The Creme de la Creme list is up (as of January 1).
I am #210 of over 333 bloggers in the adoption/loss/infertility
community who chose a favorite post from 2010 for the list.
There is hope and heartbreak everywhere in this human experience.
I can’t get my iPad to work properly tonight (a whole different kind of
hope and heartbreak). Fingers crossed this link will work:
Tonight the information highways are full of today’s shooting of Rep Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and her staff. My heart breaks for the victims – for everyone who witnessed the violence. My heart breaks because there is so much hate, so much misdirected anger, so little ability to listen, to bridge divides. My heart breaks at the unwillingness of those who have pointed guns publicly to accept any responsibility for this act. My heart breaks for those whose grieving began today.
We can continue to feed our anger, point fingers and grow hatred. We can choose to allow this act to touch us deeply, to turn our faces toward the sun of compassion, to let the change we desperately need begin with us. Or we can do nothing, bury our feelings in our vices, go shopping, have a drink, yell at the kids and let someone else clean up the mess.
The choice is ours.
Moment to moment, the choice is always ours.
What do you want your world to look like?
I’ve been in a funk the past few days. I keep wondering why I’m feeling this way when it’s a new year and I was excited about the pages on the calendar turning, bringing a new energy, bringing in ease.
And here I am with this sadness.
Sometimes it feels old – like a discontent I have lived with too long, though I thought we had parted ways. Then it’s fresh again, the deep sorrow of loss. Either way, I’ve been less than compassionate with myself.
Tonight as I lay with Ada, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, waiting for the little twitches that let me know she’s asleep, I wondered about heartbeats. I thought about how Ben’s fluctuated wildly at the end. Then I thought, He’s been dead as long as he was alive.
I checked the calendar.
Today is 23 weeks from the day he died.
He died 23 weeks from the day he was conceived.
My body knew.
My heart knew.
We took the Christmas tree down today. I saved one ornament with his name to hang at my desk.
My heart knew.
23 weeks.
He’s been dead as long as he was alive.
How is that possible?
Memories are held in the body. My visits to the magician remind me that this is true.
Memories are held in smells, in touch, in the things we see and taste.
Memories are held in bottles and jars, rooms and street signs, under certain lights, under cover of darkness.
Today memory came to me in the sterility of a veterinarian’s office. A different one, 80 miles away, with the same floors and the sounds of dogs howling for their loved ones, held us almost two years ago as we said goodbye to a part of our family. Today the memory floored me. The way he jumped as if he were a puppy, not a nine year old whose liver had failed him. The way he wouldn’t settle in my arms, yelped and bled. The drugs they gave him that made his tongue loll to the side. The light in his eyes and the sight of it fading. The tears as we held him and loved him and said goodbye to the body that no longer housed what made him greater than flesh and bone. The way we gave him away and left, sobbing, a part of ourselves staying forever.
Memory begets memory. Grief remembers grief.
Today, I remember Buster. Ass biter extraordinaire. Grumpy old man. Big love.
