On Thursday night, as I snuggled into my favorite spot in the front room with the book, Practicing the Presence, by Goldsmith, a loud bellow rang through the house, "HONEY! COME HERE!". "No!" I thought as I planted myself deeper in the pillows of the sofa. The call came again and again, with a rising panic and mirth. ARGH! The frequency of mama's quiet moments are pretty slim and being called into mother duty after 15 hours on call, isn't always welcome. I walked toward the family room and to my surprise, I caught the distinct waft of something unpleasant and saw Bodhi perched on the tiny toilet he has never used. He was perfectly proud of himself as he announced, "Mama, I poop in the living room!". Imagine that and I just thought I would read myself into relaxation.
Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the
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