It has been almost 4 months since my last blog post. I see that I last posted on March 13. On March 19, my dear older brother Chuck died suddenly of a cardiac and respiratory arrest in his workshop at home in Klamath Falls, Oregon (Just 2.5 weeks after my dear friend and mentor Linda Keiser Mardis passed away after a short and unexpected illness). When my sister in law and sister finally phoned me many hours after the event, my soul was completely crushed. I cannot begin to describe the pain, fierce denial, and panic that I experienced in those moments of taking in this horrible news. People who write about grief and loss talk about a kind of numbness that overcomes one as the psyche tries to adjust to the image of the loved one being gone irrevocably. That is true. I could barely speak, and yet I felt the need to connect in those early moments. I reached out on Skype to people I knew were in and just tried to have some human contact as I attempted to absorb this news. I think that is a woman's way to begin healing as immediately as possible- to reach out to community. It was interesting to me that my younger brothers did not reach out to me in those moments, in spite of their knowing about Chuck's death earlier than I. My youngest brother Jerry was speaking at some affair, and I have no idea how he managed to go on with that commitment only moments after learning that a beloved sibling had passed away. I am not sure where my middle brother was or what he did, but it was the women in our family who attempted to make connections.
Being with family was important in the 10 days after that. I sat with my brother's body in the funeral home for close to two hours during a private viewing. Seeing him there in his casket was an important part of my absorbing and coming to terms with his death. He was not made up, there was still paint on his fingers from his final woodworking project. That gave me comfort- that visible sign of his identity- of Chuck working in his shop.
All of the members of the family dealt with their pain in different ways. I tried to take care of people, and I cooked and cleaned. I also tried to stay connected with my sister in law's very large tribe of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and lovers without being 'in the way'.
I felt very proprietary about my brother and his life and his things. Being with his belongings was important to me as well...these little performances of his values, interests and identity. His things told me that he had been there in his larger -than-life way. I was proprietary about him because I had loved him the longest of anyone. My brother was 14 when I was born, and he was a 'big brother' in every sense of the word. I believe that he was a part of my learning about unconditional love. I can easily say that we adored one another, enjoyed being together, and were confidants even into the final year of his life. Yet, being who he was to me was only a part of who he was. He was also a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather to a large group of people who also felt proprietary rights to him. That letting go- the process of letting him go to his greater identity after death was really difficult for me.
You called him a Poet. Yes, he was a poet, and where were you when he wrote his first poem? I was there- I read it... we wrote poetry together, he and I. He is known as a photographer. Yes, he was an artist photographer, and were you there when he bought his first camera at a pawn shop? I was. I was the subject of many of his first portraits. Did you know that he was a cartoonist when he was a teenager? I knew that. That practice dropped away when he went into the Marines and went to fight a pointless war in Vietnam. When he came home damaged and ill, were you there to call him 'Chuckie' and remind him of his soul? I was. And it was I who sat with him through PTSD night terrors brought on by exposure to Agent Orange- an herbicide that the US government exposed their military to while they attempted to defoliate Vietnam.
So, I put a lock of my hair in his breast pocket- allowing a piece of myself to go with him back into the earth. And I put together music- a playlist of my experience of my brother's life- for the comfort of all; and it comforts me too.
Grief and sudden loss in particular is extremely toxic to the body. It is not that grief is unusual for humans, but it causes us to secrete stress hormones in abundance- we do that from the panic and fear of abandonment, of the world being different without the loved one. And I was no exception. The rituals that we have constructed to express and perform our grief are essential to allowing the flow of our emotions. I have recently learned that it is emotional shock, panic, anxiety, grief...these emotional/psychological states that actually cause the fascia in our bodies to harden and tighten up like concrete. The fascia is like a webbing that wraps itself around organs and muscles and bones and figuratively become rigid and concrete like causing pain, immobility, inflammation and dysfunction. Is it any wonder that I became severely ill upon returning after my brother's funeral- that it took me 6 weeks to clear the bug, and that I continue to be left with pain, immobility, inflammation and dysfunction?
I have learned that inflammation is linked to diet. My efforts to eliminate Gluten from my diet took a backslide while in Oregon and then back home. I introduced sprouted grain (flourless) bread instead, but still pain remains a feature in my life. With the season's changes and the return of the high heat and humidity to Michigan, I am not drawn to grains of any kind and in eliminating them again, find some positive changes. Still, the body is struggling.
What has been easy to reconnect to is my daily spiritual practice- Yoga and meditation twice a day- upon rising and prior to sleep. The gentle yoga really helps stretch out and separate the muscles. Eating clean and organic (I have discovered) is very expensive. My food bill has doubled at the minimum. I drink only water with a little lemon now- still I notice Ama as I continue to gently detoxify. And I am having body work once a week. It is not your relaxing massage- that is for sure! Rather, it is deep tissue stretching and loosening and thus it is quite painful, yet I leave those sessions feeling loose and touched.
So, my healing path continues. And I am exploring some new products too! Coconut oil for one- which is supposed to be one of the most powerful allies in the elimination of inflammation. I will try to share some recipes and if you, kind reader, know of any recipes for its use, I would very much appreciate knowing them.
More thoughts later- about meditation, compassion and intention.
In peace
Terra
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