Posted - 02/09/2010 09:39pm
3 Comments | Add Comment REMIND ME OF WHAT I LOVED
February 2010
Sonoma, California
It is 4 months to the day that Vera Ushakova died on the eve of my birthday, at 4:45 pm on 09 October, 2009. There are no words, there are no words, there are no words, no words, no words, no words, no words, no words, no words....
I return to my breath to remind me of life.
At this moment I want to be at a café in Paris, smoking a Dunhill Red cigarette, drinking French champagne and toasting Mama. In my mind's eye I see her reaching for a glass of French champagne, too. She was asked what she wanted to drink in the week before she died and she replied "French champagne."
She knew how to live, how to love and how to die. She did it all and said it all, lived it all and then left it all behind. She was a sultan of soul.
From a poet whose wisdom I cherish as if it were my own.
His words on loss, love, grace...
....You know the sore edges in your heart
where loss has taken from you. You stand now
on the stepping stone of the present moment.
In a minute it will be gone, never to return.
With each breath you are losing time....
....Absence is the longing for something that is gone.
Loss is the hole that it leaves. The sense of loss confers
a great poignancy on your longing....In a certain sense,
there can be no true belonging without the embrace
of loss.
Belonging can never be a fixed thing.
It is always quietly changing. At its core, belonging is
growth. When belonging is alive, it always brings
new transitions. The old shelter collapses; we lose
what it held; now we have to cross over into the
beginnings of a new shelter of belonging that only
gathers itself slowly around us.
To be honest
and generous in belonging to the awkward and
unpredictable transition is very difficult....
The beauty of loss is the room it makes for
something new....
The constant flow of loss allows
us to experience and enjoy new things.
It makes vital clearance in the soul.
Loss is the sister of discovery; it is vital to openness;
though it certainly brings pain.
There are some areas of loss in your life which
you may never get over.
There are some things you lose and, after the pain
settles,
you begin to see that they were never yours in the
first place.
As the proverb says: What you never had you never
lost.
Holding on desperately cannot in any way
guarantee belonging....
True belonging has a trust and ease; it is not driven
by desperation to lose yourself in it
or the fear that you will lose it.
The loneliest wave of loss is the one that carries a
loved one away towards death....
....When you lose someone, you lose a part of
yourself that you loved, because when you love,
it is the part that you love most that always
loves the other....
Grief is the experience of finding yourself standing
alone in the vacant space with all this torn
emotional tissue protruding. In the rhythm of
grieving, you learn to gather your given heart
back to yourself again. This sore gathering
takes time. You need great patience with your
slow heart.
It takes the heart a long time to unlearn and
transfer its old affections....
The bright moment in grief is when the sore of
absence gradually changes into a well of
presence.
You become aware of the subtle companionship of
the departed one.
You know that when you are in trouble, you can turn
to this presence beside you and draw on it for
encouragement and blessing.
The departed one is now no longer restricted to any one
place and can be with you anyplace
you are.
It is good to know the blessings of this presence....
....Your grief shows that you have risked
opening up your life and giving your heart to
someone.
Your heart is broken with grief, because
you have loved. When you love, you always risk
pain. The more deeply you love, the greater the
risk that you will be hurt.
Yet to live your life without loving is not to have lived
at all.
As deeply as you open to life, so deeply will life
open up to you.
So there is lovely symmetry and proportion
between grief and love.
Conamara is a dark landscape full of lakes and
framed with majestic mountains.
If you ask any person here how deep a lake is,
they say that they often heard the
ancestors say that the lake is always as deep as
the mountain near it is high.
The invisible breakage of grief has the same
symmetry....
....Let us not look for you only in memory,
where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
beside us when beauty brightens,
when kindness glows
and music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
darkest winter has turned to spring;
may this dark grief flower with hope
in every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us;
to enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
until we see your beautiful face again
in that land where there is no more separation,
where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
and where we will never lose you again.
John O'Donahue
Irish Poet and Teacher
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Dear Anya, I'm so glad that I made the time to visit. As always, your writing is an inspiration. I'm really looking forward to the workshop. Love, Joanna
(note: reference to "Remind Me Of What I Loved" Retreat Writing Workshop on 02/21/10)
Dear Anya,
I wish I could have met your mother. Though knowing you and your writings, I feel I have. She is so alive in you and it is a pleasure to experience her in this way. Blessings, Donna
Hey Anya, I am very much looking forward to seeing you Sunday and exploring with the group. Chad
(note: reference to "Remind Me Of What I Loved" Retreat Writing Workshop on 02/21/10)