Trying to write this post is a nightmare. Believe me, I don’t want to. It stuns me that it’s necessary. Eulogizing my beloved Spartacus seems redundant. Any attempt – inadequate. I’m going to have to let the million posts I wrote that referenced him and his mother Sheila speak for themselves. I don’t want to believe he’s actually gone. But he is.
The photo that was at the top of last night’s post was taken at 2:00 p.m. yesterday. The rapidity with which his health situation crashed was stunning. The doctors have no clue as to his illness’s etiology.
All I know is that our veterinarian and the emergency veterinarian both were at a loss. His blood work showed his liver and kidneys were failing. He was septic – apparently very much so, according to his blood sugar. And the chances of bringing him back from the brink of reuniting with his mommy, Sheila, were extremely slim.
Hangin’ on the porch – Photo: L. Weikel
Small Comfort
As with all loss, especially the kind that sneaks up and smacks you in the head from behind, questions abound. Regrets, second-guessing, and ‘what-ifs’ swirl unmercifully in your head, and even more so in your heart. While intellectually you might know without a doubt that the one lost (and here I’m making no distinction between the objects of our love) knew they were loved and adored – it is small comfort in the face of the fact that suddenly they’re gone.
Squeaky toy, muddy paws; Photo: L.Weikel
And Yet, It’s Everything
I think that’s probably the most excruciating part about being a human. It’s both the awareness of love and the persistence of that awareness once the beloved is gone. Because it’s that persistence of awareness that stops us in our tracks when we remember they’re gone. And it’s the persistence of that awareness that’s reflected in the pain we humans are terrified of knowing. At least that’s been my experience.
Pain is the direct 1:1 reflection of the depth of the love. It can feel unfathomable.
I love with my whole heart, without restriction. And when I lose an object of my love (particularly unexpectedly) the pain ‘goes there.’ It is hard to see straight for a time. And it’s tempting to wish I’d never opened myself up to being hurt so deeply, to being left so vulnerable.
The Four S’s – Photo: L.Weikel
And Then I Remember
I remember the joy. I remember what’s truly important about life and living.
Knowing the pain, I love all the more. In fact, I yearn to bring more love into my life. I’m not a glutton for punishment. I just know. Love is what lives forever. And it’s the most powerful force in existence.
Sheila and Spartacus Reunited 9/20/21 – 5 days shy of one year exactly; Photo: L.Weikel
I remember the night after we received the call about Karl’s death. Twenty four hours after we received the news, we were attending a cross-country track team banquet. We kept our loss quiet, the three of us pretty much navigating the festivities on auto-pilot. (Our middle son was making his way home from another state where he was working his first job.) Oddly that night remained in my memory – not because of the cross-country banquet – but because of the evidence we received of a truth much bigger than ourselves that night.
I distinctly remember walking out of the church basement where the meal had been served and feeling the overwhelming beauty of the sunset practically pound me on the chest. The reds, oranges, purples, and blues all seemed to wrap themselves around me in a literal embrace of love and knowing. I felt my son’s arms around me. He was there. He was more palpably close to us in that moment than he’d been a week earlier, when he was still in his body.
The photo I took of that powerful sunset was the background on my iPhone for years from that day forward. Evidence that Karl’s essence did not die with his body.
Tonight
I’m recalling that night tonight because another family I know is encountering a similar life-altering reality – an adult son lost in a car accident.
I don’t know the details, whether he died last night or this morning, but I know that tonight was the first full day of him being ripped from the fabric of their lives. I’d been thinking about his family all day, remembering the shock of trying to wrap my head around the fact that I would never see my eldest son alive again. It doesn’t compute. It takes a while. And it makes you feel nauseated every time you try.
As we walked this afternoon and crested our favorite hill for weather and astral observations, we could clearly see rain cascading from the clouds in the distance. It felt like a metaphor – my holding space for them from afar as the rain pelted down in their lives.
Photo: L. Weikel
But about an hour later, another moment arrived. A sign, a message, a small but potentially powerful indicator that, while the pain is exquisite and they may feel they’re drowning in their loss, his spirit shines on.
It’s in times like these, of sudden shock and great loss, that we owe it to those we’ve lost to take solace in their best efforts to send us signs of their continued existence – and undying love.
Yes, we yearn for signs when tragedy strikes. But who are we to deny those who’ve departed our respect for their best efforts to reach out, make contact, and comfort us?
I’m sitting here listening to rain pelt against the dining room windows while a long, lonely gust of wind whistles through the keyhole of our front door. No need to worry about ‘closed building syndrome’ in this old house – and that’s just fine with me. I’m happy with the creaks and cracks of this home, the things some people might consider imperfections.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say I love the imperfections that make our house our home. Not all of them, of course. (Oh, for even a smidgen more kitchen counter space.) But overall? I honestly think it’s the imperfections that keep me sane.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in a house that was built in 1770. It was nothing like the houses of most of my friends. Our wooden floors were known to occasionally cast splinters as big as spears into my foot, piercing my socks and making me yelp (and causing my father to reach for the black gunky stuff that smelled like tar, that would supposedly ‘pull it out’ if it was embedded too deeply to dig out).
Christmas Eve 2020
I think many of us would agree that this Christmas in particular is filled with imperfections. Certainly, it’s far different than any Christmas most of us can recall. But I have to wonder. What will we remember most about this most abnormal of yuletides?
There are so many people enduring untold grief this Christmas. (And of course, I am using Christmas as a shorthand for all the holidays we may be celebrating at this time of year that celebrate the return of light, and encourages going within, hibernating, and reflection.) Nothing feels the same. And precious little is the same.
People are losing loved ones to the pandemic and other causes by the thousands – every single day. We’re being asked to sacrifice our traditions for the safety of ourselves and others. We’re wondering just how long this no-longer-fresh hell is going to last.
A Reminder
Karl and I were lucky enough to be able to spend a few hours with one of our sons and daughter-in-law. Because the weather is as unpredictable as it is, early this evening, it was balmy enough for us to safely sit outside in their enclosed porch and eat dinner together – occupying opposite ends of the long dinner table.
As we were driving home in the pouring rain that luckily mostly held off until we were leaving, the wind starting to whip around us, a couple of deer jumped out into the roadway in front of us. Luckily, I was driving slowly enough that I saw them well ahead of time. Turned out, though, that the three that popped onto the roadway before us were joining quite the cadre of peers on the other side of the road.
They were so beautiful and such an unexpected sight! I rolled down my window and took their photo, in spite of the raindrops splattering on my face. They were a lovely reminder of the gentleness we’re all wise to exercise with each other and ourselves over these holiday times.
I’m grateful we didn’t have an accident. And I loved the looks they seemed to give us as they stood there in the rain, returning our gaze. I realize this post probably makes little sense. But I wish all of you a peaceful, loving Christmas Day. May we all enjoy a day of respite from the insanity that has marked this year in particular.
And I’ll forgive myself for the vast imperfections of this post – not least being the fact that I just blew right through the witching hour of 1:00 a.m. (when it gets automatically sent out to my email list).
Merry Christmas. Happy Solstice. Let’s let the light shine into our hearts.
First Page of Pandemic Journal #1 – Photo: L. Weikel
We’re all familiar with the saying: “There’s a first time for everything.” Little did I know at the beginning of this momentous year of 2020 that the expression would apply to a devastating experience with one of my journals.
As I mentioned in my post last night, I reached the natural conclusion of my then current spiral notebook journal at the beginning of April this year. Filled that baby up. Of course, that prompted me to begin a new one, the first entry of which was on April 7, 2020. On the very first page, I dubbed it my Pandemic Journal, because in spite of all the reassurances from on high that it would “all go away like a miracle” one day, my instincts (and ability to read well-researched, science-based articles) told me otherwise. The prospects felt ominous.
A Long History
I’ve been keeping a journal for at least 45 years. Wow. Seeing that in writing really drives it home. I know it to be a pretty accurate estimate because when I became an exchange student to Sweden my senior of high school, I’d already been keeping track of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences for at least two years. And once I arrived in Sweden, my journal was my refuge. In fact, as I became fluent in Swedish through that year, I even started writing my journal in Swedish to prove to myself that I could do it.
My habit of documenting my life’s experiences continued unabated (and perhaps became even more ingrained due to the daily parade of new countries and adventures) as I backpacked around Europe with a Swedish chum a month before returning home and starting college.
I’ll admit that there were times when I would go days, then weeks – and even, especially in college, months – without writing. I’d always regret the lapse when I picked up a pen again. In college, I used a Day Planner my father gave me for Christmas each year. It didn’t have a lot of room to write in each day, which in some ways was probably perfect. I could at least make time to jot down whatever was most significant about a particular day.
Throughout It All
Thus for the past 45 years or so, I’ve kept journals. Throughout all my travels, all my experiences, journeying from Sweden to New Mexico, Buffalo to Peru, Seattle to Siberia, I never – not once – lost or mangled a journal.
Not until 2020.
Specifically, on Thursday, July 30, 2020, I dutifully recorded a variety of observations, from the very personal to the fact that the president was starting to float the idea of postponing the election. I remarked just how oppressively hot it was that day and how disheartened I was becoming over the trajectory of our country.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I left my journal, along with a Medicine Card book, buried amongst the mound of pillows piled upon the glider where I usually sit when writing on my porch. Karl and I took a walk that evening and upon returning, I forgot to retrieve it. I left it outside overnight – and of course, there was a wild and thoroughly drenching torrential downpour that raged for hours that night.
I Searched High and Low
Friday morning I searched everywhere for my journal. I turned my bedroom upside down, my living room inside out. I looked on the porch several times, but with great relief found nothing – until I started dismantling the mountain of pillows and cushions to place them out in the sun to dry. It’s hard to express the horror I felt when I made my grim discovery.
Indeed, I even wrote (in my first entry of my present journal) how the magnitude of the soaking storm that occurred that Thursday evening was so extreme that, had it been a storm of any normal size, the journal would’ve been protected. First of all, it had a thick plastic cover on it. Second of all, it was so deeply buried – under several layers of pillows. It was outrageously ridiculous that so much rain fell that evening such that everything – all those layers – became utterly waterlogged.
Indeed, for days afterward, I would sit on that glider and water would drip out of the bottom-most cushions.
Simply Devastated
I was stunned. In shock. For the first time ever, I’d failed to take care of my journal. I’d neglected one of my most sacred objects.
It probably sounds weird, but I’ve been too ashamed to even write about and confess this publicly until now. While I realize it is just words, it’s not a human being, nor a beloved pet, I experienced a deep and irretrievable loss.
Once I write something down, I let it go. I give myself permission to release the need to obsessively try to remember all the details of everything I experience. And through the pandemic up to that point, I’d been tracking a number of dreams and journeys (the shamanic kind) that seemed particularly significant. A few in particular almost felt prophetic, and documenting them in my journal was my best way of keeping track.
To make matters worse, I may have mentioned before that I write dreams and journeys in different colors in my journals to make them stand out. It’s then easier for me to locate those extraordinary moments when I go searching for them later. Imagine my dismay – my actual sense of mourning – when I realized that my journeys and dreams had literally been washed away. For whatever reason, the colors I use for those special events orange, green, and red, of the very same pens I use in black and blue ink to write my everyday experiences, ‘ran’ completely off the pages, leaving nary a trace behind.
Started Anew
So on August 2nd, 2020, I began my Pandemic Journal #2. Of course, I’ve kept the first, as can be seen from the photos I’m including with this post. But sadly, it seems only my more mundane entries can still be read. While I’m grateful that anything could be salvaged…
The loss is real.
Rich Details of a Journey – Lost; Photo: L. Weikel
What a blow to our already stressed collective psyche. I’m referring, of course, to our loss this evening of the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg, second female Supreme Court Justice of this United States of America, to the unrelenting ravages of cancer. As soon as the world knew of her passing, my phone lit up in reaction to the profound grief so many of my friends, family, and colleagues are feeling in this moment. It is as if 2020 refuses to relent. We’re being pounded into submission, forced to face head-on the stark reality – and profundity – of the choices facing us. And in the face of our grief, in the face of these choices, I ask: #WWRBGD?
Let me be clear: I am not being glib or cute in asking the question. Perhaps asking the question in the form of a hashtag lends it a more pedestrian patina than I’d like, but I actually think the fierce, dynamic champion of human rights would chuckle. After all, she embraced her status as ‘the Notorious RGB,’ and she undoubtedly knew of the hashtag #WWJD. It seems only fitting that #WWRGBD take its rightful place as a question the answer to which might guide our actions in the days to come.
I ask the question, #WWRGBD, because it is too easy for us to get lost in grief and lose our focus on what’s truly important. Yes, her life had historic significance and impact. And goodness knows, she fought an Herculean battle to remain on the bench until, ideally, a new president could be elected.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
We Must Not Give Up
And when I consider how tenaciously she fought throughout her life, not only for equality, fairness, and justice under the law, but also to model collegiality, open-heartedness, integrity, and grace, I cannot imagine us demeaning her efforts by giving up the fight to soundly defeat Donald Trump and his enablers in the House and Senate.
We must not give up. We must not surrender to grief or despondency. We know what’s at stake and we must use her death as a rallying cry, a rod that stiffens our spines, and a torch that leads us to do whatever it takes to reclaim our country and the principles and values upon which it stands.
When our energy flags, when we are slapped in the face yet again with the hypocrisy of the Mitch McConnells, Donald Trumps, William Barrs, and Ted Cruzes (just to name a few), we must stop and ask ourselves: #WWRBGD?
I have no doubt that she would tell us to suck it up and move forward. In my mind, that’s the best way we can honor her memory and her legacy.
I spent the better part of this evening celebrating something wonderful – the third anniversary of my middle son’s marriage to my daughter-in-law Tiffany. We love each other. We maintained safe distance between us and they did not even come into our home. Rather, we sat outside enjoying the smell of freshly cut grass, the flicker of lots of candles on the porch, and the ribets of what must be massive bullfrogs in the pond behind our barn.
We used to be able to see each other often – once a week, if we were lucky. Tonight was only the second time in three months that all four of us were within twelve feet of each other at the same time.
A Realization
But while I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate this anniversary with my family, so many other people are suffering unimaginable and utterly senseless loss. And the thought of what those other people are feeling and experiencing takes my breath away.
I do not say this lightly. For days and days following my son Karl’s death in 2011, I would find myself feeling as though there was a huge invisible weight on my chest. I’d never felt anything like it – even after my own parents had died. This grief was different.
As I may have written last night, when I watched the video of the incident in Central Park and then saw the still photos (and read the description) of what happened to George Floyd, I started feeling that weight in my chest again. It is as if the world is so heavy and so unimaginably cruel that it’s impossible to take another breath.
The Microcosm and the Macrocosm
After our celebration this evening, I came inside and watched some reporting on MSNBC. I watched the interview by Lawrence O’Donnell of George Floyd’s sister, Bridget Floyd. And I felt that weight again. I saw her shirt with her brother’s last words, “I can’t breathe.”
I remembered the words of the man in NYC, Eric Garner, who also said, “I can’t breathe,” and was killed by NYC police officers.
They are the microcosm. The macrocosm, I realized tonight, is the coronavirus, the root of Covid-19. How do I arrive at that? What are all of the people dying from Covid-19 feeling before they die? “I can’t breathe.” What do they say when they arrive in the emergency departments of hospitals all over the world? “I can’t breathe.” What is the state they are in when they’re put on ventilators? They can’t breathe.
Our world – but in particular our country – can no longer breathe. We are choking on our own injustice, inhumanity, greed, systemic racism, and simple cruelty.
Yes, it hit me tonight. There’s a theme to all of the suffering we’re seeing play out around us and within our homes, families, communities, and countries. We can’t breathe with the continued injustice we’re witnessing and experiencing.
We can’t breathe with the overwhelming cruelty we’re witnessing day in and day out, perpetrated by our supposed leaders and elected representatives. We can’t breathe if their actions truly reflect our hearts. Because there’s no way anyone can breathe and endure this awful, unbelievable, grief.
We must find a way to heal this. I know we can. But first, we must each take a deep breath ourselves. Feel that life force enter our bodies and ask how we can help others breathe, too.
A couple things came to my attention today that drive home the adage that ‘everything can change in the blink of an eye.’
Not that I’m unfamiliar with the floor of my world dropping out from under me. But the feeling that accompanies drastic change in our lives (usually on the ‘awful’ end of the spectrum), is rarely something we want to repeat or actively seek.
One occurrence that shook me was seeing a friend of the family post on FB that their home was lost in a fire this morning. A home in which two girls spent their entire lives growing up – charred beyond measure. Treasured and irreplaceable family heirlooms – up in smoke. Worse yet? Family pets. All but one (a cat receiving medical treatment tonight) presumed or confirmed dead.
Loss
This family has been on my mind all day. I sit in my home of 35 years, surrounded by my beloved pups and kits, and my heart can only flirt with the sorrow and horror I’d feel to lose so much in such a ravaging manner.
And while I absolutely value the preciousness of all life and am grateful human lives were spared, I imagine the loss of photos and journals, and a myriad of other utterly unique, tangible items that were artifacts of lives lived by their ancestors leave a terribly raw and open wound in their hearts. It’s precisely the irreplaceable nature of these items that make their loss tragic.
The loss is stark. Only memories remain. And these realizations of impermanence are harsh.
The Little Things
I imagine that shock has probably overcome the family by now. A certain numbness to the magnitude of loss takes over so we don’t implode on ourselves.
The big stuff, in many ways, is probably most easily replaceable. It may not be Grandma’s four poster bed, but a beautiful bedroom set can be acquired. Same with many other ‘things’ we surround ourselves with in our homes.
No, the excruciating pain will probably come in the form of a daily drip of realizing all the little things that have been lost. Stuff we all take for granted. Little things that are so ingrained as a part of our daily lives that it’s not until we reflexively look for them or think, “That must be in the attic…” that we realize yet again what’s gone.
And the worst part may be that intangible loss: that feeling of being swept out of that home and off that land – no matter how large or small the plot of earth that stood beneath their house. That sense of possibly never sleeping there again, the impact of realizing they may never look out windows onto the familiar trees or grass or skyline they’ve lived with and gazed upon for decades, will only gradually dawn on them.
When others experience horrific tragedies, it’s only human to empathize and reflect upon how we would feel if thrust into the same circumstances.
In the blink of an eye, everything can change for any of us. It is cliché, perhaps, to suggest that we look around and appreciate our lives and circumstances. But nevertheless, it behooves us to do it. Take a moment. Look around you. Appreciate your many blessings.
And send compassion and courage to those who, in the blink of an eye, have lost so much.
I wasn’t going to write about this tonight, but I have to tell you: it’s not easy coming up with something to write about every night. And that holds especially true when something kind of crappy happened during my day and it’s sort of the only thing that’s occupying my mind.
Well, there are a couple of understatements: ‘kind of crappy’ and ‘sort of the only thing that’s occupying my mind.’
I realize, believe me, that facing the fact that my car has two tires in the junk yard is a miniscule concern compared to so much of what so many other people are dealing with. I know that. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t big in my world at the moment.
Regardless, There’s No Comparison
Yeah, I write the words contained in that paragraph, above, but truthfully they ring hollow. Yeah, it stinks that my car is essentially irreparable and may conk out at any moment – and in such a manner as to render me stranded and the vehicle worthless.
But aren’t I lucky that I have the knowledge, in my back pocket, that I have AAA? Yes. I am.
And aren’t I lucky that I have the knowledge, deep within myself, that I will manifest a new car? Yes, I am.
So I call bullshit on myself.
There are simply so many things going on in the lives of people all around me, people I love and care about, people who are blood family and people who are Spirit family, people I don’t know well and those I don’t know at all, that are far worse than my car wearing out. Indeed, the very fact that I was able to take care of my car for 15 years, eke out 311,241 miles (and counting, if only by the hour!) out of her, and not have a car payment for ten years is amazing.
So, no.
Everything has a season – Photo: L. Weikel
Listening and Perspective
Because listening is so sacred to me, and because it is probably the greatest aspect of myself I can give to those around me, I can safely say that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t extend it to someone – at least one person – every day.
And lately, especially, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of upheaval in the world. People’s lives are being upended in astonishing ways: loss of loved ones (human and otherwise), profound betrayals and ugly realizations, prolonged struggles with depression and pernicious recurrences of hopelessness and despair. Fear of losing a job or the business that’s been cultivated for decades. Loneliness – even when surrounded by people or in long-term relationships that died long ago.
And of course on the world stage, there are people realizing the jig may be up – on so many levels and in so many life-altering ways.
All I Have
Meanwhile, here I am, enjoying so much. My family. My friends. My amazing four legged loves. The birds that frequent my feeders or soar above me when I ask for a message, or reveal themselves as I sit by the creek. My beloved Tohickon and the Lenape Sipu (Delaware River). My work and the amazing people I get to meet through what I do. My health.
Yes, I’m mostly speaking in generalities because to be specific feels like bragging, and that’s quite honestly the last thing I’m intending in this post.
How could I look at tonight’s sky and remain upset over my car? How could I, when I was able to walk with my best friend as the colors of the sunset deepened into an indigo that was hard to describe?
Norah Claire Guerke – my great niece; Photo: A. Guerke
Moments and Memories
I know there are certain members of my family who, right this moment, are ever so slowly, achingly, marking the minutes and hours of their lives now – tonight and into tomorrow, in particular – as they remember and relive those same moments that unfolded exactly a year ago.
This marking of seminal moments in our lives, this remembering each second and minute as precisely as we can (even though our experience of them may have been blurred by the impossibility and horror of what was unfolding as it was happening) is inevitable. It is, I suspect, a sacred ritual that happens universally. It is an honoring; a witnessing of what was. A ritual of remembrance and cherishing.
As I think about my eldest nephew and his wife, my niece, I know they are remembering the last hours they had with their little girl, their daughter who was only 110 days old. They are remembering, as best as they can, the way that last evening they spent with her unfolded. The feel of her hand gripping their fingers as they held her on their laps, laughing, their family watching tv and just being together on a Friday night. Remembering her almond shaped eyes and wise little smile; her baby smell. They’re recalling the irreplaceable feeling of cradling her in their arms as they took her upstairs. How they placed her gently in her crib that night and tiptoed out of her room, never imagining – at that moment –what lay ahead.
We do this. As humans, we replay those moments. We both savor them and allow them to torture us in the exquisite way love does.
I know they’ve been dreading this ‘anniversary’ for weeks. It seems impossible, in some ways, that a year has passed. The pain of their loss is so deep, so take-your-breath-away awful, that it often feels like it happened only yesterday. And yet, a year has passed. There is a difference to the pain.
A Testament to Our Love
We think it won’t change. There’s a part of us that vows it won’t. Somehow, even the thought of our searing pain becoming anything less than that driven-to-the-edge-of-madness-and-despair that’s engulfed us feels like a betrayal. We tell ourselves that we will never forget. We will honor and carry that pain as a testament to our love.
But then we realize, yes; the pain does shift. It must. It takes on a different color, a different hue.
As they are noting each peaceful series of ‘lasts’ tonight, and then tomorrow, marking each excruciating step in the process of losing their precious Norah, they are honoring her. They are honoring their journey, as well. And through this ritual of marking the moments and honoring the memories, they will feel an almost imperceptible sense of relief.
As this weekend passes, and they tick off each moment, each memory, they will begin to sense an almost intangible – yet undeniable – lifting of the overwhelming heaviness that has been the cloak of grief weighing down every step they’ve taken over the past year. Perhaps only the weight of a feather will be removed; but if they pay attention, they will feel it.
Rituals of Remembrance
And that is Norah’s gift. It is the gift that each of our loved ones gives us when they’ve left us behind, wondering how we’ll cope without them, how we’ll manage to make it through even one more minute, one more hour, one more day without them.
They witness our rituals of remembrance and cherishing, and their love and our love somehow meet and merge and cause a slight breeze to wash over us, like the breath of a kiss, swirling away a little bit of that stone cold heaviness that threatened our own will to live.
We think we’re dishonoring their memory to allow the searing pain to shift into a different expression. There’s a part of us that swore we’d never let them down; never lose that edge. But they want us to. They want us to live on, remembering them – and celebrating that we had that time together in this lifetime.
One amazing result of writing my 1111 Devotion was the email I received yesterday from a friend of Cleo and Barry Sharplin. You may recall that I wrote about the Sharplins a few days before Christmas, encouraging a visit to Alchemy, their wonderfully unique clothing shop in Frenchtown, NJ.
Sadly, I must report that Cleo’s suffering ended this past Tuesday, January 15, 2019.
A Most Surprising Messenger
Last evening I received an email from the mother of an art student of Barry’s. She had apparently stumbled upon my blog and read my post from Day 39. In an act of uncommon kindness, she reached out to let me know of Cleo’s passing. Marlene’s words were so loving as she described moments she’d sat chatting with Cleo, listening to stories of Cleo’s adventures.
I am in awe that this blog put us in touch with each other. What a totally unexpected gift I received for the simple act of remaining disciplined to my commitment in honor of my Karl Daniel.
I paid a visit to Alchemy today to spend a few minutes with Barry and to let him know how sorry I am for the loss of his Cleo, his best friend. I know my words, however well-intentioned, were of hollow comfort. No words can set his upended world right.
A Heart to Hold
Before I went into the shop, I sat outside in my car, gray clouds gathering overhead and snow just starting to spit from those clouds ever so slightly. I’d wanted to bring something to Barry, some token to honor my memory of Cleo and acknowledge the rending of his life as he’d known it. Having an intimacy with stones by virtue of what I ‘do’ in my life, my best idea was, of course, the comfort of a gift from Mother Earth.
I’d found a heart of rhodonite that reminded me of Cleo, and as I sat outside Alchemy, I blew my intentions of love, comfort, and peace for Barry into that stone. On some level, I wanted to give him something tangible to hold onto as he winds his way on a new path that he did not expect to be traveling so suddenly.
As I was sitting there, whispering my final intentions into the stone, I watched him come out of the store. Taking a seat wearily on the wooden bench just outside the shop’s entrance, he lit up a cigarette and took a deep, long drag. As he sat there, I watched as he took in the empty front windows and the sign announcing “60% off.” I could only imagine his thoughts. How his entire life had upended in sixty days. Their store, so vibrant and lively for these many years, suddenly sapped of its lifeblood, a virtual shell.
It’s stunning how everything can change in an instant.
The Connections We Make
In that moment, I got out of my car, walked over, and sat next to him on the bench. Looking up, he recognized me, at least on some level, and moved over just a scootch. All I had to do was look in his eyes. I asked if I could give him a hug. (That seems to have been the only consistent offering I could make these past weeks, as I witnessed this unfold from afar.)
I explained how I’d received the email from his student’s mom, and how grateful I was that she’d reached out to let me know. I’d felt really sad earlier in the week, and had blamed it on circumstances in my own life. I didn’t tell him that, of course; but I did reveal how in those moments of self-pity, a clear and unmistakable sense of Barry’s loss (impending, I’d assumed) had intervened. Yes, Cleo and Barry had been front and center in my mind and weighing on my heart.
Barry, listening and staring straight ahead at the shell Alchemy has become, took a long drag on his cigarette. Turning his ruddy face toward me, he smiled and looked me directly in the eyes. “You know,” he said, “she left at 9:11.”
Wow. No. I did not know that.
I don’t know if that felt significant to him because of the connection to ‘the’ infamous 9/11, or if on some level, he knew about my connection to 11s, but there it was. That doorway created by the double ones. A portal. And now another shared connection to a loved one taking their leave from this world into the next.
Barry will be keeping Alchemy open until next Sunday, January 27th. Sadly (but good for you), I was surprised by the number of great pieces still available as of today.
So if you want to help both yourself and the Sharplins out – pay a visit. The discount is steep. And best of all, you get one last chance to have some Cleo eclecticism in your closet. Even if you didn’t know her, trust me. She had an eye for beauty, color, and style that will be sorely missed.
