“Grief is how you love all those things in life that end.”

– Stephen Jenkinson

I have a picture in my mind:

I don’t know if this is a memory or an imagined event, but I envision an old-school 60s-style astronaut, replete with the shiny white suit and the aquarium-glass bubble over his smiling head. He is in outer space. He holds out a glass in one puffy astro-gloved hand and from the other, higher hand, he pours liquid from a jug. If this scenario is time-appropriate, I’d guess that it must be Tang.  The orange liquid, free of all earthly expectations, flows from the jug. It shimmers like mercury, wiggles and floats free, like a lake with no earth to surround it. Unconstrained and uncontainable, it slips from his grasp.

I keep coming back to this image as I think about these last weeks.

Yesterday’s visit to the cancer clinic confirmed what we thought we’d known from our collective research. I sat with my two friends. One, like me, was there as a witness and support. The other friend was the one waiting for the news; she was the one with the freshly-shampooed hair that doesn’t quite cover the new scar reaching down from her scalp.

We are all in our 50s. We all appear, and, up until a few weeks ago, were, all fit and healthy. But only one of us is singled out for this ridiculously bad news. It is enough to say it’s horrible. I will not divulge her private details, although I seem unable to contain any other thoughts in my head these days.

Yet.

We all know that we dance our days across a tightrope stretched tight over a deep abyss. We all know that with one slip we fall off into forever. There is a reason why we are continually admonished to live in the now; it truly is all that we have. We need to remember to breathe our gratitude as often as we take each breath.

But in order to keep living and planning and carrying on the business of life, we also have to somewhat ignore this truth…until it forces itself upon us once again.

Life is nothing without the reminder of death. Life needs death to cradle it, to contain it, to make it precious. Whether it’s the golden leaves falling from a maple or the robin fluttering on the porch beneath the cracked window, the precarious beauty of life is in the finite.

Life morphs and changes and dies. Yet simultaneously, it is also infinite. Soul is contained in this crazy duality of infinity held within the finite.

Miracles of birth, the wonders of recognizing our multi-generational commonalities or the crazy incredible growth of a tree coming from a single seed. It is all a miracle.

It is only contained and constrained by our puny earthly expectations and limited understanding.

I am feeling very puny. And very limited. But I solemnly vow that I am paying strict attention.

Sky-Circles

The way of love is not 

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

-Rumi