Unbearable Loss

Read this email very slowly.  Each word has space around it.

Two days ago you asked me what we do with loss that we cannot bear.  I told you that we must find incredible patience.  Acceptance and patience...I think, maybe for the both of us, this is not enough of an answer.  

  

We do not need to exit suffering the same way we came into it.  There is something more, and patience is a word that points to it.  Now I am going to say things that will move us through philosophy and into process.  This is very important.  

Love is your window into beauty.  You don't want to shut it.  

Look upon everything softly.

These are lessons for the living.

You are losing everything.  Consider this to be the end of your life.  

I see how loss drives people into the arms of despair.  If that is the direction they have taken then they did not lose quite enough; not enough to give them no other option than to let everything die while their heart is still beating.  This kind of loss is not a necessary step towards consciousness.  But you are experiencing it and you have no choice.  

The words you spoke are playing in my mind: "You have to say goodbye to everything eventually. So it is important to be able to bear this kind of loss."  Do you sense the incredible freedom in saying goodbye?  

Nothing matters.

Not where you come from or where you are going.  Do not adopt this as a belief system. Nihilists say these same things while they are still holding on to the breath in their bodies.  I do not see how their thoughts will help them.  

But you have nothing.  Nothing left to live for.  And there is no changing that.  Let your heart and head be empty.  Let your goodbyes make you as naked as you came.  

If you have still not realized the gravity of your impending death, look around the room for a minute.  Your eyes touch the walls, the finished table, a mason jar.  Your body feels your seat.  You are breathing in and out.  Your tongue tastes your mouth.  There is a humming in your ears.  All these things will cease to be.  The moment they end will be random.  You will feel your senses going.  You will feel your mind crawl towards extinction.  You will end.  

Nothing matters.  Not time.  Not today or tomorrow.  Not food and not water.  And not the thoughts passing through your mind.  Do you feel an aching rising in your chest?  Watch this happen.  Turn it over for inspection, gently.  Now see what your eyes can do.  They are here with you now.  Enjoy them.  Stand up and walk into the kitchen.  Prepare yourself a glass of water.  Taste it and feel it move into your body.  Move slowly enough to pay attention.  Your attention is the only thing that matters.  You will see, hear, feel, taste and touch everything.  

This experience will fade.  Enjoy it deeply.  But not because your mind recognizes that it is impermanent (and so you seek through desperation to consume as much as possible while you can).  Enjoy it because it is happening now and that is a miracle.  Take your glass of water and look at it very closely.  Do not think about what it is.  Let it be nothing and use your eyes to see it.  Can you feel its beauty?  The way my eyes brush this glass is delightful.  Emotions rise into my chest.  I watch them come and then they go, quickly.       

In the "future" you will move your eyes away from this letter.  Your mind will become busy.  That is fine.  Watch this happen.  Watch your self from the top and back of your head, as if you are the empty space hovering just above the body.  Watch your body move.  Watch your self think.  Watch your heart feel.  

People call what we are doing here, meditation.  I do not call it anything.  Words separate one thing from another and this process is everything.  Practice it in everything you do.  If you find yourself getting board, notice that you have stopped inspecting things closely.  If you are looking closely you will not miss the overwhelming beauty of every tiny stirring.  If you are board, your mind is speaking and you are not watching it.  You have reunited with it.  

I strongly support your idea of hiking the AT this summer.  I have practiced "meditation" for many years, alone, since my first unbearable loss.  I have made few attempts to express what I have just laid out before you.  I do not meet many people who are ready to die.      

Your loss is a great gift.  You will see why Brandon does what he does and it will not burden you.  You will see why I left my family without telling them and with no intention of returning.  Do not believe that you have to leave everyone.  There are no rules to follow.  Your honesty will lead you.  

You are not embarking on an overwhelming journey.  That is what the mind says.  Watch this thought pass through.  Emotions will rise up in your chest.  Watch. The only thing you have to deal with is what is happening now.  And whatever challenges come into the present will never be that big.  

Your mind will continuously try to resist this process.  There is nothing here, in my words; no knowledge or information to keep it entertained.  The mind grows board and apathetic emotions rise up in your chest.  This is not a problem.  Watch this happen from the still space above you.  You are not being asked to give up your emotions or your passion.  That is not possible.  And attempting it will do harm.  You only need to watch your feelings and thoughts unfold.  This process does not make you feel dead.  It brings you to life in a way that you could not imagine.  

I needed to be alone in order to "be still and know that I am god."  But as Rilke said, your solitude does not depend on the absence of people.  And as much as aloneness can bring us to life, so can the people that make us still.  

Love is not your enemy.  

You suffer because you are addicted to a form.  This form, Brandon, is leaving your presence and never coming back.  

Your most desperate hours are now, your greatest gift.  Because you are reading this you cannot hear the unshakable steadiness in my voice as I say this.  I am not being optimistic or idealistic.  I am not grasping at hope, somewhere, out there.  I am telling you a stern, naked truth.  Your great pain will allow you to decide that you have suffered enough.  You have suffered so much that you are ready to die.  You have no other option.  

The time is now.  Move into yourself.  There is nothing to fear, because you have nothing.            

Lost love: A letter to the three of you

The Memories:

H,

I remember the first day you brought me to the farm.  You had work to do.  I sat on the wraparound porch that overlooked the chicken house and I watched you carry buckets of dirt to the garden.  Your arms were strong and wet from the heat.  I could see the curves in them; your limbs were tight from the weight of the buckets.  Your fingers were turning red and white wrapped around two thin metal handles.  It looked like your hands might slip but you made yourself hold on.  That was the first time, I was surprised to find, I loved you.

Y,

Your face is my sharpest memory.  The day after I met you I was working in the office where you kept your microphone.  I was eating a banana and wishing for coffee.  I hated your country.  The people were tricky and they only drank tea.  But that didn’t matter now.  The food was a distraction.  I was waiting for you.  That morning I saw you through the window.  You looked at me and smiled bashfully and I could not believe that you could be nervous. You laughed a little.  The blackness of your beard made your teeth almost shine and I saw the little boy that you had once been.  I wanted to touch you.  You were no boy.  Ten hours ago you’d made me weak with your honesty.  Your fearlessness made me tremble.  I wasn’t afraid; It was your power that weakened me.  It made me feel more woman than I had ever been.  And I knew you were wrong to think that I was anything worthy of your shyness. 

M,

I hadn’t noticed you at first; not when we’d climbed the ridge behind your house.  Our words seemed empty then.  But one night we’d built a fire and under the stars I began to know you.  I woke up next to you with the alarm.  The sun was coming through the blinds.  Your room was white, like sand.  And I was happy.   You stretched out without making a noise and looked up at the ceiling and smiled.  I wondered what you saw there.  I let the sheets fall off of me with your movement.  And I hoped I looked beautiful.  I studied your chin and followed its curve towards your eyes.   There was magic there.  We didn’t say anything.  The air was full already. 

After the Divorce:

M,

You always scared the hell out of me.  It took some time to allow myself to love you.  I don’t love you anymore and so your letter stops here.  It’s a failing on my part.  Or maybe on time’s.  I didn’t know you long enough before you shut me out.  And now everything you say looks like charm.  I am not angry;  only disenchanted.    

Y,

You killed the fear in me when I was with you.  It was our discovery of the eternal; a current of divine honesty that we put first, before each other.   I was not afraid to leave you but when I did I split in two.  I was a being full of longing.  I slithered on my belly through desire, in search of your voice where I knew I’d find myself and the reasons we could not be would make sense again.  And then I was love.  I was whole and unafraid.  I was what I was with you, but all on my own.  I could not figure out which being was more honest.  What intelligence would win if I remained patient?   In the end I heard your voice and I remembered what I’d learned from you.  You still make me better, every day.    

H,

I love you more than lovers love.  Nothing can go deeper.  There was a time after our separation when I felt nothing.   All day I saw you in my mind.  I am not sure if I saw your name or your face or your outline.  All three seemed put together, but undefined.  You stayed there relentlessly; a heavy mist that I grew use to, like the burden of a damaged limb.  Sometimes I felt anger.  I could not believe I hated you.  I wanted to be better.  I still believed in my childhood eyes. They trust storybook heroes; the ones that love despite all hardship.  What was the point of ever having loved you if my scares could not be beautiful?  But that was hard to realize.  

What Now:

H,

Love in the hands of fools is not love at all.  And so we all, being fools by birth, must be persistent.  I have decided to love you every day forever.  No matter what it costs me, it gives me more.  I have always been taught that we stop loving at “goodbye”.  But I have learned through your light that true love is immortal.  And I will be good.  I will not waste time being anything less lovely than what 5 year old me expected of the world.  Some people think that being jaded is wise.  They have not been looking deeply.  I could fail you and hate you instead.  I could let you wash away from the shores of my consciousness.  I could let you go and choose to dream instead of live.  But I will not do those things.  I am not holding onto you here in this world.  But I will let love be immortal.  I will let it be what it already is.