feeling

i got news of her funeral and i got sick to my stomach.
painting the bathroom wasn't doin' the trick.
i tried grocery shopping.
when i felt like i was gonna weep in every aisle,
i knew that wasn't workin' either.

so i came home, unloaded the groceries, handed the
kitchen duties to my son, and went and grabbed my grieving books.

i have a bunch i got at one time in my life when i was trying to cope
with a death that knocked the stuffing outta me.

funny thing was i ordered the books but just couldn't read them.
i kept trying but couldn't.  the death was too close, too hard to even
try to concentrate. to hard to try to look and understand.

but now i craved them.
give me something here.

i grabbed a handful of them and snuggled in on the couch.

the first thing i read was about how it's not just a death you're grieving,
it's a loss of beliefs.

ahhhhhhh i learned that the hard way when my dad died.
i so learned that then.

and yeah, that's gotta be goin' on here too.
cause you see, i wasn't that close to this woman.
i knew her. enjoyed her. wanted the best for her.
but she wasn't a close friend and confidante.

so there's a lot mixed in all this to get me this way.
and i think the idea that we're just here one second and gone the next
just completely throws me.
the fact that she's not here looking at the spring day, walkin' barefoot
on her kitchen floor or headin' out to get bananas just makes me crazy.

so i needed some help.

i put the first book down. i knew the thing about beliefs and figured i should
give that some more thought as i wander around.

then i picked up pema chodron's book....'when things fall apart' -

"inspiration and wretchedness are inseparable. we always want to get rid of misery
rather than see how it works together with joy. the point isn't to cultivate one thing
as opposed to another, but to relate properly to where we are. inspiration and
wretchedness complement each other. with only inspiration, we become arrogant.
with only wretchedness, we lose our vision. feeling inspired cheers us up, makes us
realize how vast and wonderful our world is. feeling wretched humbles us. the
gloriousness of our inspriation connects us with the sacredness of the world. but
when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. it ripens our
hearts. it becomes the ground for understanding others. both the inspriation  and
the wretchendess can be celebrated. we can be big and small at the same time."

okay.
so that made me just try to sit still and sit with the feelings.

and then i found this in kathleen brehony's 'after the darkest hour' -

'first, in order to realize the fundamental truths about suffering, we must
first understand that everyone suffers. and second, we must accept that
suffering is the force that knocks out our illusionary beliefs about life and
thrusts us toward new consciousness about ourselves and the true nature of
reality. in spite of all the ways we try to deny the actuality of suffering, i believe
most of us know these things in our heads. but that's not enough. we have to
know these truths in our hearts -in the deepest, emotional places of our being.
we have to feel them. it is only then that we can gather the rewards  that they
bring: the growth of consciousness, compassion and courage.'

oh, my goodness......
good stuff.......

then my guy called. hed' been reading a whopper of  a book that i love
called 'who dies'.....one of my favorites and one that's packed with more
stuff than any book i've ever read. he started spouting some of the stuff
from that book.

sigh.

together we agreed i needed to get better with this death stuff.
yeah......i know.

it's life stuff.

it's the deal.

and so i will sit and watch.
i will sit and try to feel.
and i will try to watch the whole process.