Floating

I've been thinking about the need to go with the flow sometimes, floating, accepting, feeling and not resisting. Trusting that whatever is underneath my spirit will hold me up. Remembering that this, too, shall pass. Remembering to breathe in and out while it's passing. To smell the rain. Feel the breeze. Relax into the rise and fall. Because this, too, is life.

And so I was reminded of this poem by Mary Oliver:

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
- Mary Oliver

It rained this morning. Green leaves are shiny. Happy Saturday.

Stages

I'm not sure what the official name for the stage of grief that I find myself in is called. But I'm ready for Dan to come back.

I mean, I did the funeral and the packing up of the stuff and the crying after the funeral.

And I did the "I can't believe he's gone" and the "I wish I'd been kinder, nicer, better" round of discussions with friends and family.

And the stage where I kinda forgot he was gone and in the back of my mind while focusing on other work, I'd construct these conversations with him, like you do with a live person that you're fighting with. I'd do my side of the conversation and then imagine his response, how he'd stay sober if I had him move back in, and I'd feel better thinking I'd figured it out and then that stream of thoughts would move to the upper most part of my thinking and, boom, it would hit me. Doesn't matter what persuasive position I pose to him in my mind, the man is gone.

But now I've decided I'm finished with grieving. Dan can come back now.