Recently, I was floating on my back in the pool in our condo complex, when it occurred to me that floating on your back on the surface of water is like living in this world while loving others who have passed on to the next.
How so, one might ask:
On the surface of the water, you are literally floating between two worlds, one made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, the other of mostly hydrogen, and some oxygen.
We are made of water, but also of breath.
The air we take in and release is of the Spirit: Ruach's breath in our lungs.
We have to keep breathing to keep living, and sometimes that is hard.
The process of floating goes better the more relaxed we can be. We surrender to the process...or we sink.
This past week, I had to live through the second hardest day of my life, second only to lowering Brandon's body into the ground. This past week, I had to go to court for the sentencing of the murderer who took the life of the man I loved. Along with his sister, cousins, and best friends, in solidarity with his family and community, I chose to address the man who took his life.
I wore a picture of Brandon [printed out by his housemate and one of his best friends] on my chest, a black dress I will never wear again [but will tear and make into art] and a gold flower in my hair, to match the community of people wearing the black and gold shirts our man would rock when he was alive on the earth. I was held up by my brothers, who have always been, and continue to be, my bookends. They hold me up.
I will spare the gruesome details, but will share that I spoke every ounce of pain and horror I was forced to endure the past year and eight months since that man drank heavily, tailgated and sped, and then rammed his Escalade into our beautiful Brandon. I forced him to look at me and see the pain he caused.
As named in my statement, the hell of this past twenty months has, at times, thrown my faith for a loop. It has been hard [to say the least] to reconcile the reality of the senseless and violent death of one of my favorite people being killed two days before my birthday, two weeks before Christmas, at no fault of our own, but due to the choices of someone else, who survived.
The rage and the pain I have experienced since the tragedy of losing our B is something I hadn't been aware of before, and I am a person who has endured and overcome hard things ---anxiety and panic attacks, family of origin stuff, serious health crises in our family. I am a warrior, one who had already faced demons and overcome them. Losing B was a whole other level of horror I never expected God to ask of me.
Healing has come in gradual stages, these last twenty months. Helped along by community and family and my dog(s) and walks under redwood trees and the joy of red wine and the pool. Always the pool. Its the place I go to breathe when its too hard to do so on the surface.
So when nothing makes sense, into the aqua blue waters I go. I stroke, and I breathe, and I strengthen my body, and I release my sorrow. I find release, and joy within the water. I float, between this world and the next, straddling grief and hope.
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