light outside the wolf: words after mum's suicide: part 3: light
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
--Antonio Machado
The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.
-Tagore
I've got some words and I cannot let them die in me.
-Macklemore
And I don't care if I sing off key
I found myself in a melody
I sing for love, I sing for me,
I shout it out like a bird set free.
-Sia
This my excavation
Today is Kumran.
-Bon Iver
a week after mum died, a bird shit on my head. i was walking down charles street in beacon hill and bam, it got me.
i knew instantly it was mum, the ultimate prankster, even in the afterlife.
i laughed, and then i cried.
mum had spoken many times of getting shit on by a bird at her eighth grade graduation.
it had never happened to me in my entire life, and then, just a week after she died, there it was.
my mum's triplet laughed like a teakettle when i told her. "definitely mum," she said.
i think mum could see what was about to happen and she was trying to tell me--hey--don't take it so seriously. stay light.
i shrugged off the experience and, as you saw, got down to mourning, grieving, and slithering.
little things like this kept happening. marvels from the universe threw themselves at me. and during my mother's eulogy i had vowed that i would see her in all the beautiful things of my days--cardinals, which she loved, butterflies, rainbows.
the weekend after mum died, my dad sat at my aunt's house outside of boston eating lunch. he looked up as they ate, and through the window, he saw a lone monarch butterfly, its orange wings hinging and unhinging in the breeze. this was a frigid march in boston, and a butterfly with its tissue-paper wings was there, a spot of orange, floating by them.
“what the hell is he doing here?” he asked the room. but inside his heart, he knew it was mum. he told me.
a couple weeks later, we brought mum’s ashes to bermuda, our treasured place, somewhere we'd gone nearly every year since i was a child. it was dad, dan and me, and we toasted mum over rum swizzles at the swizzle inn, and rode through the rain on mopeds to see our island friends at a happy hour near fairylands. we stayed at the hamilton princess and woke up each morning a bit hung over. we planned to get up early that thursday, and spread mum’s ashes in the sea at treasure bay, where over the years mum, me and multitudinous family members had collected beach glass together (recall the era of the beach glass arts and crafts project). hearing of her obsession with beach glass, years ago, our bermudian friends had given us directions to treasure bay. we had spent hours at this little stretch of beach over the years--tossing pieces of brown glass with disgust and whooping at the ever elusive red, blue and pottery pieces.
that thursday, with mum’s ashes in the bucket of dad’s moped seat, we went over the bridge, and pulled left into the beach parking lot. as we took off our helmets, dan said, “look!” and in the sky, far off, was a rainbow, the first and last we’d see on the trip. we all looked at each other, and we smiled.
the beach was empty at first. by regulation, if we wanted to toss someone’s ashes in the sea, we were supposed to do so a certain distance off the shore. we had no dingy, nor did we attempt to seek one. dad had brought mum in a bag and our plan was to empty the bag at the shore.
we walked to the lip of the water, and suddenly a few islanders appeared.
“oh fuck,” i whispered to Dan. we looked very suspicious—three fools with a bag of gunpowder-like substance, looking around like hungry coyotes to make sure no one was on the beach.
the family walked up and spoke with us, and a pit formed in my throat. i just wanted it to be done. finally they meandered about, getting distracted as their small children astubbed their toes on the rocks and picked up shells and pottery. it was our chance.
i forget now who released mum to the sea—maybe some me, and some my dad. the ashes hung cloudy and obvious like an oil slick around the area we’d placed them in.
“jesus christ, it’s not washing away,” I said to Dan, my eyes rolling in the back of my head. the tide flirted with the fog of submerged ashes, but only drew the shadow larger and more obvious. “do you think they’ll say anything?”
dan shook his head.
we watched the foggy water slowly merge with the rest of the sea. then we turned to walk back up to our mopeds.
“what brings you to this beach any way?” asked the father of the family that was hanging about the beach.
my dad answered, “well, we like to collect beach glass. our friends who live in fairylands told us long ago that treasure bay was the best place to do that, so we’ve been coming here for a decade now.”
the man looked at us and smiled kindly. he said, “that's so nice."
we nodded, ya it was.
"but this isn’t treasure bay,” the man said.
we were silent for a moment.
“it isn’t?” i finally asked.
“oh no,” the guy said. “treasure bay is about fifty meters down the road.” dad, dan and I looked at one another and cackled with laughter.
“that is so perfect,” i said.
the signs continued.
when my cousin got married outside of san antonio in october 2014, we saw monarch butterflies everywhere – outside the dodging duck brewery off route 46 in boerne, at 103 apple rock near jack nicklauss’s golf course cordillera, and palpitating at the site of the wedding ceremony. there, the butterflies sipped nectar happily on every available floral pocket.
blissfully and a little bored, my native-texan cousins said, “the monarchs are migrating now.” science aside, to me, it was mum everywhere, clasping and unclasping her orange snow-peppered hands, waving to all of us as my cousin cried white streaks down her beautiful face, taking her new husband’s hand at the altar.
we went to the big island of hawaii the year after mum died.
we flew in to kona and the next morning, we sat on our small deck, sipping coffee. amidst the bone chattering screech of the minah bird, the warbling of the wild turkey and the spooked shiverings of the mourning doves, i heard a sound i hadn’t expected. i heard the unmistakeable call of a cardinal – the puncturing chirp, the sound of a single coin dropping. i stopped, cocking my ears like a dog, and scanned the limbs of nearby trees. a flap of wings and a flurry of leaves revealed the flash of a red kerchief – a cardinal. i shook my head with disbelief.
“what’s wrong?” dan asked.
“nothing’s wrong," i said. "it's a cardinal," i whispered. and mum loved cardinals, i thought.
i vowed that i would not research if cardinals lived in hawaii. i didn’t want to know, and i still don’t want to know. i want this beautiful secret with the universe to remain untouched, like ruins in the forest. you followed me here, mum, i thought, feeling warm inside.
on the second day of our trip, we drove the rental car east towards hilo to visit the kīlauea caldera. after we’d seen it, the gaping hole, still smoking, its tendrils of grey like shepherds' crooks to the sky, we drove north to akaka falls, the waterfalls on the eastern side of the big island.
the path was slick to the falls – we fumbled on the wet railing and gingerly dipped our toes onto the steps as we walked. the banyan trees stood on their hallowed ground, their thick tendrils ropes unflinching and beckoning. the elephant ears nodded to us as we walked by. we marveled at katuna then ascended the steps toward akaka.
then, unmistakeable again, the drop of the coin. i stopped, threw my head up.
in hawaii, by the falls, i stood facing the undulating carpet of green rainforest, focusing here, then there. finally, the flamed handkerchief fanned itself to the next branch. i raised my hand, hello.
“are you coming?” dan hollered from ahead on the slick ascent.
“yep!” i replied, and walked on, anointed.
i was taught in school that a writer’s enemy was sentimentality but now i think sometimes the moat we build around ourselves, protecting ourselves from sentimentality, can be a buffer around deeply feeling or believing. being sentimental, seeing the signs, exposes what's haunting us, what we’re carrying around deep in our marsupial pouch. facts – i don’t care about the facts when i see the monarchs migrating a year after my mum committed suicide. i don’t care if it’s science and "they do it every year on that date!". i don’t care if cardinals live in hawaii; i don't care if they're the cockroaches of the winged things there, they're so plentiful.
i care about the small living orange and black leaves flying through a channel that still exists from my mum to me.
i was hurting, i was wounded, i was bleeding out, but in those moments, i believed in magic.
mum, and the beautiful world, they were calling to me, together to come back. they were throwing their hands on me and trying to yank me back from the edge of the pit. i believe this.
but i needed time.
i missed her voice. i missed calling the milton town hall where she worked and hearing her pick up the phone and saying, “good afternoon, collectors office.” every single time.
i would give any of my organs, including my heart, to hear her say that today.
this annoyed people. indirectly. they couldn’t leave messages on my phone. my mailbox was full.
it was full of old voicemails from mum i couldn’t delete. filled with the sound of her voice. i wanted them. my favorite one she’s talking abut what sheets to buy my cousin for his wedding. it’s so normal. she goes on and on for ten minutes about what sheets to buy.
it drove my dad crazy.
“sara, i tried to leave you a voicemail but your damn mailbox was full!”
“sara, have you ever thought of deleting your messages?”
“no," i would say. and i would leave it at that. maybe sometimes i explained. the thought of losing her voice, of never hearing her voice again, of it being lost like an echo in a canyon made me choke and sputter.
after years of this, my husband helped me figure out how to download them. it wasn’t very hard, but being able to free them up from my phone, as odd as it sounds, was progress.
but i was barely holding on.
dan and my friends and family told me it wasn't my fault. "mental illness is nobody's fault" they said. and part of me believed them--the part that was bobbing above the surface, shining in the sun. but another part of me didn't, the one scraping the bottom of the mucky pond.
but i kept going. i got up every day and i went to work. i smiled to my bus driver, i filed expense reports, i breathed, i cried, i burned.
i had thought about it so many times--mum was in a thought warp that she couldn't get out of. she fell into a rut and it was so deeply grooved that she couldn't crawl her way back out.
it began to dawn on me that i was following in her footsteps.
i was in the shower, hot water beating on my skin, and i realized this for the first time.
i thought about how upset mum would be if she saw me fall down the same well she did.
and the thought didn't cure me, but the thought stayed with me, following me like a perfume. huh, i thought. there's something to think about, i thought.
it came to me in other ways, this question, like a feather fluttering through an open window: so was this what life was going to be now?
i blinked.
really—was this what i had decided on forever? an endless roll of a boulder up the hill like prometheus, the pecking of my own self and the endless scourge? is that what i wanted? a gauntlet i both ran through and set up?
what?
i've wanted to write since i could remember, and mum was the first person to believe i could do it, the first person to believe in me. she submitted my work to contests. we would sit around the round table she used for puzzles, reading the rules and following them exactly for the submission.
i wrote. i wrote and i wrote. i could've walked around the world on a carpet of pages ripped from my journals i wrote so much. the idea that, perhaps, i could take the raw words i had written in my journals about mum and transform them into something structured, cohesive, tapped at my window. perhaps you could memorialize her in this way, the voice behind the tapping said. it seemed so large, so terrifying, to write about something so raw, and painful, to really stare into it, to go deep, to face it. i picked up my treasured copy of anne lamott's guidebook for writers, bird by bird, and i came across these lines:
The great writers keep writing about the cold dark place within, the water under a frozen lake or the secluded, camouflaged hole The light they shine on this hole, this pit, helps us cut away or step around the brush and brambles; then we can dance around the rim of the abyss, holler into it, measure it, throw rocks in it, and still not fall in. It can no longer swallow us up. And we can get on with things.
The water under a frozen lake...getting on with things, I thought. Dance around the rim of the abyss...and still not fall in.
Yes, I thought.
Ok, I thought.
I will write myself out of the woods. I will write Mum's story.
Somehow, I could take something back--maybe I could take some of my life back, maybe I could give some back to Mum.
I committed. I began.
I thought of alchemy. I thought of the transmutation and the shape shifting. I thought of pain taken and turned into beauty, into love. What i mean to say is—I thought of my writing, and the alchemy of pain and words released from a cave inside.
In 2016, I applied to the Colgate Writer's Conference, which was put on by my former coach and professor Matt Leone. I submitted an excerpt from what I had been writing about Mum, and I found myself traveling those 300 miles west to workshop it with a group. My workshop leader, the wonderful woman and writer Joni Tevis, and I sat, getting acquainted at Frank Dining Hall.
And she said something to me that perhaps a hundred people had said to me, but that I hadn't really heard, and wasn't ready to hear until that moment.
She said, "I think you should forgive yourself."
And I started to cry.
I was supposed to spend that week, when I wasn't workshopping my piece, rubbing elbows with other writers, or listening to talks--holed up in my room working on the piece about Mum. Implementing the feedback I'd gotten, polishing. But I kept getting called to the hills. I had squeezed my bike into my car for the trip and I kept being called to ride it, or run. The wild was calling me.
I was riding in the back roads and suddenly, a deer came into my vision just as this thought--the thought that Mum had the gift of life--was blooming inside of me. It had popped into my head out of nowhere.
I stopped on my bike.
The deer was standing amidst tall grass and white and purple wildflowers. When I stopped, she bobbed her head this way and that--a thin wildflower stood between us. She swiveled a large ear. Black flies walked on her face. She wiggled her wet nose, and suddenly she crashed through the brush, her red hair bounding away. The earth was silent and I felt blessed.
When my mother died, my aunt and uncle sent me a card with these words written on the front: Deep peace of the quiet earth to you, deep peace to you.
The earth kept inviting me to heal--it insisted on its harsh and raw beauty and that harsh beauty shocked and filled me. The peace of the quiet earth ran through my bones and allowed me to consider healing.
Forgiveness, my workshop leader had suggested. Forgiveness. I walked away from that week with memories of a wild deer looking into my heart, with pages and pages of feedback and only one word repeating over and over: Forgiveness.
I started to give myself permission to consider forgiving myself.
I didn't tell myself, "Hey, you didn't do anything wrong--you were perfect! Shake it off!"
No.
I started to accept that I had failed, that I had disappointed myself, that no, there wasn't a do-over for some of those moments--but that maybe I could consider forgiving myself. I considered that the Golden Rule of "Treat others how you want to be treated" might even apply to me and might even apply to things like forgiveness.
Notice how I'm not saying "I forgave myself." I'm saying I considered that maybe I could entertain the thought.
It was a very long process.
I kept writing. As writers do, I would put my project aside for a while, then get back to it. I had a million drafts all over the place, and do to this day. "I'll get to it," I said. No matter how much I tinkered, I couldn't seem to get the right form.
I read a million and one self help books and started practicing the idea that I was worthy. Worthy of love, worthy of forgiveness, just worthy. I wrote it over and over in my journals. I practiced believing it. I tried to get myself into a different thought warp--into one that might actually allow me to tilt my head back and feel good.
Because I realized I didn't want to feel badly anymore. I didn't want to feel that way. I don't want this anymore, I said.
And I thought, perhaps it was within my power to decide that I deserved to be happy. That I deserved to feel good. That I made a mistake, so many mistakes, but that I was the one withholding forgiveness, and maybe I should get the hell out of my way.
I could at least try this other shoe on, I thought.
I started to meditate.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the idea of and the praise of meditation seems to be on the cover of every single magazine in every single rack of every single store in the United States of America right now. I thought what the hell. I'll try it. And I found space shifting inside. I started to reach for a space of peace and I started to repeat that joy and peace were available to me.
I began to read books by Thich Nhat Han, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and in doing so, I came across an idea that burst inside of me like a star.
The idea was that we carry with us the unresolved suffering of our ancestors, of all our family--that their pain is written into our helixes, those who are alive and dead, stretching back endless years. And he said we had an incredible opportunity to heal their suffering by healing our own. We could transform and release their pain for them by releasing ours.
We could release their pain, and bear our children without this endless despair etched into their palms.
Wow, I breathed.
My whole body was on fire.
This—I realized—this was something I could do. This allowed me to reach beyond the void and unlock the concrete pain Mum had carried, and the pain that I was carrying, and throw it like a sand bag from a balloon and float.
Everything had felt so final after mum died. This told me it was not. This told me that things could still shift, and that I could shift them.
In fact, that I had to.
Well okay then, I thought. I have no choice. I owed it to my ancestors and to my progeny and to myself.
All of this slowly brought me back into the light, slowly allowed me outside the dark dark wolf I had been inside, and into the light.
I started to feel OK.
And then I found this, one day at my father's house: A calendar my mother had kept of all my milestones as a baby. I didn’t open it for weeks. I saw it, turned to January, understood what it was in one heartbeat, and didn’t feel ready.
I knew it would open something, i knew it would open a faucet of some kind. I knew it might hurt, it might ache, and this wound was so pink even still, so painful to touch, even though I felt ok most days. I waited. I would go to my childhood home, and putter around my old bedroom, eyes glancing at it tucked in the bookshelf, not quite ready. Finally I said “oh hell” and I pulled it out.
My first smile, first laugh, first word, first everything, dated and written in her beautiful, neat, characteristic handwriting—the writing that had sent me love and cards dutifully no matter where I was in the world—be it the Galápagos Islands or upstate New York. All of it charted like a sacred map.
And the map led to love.
Reading this calendar was like reading a sacred lost text; it was like a baptism. Reading what she’d painstakingly written, with so much joy and tenderness—something inside of me was wiped clean. It was like a gale force wind swept through my heart, sweeping away all the detritus, the guilt, the self hatred, and was replaced by mighty, mighty love. The understanding of how much she loved me, and how powerful that love was through this scripture, it clarified everything. It didn't fix everything, but somehow, it didn't matter anymore.
—
You are looking, perhaps, for something more complex, perhaps not. All I can say was the answer was always love and I simply had to find it and accept it. It would have come to me in some form, when I was ready to forgive myself and to love myself again, whether it was the calendar, a flower, a child, or all of them. The answer to the Zen koan, to the pain, to the riddle is love.
What do you mean?
Love is what I mean.
Love with no footnotes or caveats.
It hurts still, it always will, but she is everywhere. She's a sparkle in the pearl of an oyster, she's etched in a piece of beach glass, she's evaporating from the sea, she's raining down on me from the sky with love that never started and never ended, it just always was.