In, out

Deep, slow

Ease, flow

Relax, release

These are the words I have adapted from Thich Nich Hanh’s book, How to Live When a Loved One Dies. I have long been a fan of this monk, and Don and I are most days reading a chapter and doing some breathing together based on some of his gentle meditations as we continue to live through this trying time.

I woke up to snow this morning – not just snow on the ground – but giant, airy flakes coming down with a gentle intensity. Ellen is sitting across from me in the living room, in her robe, planning dinner, Kal is puttering around the house and my beloveds are still sleeping, though I had to wake Charlotte up to show her the cascading snow in case the party ended before she decided to wake up at noon. Soon, I will go and nudge Don so he too can share in this joy. It’s the first snow we have seen in more than a few years and it somehow lightens my heart and further encapsulates me in a quiet warmth and stillness.

I’ve returned to my black coffee, no longer requiring sweetness or creaminess to make the start on a day. It seems more appropriate to have a somber cup of black fortitude to meet the day.

In an hour, I will have an online therapy session since we are away from our temporary home in Vancouver, and I look forward to processing a bit more. I am breathing more easily, able to not just skirt around the edges of grief because of all the trauma that has electrified me around Emily’s sudden passing. 

I know it seems as though I have been grieving and I have, but much of my process has been around trauma in these early days. A lovely lady has entered my life, another member of the “club” who lost her son some years ago, and she often messages me after reading my blog, sending solace. One of the things that she wrote was about how her grief has globalized and she may be doing something mundane in her day-to-day tasks, not thinking about her son at all, and she will suddenly well up and cry, not even recognising it is there until it is.

Presently, I am triggered by things: something unexpected in a tv show, yesterday it was the first line sang by the “Cork and Jug Band” at the Harmony, a bar on Atwood Street, a place that Don and I had frequented often, as we lived just across the street from it during our fleeting year in Madison some 20 odd years ago. It was where Eydie, Don’s ex-girlfriend, now one of my best friends and podcast partner, had helped us plan our little wedding in a cabin on a lake, with an annoying justice of the peace, a missing brother-in-law/best man who had gotten lost on the way, a blue wedding dress, a shabby chic motif hastily but beautifully arranged by interior decorator extraordinaire Ellen, multiple plates of olives that needed to be auctioned off because Don thought that everyone loves olives, even though there were probably less than 30 people there, a walk out onto the iced-over lake, my dad wearing a blazer that looked suspiciously as though it had come out of the woman’s section, bloody Mary’s (though they should have been Caesars – why did this Canadian not insist on that simple twist?), and Leah laughing through her vows because she didn’t want to marry her beloved Don, just stay with him forever.  And now, we will do it again: because we have so much to pledge now, eternal reasons to stay together, bound inextricably in the richness of our experiences, our daughters, our travels, our adventures, our joys, and, yes, our sorrows…

Last night, in the first thrums of the blue grass band’s opening – how could I not have realised it was Blue Grass? – I felt horrified by the twangs and banjo and wailing voices – and then suddenly, “This girl…”: a tune about never having loved a girl more. I grabbed my coat, eyes welled up with tears and also the discordant (to me) sounds hawing, looked fleetingly at Don lining up to buy us all beers (me a hot water – haha), and said, “I gotta get outta here.” He nodded in understanding, also frequent victim to these unexpected triggers. With my hand on the back door,  tears tipping over,  my dear Eydie walks in: the Eydie of this bar where we planned the wedding together, her insisting that we needed to celebrate not just go to the courthouse, the Eydie that has become my mainstay over these many years since.

And that was that. In the best of ways. We sat in a little corner in the back, as far away from the music as possible, her in just a sweater, me bundled up in down coat and scarf, and laughed and cried, and found joy together in yet another reinvention of love and friendship after loss. It was exactly the same, except with that mantle of sadness, that careful introduction of an entirely new element that will now forever be a part of our friendship. 

So slowly, I circumnavigate this grief, occasionally diving in like a dog into the ocean with all four paws, and often scampering around the edge of it, tentatively exploring what it can look like outside in the wider world.

The meditation is helping me, the breathing, the storytelling and remembering. Saying Emily’s name. 

Emily loves snow. Today she is happy for us to be surrounded by this flurry of whiteness. If she were here, she would already be outside. 

11 thoughts on “Snow”

  1. We join you in a black coffee morning, as I read your words aloud to Anthoney. We both prefer our coffees black. At the end of the reading, with moist eyes, we both say, “beautiful.” We give our morning greeting to you, Charlotte, Don, and your loved ones down south.

  2. Beautiful snowflakes to remind you of how Emily lived snowflakes. What sweet thoughts you share with us – as difficult as they are, they help us understand how you are feeling through it all. Thank you . Xx

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