds and make space for other things. This ended with sitting down. Sitting down on my deck to listen to the chimes and watch the many birds.

I don't know all their names, like George and Blanche do, but I can surely tell when one bunch has the relocated feeder figured out and another one doesn't.

For the past hour I've been watching some poor little guys hanging out on the old, now empty pole, jumping all around, up and down, looking for the feeder. During this apparently frustrating and fruitless exercise I've silently pointed to the new location about eight feet away to no avail. It's super big and a nice breeze must be spreading the seed smell everywhere, but these poor little guys can't figure it out. A few of their group even sat in the tree that's near the new location and they just can't get the job done.

About eight feet away - that's a pretty short distance for birds, I'd say.

I don't understand their inability to get what they need, but I do understand what I'm witnessing.

I get it because I do it all the time. All the time.

The things I need to keep a compassionate view of the world, the things that ground me in the here and now and keep me from drifting to what used to be, the things that speak life and love and hope to me are always within reach.

However, I'm just like these poor little birds, sometimes, as I sit on one pole to no avail because it used to feed me, it used to have sustenance to keep me going. And I sit, flit about, peck the ground, check out the empty vessels that held flowers last year, and wonder what's going on. I can't manage to look about eight feet away to see it's all right here.

Everything I need to replenish my heart and soul, everything I need to keep my body strong and healthy, everything I need to keep doing the work of my heart is right here.

I need only remember to look.

Resilience was a big topic in the conference I just attended. Resilience is a precious commodity in a world such as this one. It's something we can cultivate. It picks us up and keeps us going. Also, and this is important, being resilient doesn't mean we don't miss and long for everyone who has died.

No, it means we feel all those things AND keep going.

AND. 

The most important word for people in grief (which is everyone).

We are sad AND we keep going.

We are broken AND we keep loving. 

We can't find our sustenance AND we keep looking.

It's only about eight feet away.

Redemption Waits On Us

The rituals of Passover

Took priority over the Rising.

The people, the congregation, the community

Had to complete their appointed tasks

To recall, recapture, relive their ancient exodus and salvation in the desert.

And Redemption patiently waited in the dark tomb.

Specific foods were prepared

Prescribed liturgies were sung, read, and prayed

Ancient Jewish traditions carefully re-enacted in compliance with the scriptures

And Redemption patiently waited in the dark tomb.

Then, and only then,

After Passover was complete and the people slept

Only then did

Redemption Rise from the dark tomb.

Redemption didn't Rise until the people proclaimed their faith

Shalom waited until the people were ready.

Redemption waited on them

And now

Redemption waits on us.

Waits on us to share Shalom with others 

And

Fulfill the call of our faith practices knowing

They are just this - 

Only practices that bring the Ineffable close enough to intuit

Close enough to pass within a whisper of Jesus' cloak, to reach, to touch

To be healed.

Redemption waits on us.