(*audio above is of the text below)
I’ll tell you now, I'm in a mood.
Yes, still.
If, like myself, you're of an orientation that glitters but an age that doesn't and need to quote Shirley McClain in “Steel Magnolias” right now, go ahead, I understand.
I have a friend, older than myself, who shared with me that she has been having severe medical issues, heart issues, actually, and the prognosis, she said “is bleak”. She had been a cigarette smoker and takes responsibility for, she says, “bringing it on” herself. I told her that I’ve never known shame to heal anything because I know that's true.
It's beyond what I know that it gets murky.
What I can just barely bring myself to say here is that decades ago, my friend’s young son was killed, a victim of gun violence. If my son had died that way, I’d be g.d. proud if smoking cigarettes was all I did.
Sure, most of us were raised here, cultured here, where our greed is high but our empathy low, so just like my friend did herself, most of us still just defaulted to victim blaming, remembering her smoking, not her pain.
I suppose this is still a meditation but not one so soft, comfortable, or warm, maybe not even inspiring.
I remember comedian and passionate cigarette smoker, Dennis Leary talking about smoking while smoking during his stand-up routine. Even most reasonable nonsmokers would agree he had a valid point when he reminded us of the warnings that cigarette smoking would take years off your life but those lost years, he also reminded us, would be our last miserable years when we're getting sick, falling apart, and filling adult diapers. It almost counted as encouragement to smoke cigarettes to me.
I remember that now and the state of our world and the loss of our humanity and wish I could reach for a cigarette. I'm prepared to sacrifice those days.
I don't cherish these days of just maintaining and dreading the days ahead but a name echoes my friend back to my mind and I hear my words about “maintaining and dread” and how I know, first hand, that's one succinct way to describe living in grief and each of us, in that space, do precisely what we must do, with so much heavy love still to give, with so much breath held, so much loss, to take another step, another minute, a meal, an errand, to find that finally, my God, we made it through the day, now, if only, we could sleep, so sure, we reach and the reaching is good and not to blame. In fact, we bless the reaching, we only learn better substitutions.
Pause.
This is a “just in case” scenario: just in case your mental follow-up to the word ‘better’ above is also comparison and shame, if it's also to curse what was previously “good enough”, a gentle reminder that that's not necessary. Really.
We can bless both.
We can bless both.
This can be a revelation.
It is to me.
It can be a lot to take in.
Sit with it.
We can bless both and move on, no, not “get over it” but on, through it, moving, flowing again.
All those years ago, my dearest, best friends in the world were dying. My world was falling apart. You, who had lost so much, held your Virginia Slim and told me, with trust and jasmine plants you bought me and smokes we shared on the porch, that somehow there was still reason to go on and you loved me into believing it, too.
So, there are better choices we can learn to make. As Maya Angelou said, “When we learn better, we do better", One of those better choices could be to shame ourselves less, blame ourselves less, restore what we reach for at any given time. Don't for a moment confuse my musings with “blessing heart disease” or “making friends” with cancer. I'm not likely ever feeling that but I am saying I don't curse the smokes that kept our grief houses from burning down as we bricked each other's foundation tentatively with love that we dared to share with each other a bit at a time.
You're not dying, not like this you're not. There's still breath and blameless love and worth unearned and the euphoric scent of jasmine and even the memory of your grandsons’ laughter to enjoy. These repairs, things to tend to in our hearts, fault lines and hairline cracks, these all happen where love lives, with chill and contraction, with warmth and expansion, and I’d be lying if I denied my own love shack of a heart’s often dilapidated state but, our Reach reminds me that these heart homes are not sites for demolition but for ongoing renovation.
Open palm
Pressed to chest,
Bless both and
Know moments of rest
That feels like ours.
-pdk
As we share in the wonder of growing in love,
Preetam Das
All background music: album “Luys Luso” by Tigran Hamasyan, Yerevan State Chamber Choir, Harutyan Topikyan
