love

Where are you? Are you here?

View from the backyard. Bukibokolo, Eastern Uganda.

Craaaaazzy ol’ Maurice! (think Beauty and the Beast) Thanks to my new solar powered friend, Bettina Bergöö, this is how we came to lovingly refer to Morris (pronounced “Maurice”) during the last days of our stay in Bukibokolo. Morris is the elder brother of Moses. He is a community leader, a husband, a father, a grandfather. And during the time of our stay in Bukibokolo, Uganda, he was also our cook and ever-vigilant caretaker. Morris is a lean, short-statured man, but his character is as big as a mountain and sharp as an eagle. Every day, several times a day, Morris would full-heartedly walk into a room and ask:

“Where are you?
Are you here?”

Before you could answer, his eyes would drift towards the ceiling and he’d crumple into laughter. We’d usually respond: “I am here! Morris, where are YOU?!” ha! Ohhh Morris! A true character, indeed. Needless to say, his words have been playing on repeat in my head ever since my return. It’s been 3 days since Africa and, each morning, I awake at 4am with my heart still fully planted in the mountains of Eastern Uganda. My body seems to have managed it’s way, with deep reluctance, back to the States. But the rest of me…. ??

Where am I? Am I here?

It goes without saying that my time spend in Uganda was absolutely life changing. Of course, I doubt this surprises anyone. I’m not even going to try to write a post that summarizes the experience. Instead, I think I’ll just let it trickle out a little at a time. To do otherwise is both impossible and overwhelming. In the past two days, I have also begun the slightly gigantous task of moving from my old studio into a new one. The opportunity came up just before leaving for Uganda. The pace of answered prayers has my feet flying out from underneath me as every aspect of my life moves in motion towards this story God is writing for me.

Oh, goofy ol’ Morris…thank you for such impossible questions. I’ve been happily turned upside down (or right side up?) and all I know for sure is that nothing will ever be the same again.

I am here!

“Whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” ~Isaiah 30:21

Parking Lots.

Went to the grocery store tonight and, as I pulled into a parking space, I became paralyzed with sadness. You see…there was a really tall, big guy with short hair, a cap and a big beard walking out of the grocery store. He was holding the hand of his daughter, the sweetest looking little four year old you can imagine. She had a shock of bright blonde hair. Happiness spread out in a ripple effect around them as she jumped up into her daddy’s big red truck. It looked so much like Carl and the little girl we dreamed of having together. I watched them with such longing. I imagined how that scene would have made my heart smile a million times if…if only…

My gosh, my heart has broken into so many pieces. It is moments like these that just can’t be plan for.

Then I saw my friend and Africa travel co-hort, Jenn, in the parking lot. The exchange I had with her ended up making me laugh and smile. God’s grace overlapped when I ran into sweet Betty Port, a woman who worked for my parents all of my childhood and well into my adulthood. I hadn’t seen her in almost a decade! She knew what had happened and offered her love in the way that only Betty can do. When she asked about things, I told her my plans to go to Africa. I told her how I had given my life to God the day Carl died. I told her about how this is where God is leading me, about how God was using this tragedy to bring me to all these things I could have never imagined. My eyes brimmed with tears, but I felt the beauty of God in that moment and so did Betty. She gave me a hug that said everything words could not.

And as I sit here now, there are still tears in my eyes. My heart still feels so immeasurably raw from seeing that man and his daughter. The reality of the dreams that Carl and I had together are irrevoably gone. It hurts. So much. I let myself lean into the peace of knowing that God is taking me somewhere new. My heart still wants to smile and laugh as I watch a little girl of my own holding her daddy Carl’s hand. The hurt is indescribable. And yet…over and over and over again, I am offered a choice.

So I choose to continue living. I choose to love those little kids I’m about meet on the other side of the world with my whole heart, my whole being. Because that is what love does. It continues.

I love you, Carl. It doesn’t go away. It just keeps growing. God, give me the grace to choose You…over and over and over. It is the only way I am going to survive this world. Give me something to sing about. I know You will. You are. Dear God, help me to live, truly Live.

Palms Up. In Surrender and Praise of a Life Well Lived :: Susan Carol Hauser 1942-2015

For Susan Carol Hauser, my mentor, my teacher, my friend.
In Memory :: a funeral eulogy, read July 25th, 2015 :: by Jessie Marianiello

I first met Susan in 1999 as an English student here at BSU. She was my teacher in so many writing classes that I lost count! She was my undergraduate academic advisor as well as my graduate thesis advisor. She was my creative cohort in many independent academic studies. She supported me through the recent death of my beloved and husband-to-be. She was a kindred braveheart, my greatest writing mentor and also a dear friend. Susan played a very special and important role in my life, but what I know for sure is that this room is filled to the brim with people who have a story of similar depth to tell. These stories weave a brilliant, richly colored tapestry of a life lived well. Our dear Susan, each of us a thread.

Here, today, we take our deepest sorrow and continue that weaving into our own living landscapes. Forever altered by this great and gregarious mountain of a woman who lived boldly, beautifully. A woman who rode the waves of her own personal tragedies with immense grace. A woman who filled her life with an expansive sort of passion that spilled over into everything she touched. Susan, a full-hearted woman, whom we love beyond measure, we grieve her leave-taking from this world and yet we celebrate the brilliant ways she still remains. Dear Susan, even here, with our feet planted firmly to this earth, we feel your smile, your heart now a little bit of all of us.

In 2003 Susan spoke at my wedding. As a gift, she wrote a poem and, although the marriage did not survive, her words most certainly continue to live. Yesterday I dug her poem out from where it was stored. I had not read it in years. What takes my breath away is that Susan’s words touch upon something that is transcendent and pure. It is filled with love and, as though written just for this moment, is made of something circular, that place where life and death hold hands. I’ve taken the liberty of making a few small edits and, this morning, co-wrote this poem with Susan, for Susan.

What is Joined

Atoms join, one to the other,
married into molecules,
still themselves,
but something else.

Molecules join molecules,
one to the other,
keeping faith with themselves,
yet coupled into something else.

Water to water, drop
to drop, each holding
unto its own, yet wedded into
the body water, something else.

Water joins with earth,
river current kissing show,
ocean tide consuming beach,
continents spooning the seas.

Here, today, we say goodbye to Susan
Mother, Grandmother, teacher, friend,
wise, laughing, loving woman.
Palms up
in surrender
our lifelines, small rivers
running together.

This is where the heart
escapes from its ribbed cradle, loosed
into molecules, delicate.
Released in a way
too perfect for this world.

Each of us still ourselves, but something else:
current that kisses the shore;
tide that consumes the beach;
continent that spoons the sea.

Our lifelines, small rivers
running together.
A watershed
a deep ocean.
all of us, in your parting, molecules transformed.

One of my very first memories of Susan is the day she gave our Creative Writing class a photocopied handout of “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard. Many of her students might remember this essary well. Turns out, that day was a catalyst moment in my life as a writer. The essay, in essence, is about learning, or remembering, how to live. Susan not only knew how to live, she did it well. She “stalk[ed] her calling in a certain skilled and supple way.” She located “the most tender and live spot and plugg[ed] into that pulse.”

In the words of Annie Dillard, “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.”

Dear Susan, may you be blessed by God as you have blessed us. Our wild, limitless, loving friend, fly high, as high as eagles, in perfect freedom. We love you, Susan. Beyond measure. You are loved.

A flight to Uganda, unicorns, provision and babies in suitcases…

Yesterday I purchased my plane ticket to Uganda. Oh my dear Lord, my heart is full. On November 8th, 2014 I gave my life to God. I handed it over. I asked Him to use me. ANYTHING, God please, just use me. And now? He did, He is, He will. The opportunity, coupled with complete passion, to work with these kids in Uganda came up and I told God that if He provided, I would go. Within mere days HE PROVIDED! In the form of just a few earth angels, the costs were covered.

Of course. There is no need for me to be surprised. God is a funny guy. This has not been a light hearted life…and yet, somehow, He has brought lightness to my heart. Not even one detail has been overlooked!

After texting friends and family in celebration, and having a few good cries of happy tears, I wandered the woods several times throughout the day, walking with my palms up in a revolving prayer of thanks, guidance, protection, thanks and more thanks.

Last night I had a dream that I rode a unicorn. She was buckskin in color and so beautiful, maternal and calm. She was grazing in a large and rolling pasture with other horses too. It took several tries, but eventually I got on her back by pulling myself up by her dark mane. Ah, to ride bareback. She was perfect and we moved well together. Never mind that her unicorn horn was made of paper and paint. She was gorgeous and so was the experience.

Later in the dream someone left me a small suitcase with two newborn babies in it, a boy and a girl. Before the person left, I was told that the babies could stay in the suitcase, but one was crying and so of course I opened it up. The dream would switch…one moment I was with my friend, Emily, then my sister and nephew. But the babies stayed the same, in all their messy sweetness. I was like a fumbling new mother. My sister laughed at me.

Oh dreams, sweet weird, weird dreams….
Oh life, sweet weird, weird life…

Oh Carl, sweet, sweet love of my life. I thank God for you. I thank God that even His calling you Home has brought me to this. Uganda and unicorns, babies and tears and laughter….

I love you! I love you!
I love you!

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear)

Happiness, unstoppable.

Dear Abba, you’ve brought me this far. Through all those millions of moments when I didn’t think I could take even a single step, when I didn’t want to take even one more breath. My life shattered. My heart broke. When Carl died, my old self died right along with him. You know this because you’ve been alongside me, through every single moment of it all. You were there when I kneeled down next to the driver’s seat of that crumpled car. You were there there when I stood in the snow at the site of the crash, semi-trucks and cars barreling down a busy two-lane highway under a sky that I remember being neither blue nor grey. But for a moment, dear Abba, You quieted the world and created space for the most intimate conversation I may ever experience on this side of heaven. You were there when I told Carl it was ok, that I knew he didn’t mean for this. You were there when I told him it was ok for him to go, as long as he would stay with me as long as I needed him, it was OK because I knew he was going Home to You. Dear Abba, I could feel you. You were in us and with us; You were everywhere and everything. Carl’s presence was separate from mine, yet also like an illuminated medallion of light lodged in the brokenness of my heart. Oh, dear Abba, you allowed us to merge in a way that defies language, right there on the ugly side of the road that took his life. Surrounded by freshly fallen snow and utter loss, You allowed us this. Not just the idea of Carl being with me even after death, but truly, in that moment you gave us the gift of uniting our spirits in a very real and living way. I told him it was ok. And in that moment, we both knew…it truly was ok. And I felt him go. I felt him being absorbed into You. I felt it right along with him. Dear Abba, you let me die with him, and it was the most glorious feeling I will ever know until I meet You again on the other side of death. This glimpse of what it is to go Home. I felt it. I know. And nothing will ever be the same again. Not ever.

In the eastern pasture, the horses are contentedly munching on the new sprouts of green grass along with the rising sun that has been shining directly into my eyes these past couple mornings, waking me at what seems like an abundantly early hour. I use the word “abundant” because it feels good to get up so early, welcomed into the day by such a direct invitation from what feels like God himself.

Most mornings I wake up praying. It is not an intention or decision to pray, rather a conversation that is already happening. Many nights even my sleep is filled with prayers and so, when I wake up, it is simply a more conscious awareness of continued communication. I savor these moments. I sink in and attempt to make them last as long as possible.

This morning I woke up praying about Joy, a young girl I recently sponsored through Hands of Action International. That was about a month ago and I have been obsessed with the kids of Uganda ever since. Yesterday I learned that Joy is 10 years old and an orphan. She owns a mosquito net and uses it, but she does not have a school uniform or even shoes. Not all of the children needing sponsorship are orphans. I woke up thinking about her. I was wondering what her personality might be like. I prayed that she has someone to comfort her when she needs it. I thought about her feet and the red dirt, puddles and jiggers. I tried to imagine her smile and wondered if it comes easily. I wondered if she likes to be hugged and what it might be like when I finally get to meet her for the first time. Will she be shy? Will I? I thought about her name and the deep meaning it holds for me, yes, even beyond the obvious (a sacred story to hopefully be shared someday). I thought about my own life and where God might be taking me. All of these thoughts and questions and imaginings somehow held in the safety of God’s arms and a golden sunrise.

Today my heart feels a certain kind of peace. Yesterday I felt unstoppable excitement. I spent the entire day apologizing to everyone I interacted with for being so overwhelming. Maybe no one minded as much as I thought they might. I was overcome with happiness. Like this. Like the girl in the photo above. I don’t know who she is. Or the others either. I only know that they are the ones that I have become passionate about. They make me feel happiness and I want more of it. My heart feels alive again. A miracles, yes…a miracle, to be sure.

I’ll spend the day painting in the studio. I’m preparing for my largest solo exhibition to date and also a fundraiser for rescue dogs. I paint and pray and try to stay contained in my own skin so that I might stay in better pace with God. No running ahead, no falling behind. Then I’ll come home and work on photos of the kids for a new sponsorship website page. There are 500 children we are working to feed and clothe and send to school. Yes, I used the pronoun “we.” It feels miraculous. I feel a part of this. Thank you, Abba. There is so much to do and I feel such eagerness to help do it, whatever it is. This newfound eagerness has a strange way of fueling the obligations to even my own work that’s at hand. These paintings I’m currently working on are filled with more prayers than any I’ve ever done before.

I do not doubt that much of my newfound energy and eagerness is coming from the sheer amazement and joy in feeling happiness again. I always feel it when I think of those little kids in Uganda. There is joy and a desire to move in that direction that simply overtakes me. This feeling of happiness is still utterly foreign to me after such deep grief. And yet it is also welcome…so very welcome that I am reduced to tears. The grief still exists, but now it is saddled equally with hope–the tangible sort–made up of real possibility and action step that are being made more and more clear each day. I smile and cry and sing gratitudes to the Lord, all at once.

Dear God, if this is grace…I want more. And more. And more…

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God.”
~1 John 4:7

brown rice and spanish horses.

My eyes are tired. My heart aches. I’ve cried a lot these past couple days. It comes unexpectedly, in waves. It began last night with a remark about remembering a time when you heard the desperate, all-too-real sound of sorrow. I was watching a video with a group of women, half of whom I don’t even know. Oh God, please no. Not now. This hits too close to home. I brace myself against the inevitable. Carl’s sister, Christine, is sitting next to me.

I set my coffee cup down on the floor, grab a Kleenex from my purse.

I accomplish neither before I’m sent colliding into my own internal, wailing memory. The phone call. The one that has replayed itself in my head every single day since it happened. It was morning. I was out walking my dogs in the woods, at a curve in the trail, surrounded by pine trees, the ground covered in new snow. The whole world unraveled and all I hear is my own nightmare-stricken voice…NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO…even before I hear what is needing to be said. Something inside of me already knows what I’m going to hear and I’m screaming NO, trying to stop it, undo it, make it not real. Please God, don’t let it be real. Tell me I misunderstood. I didn’t hear right. Please, stop the terrible, unthinkable wreckage that is happening inside of me, my whole world. Stop this loss of everything in my heart. Gone. Please, God, no. Let me out. Let me out of this horrible, unthinkable, impossible news. NO-NO-NO. This cannot have happened. But it did.
It did.

The sound of my own sorrow. All these months later, the memory still deafens me.

I feel Christine’s arms around me, hugging me. I think my body might crumble, but somehow we manage to create a soft net in the outreaching of our arms that holds us through. I hear someone behind us crying also. These losses, they’re all too real. And we’re all too human. Profoundly fragile, even the strongest of us.

Revelations 21:4

Today though, the sun is out. It feels good/It makes me sad. Sunshine mixed with the warm weather of spring confuses me. My emotions come too close to the surface. I feel like Carl should somehow be a part of all this sunshine, but he’s not. At least, not in the way I expect him to be. My make-up was wiped away by tissues and tears long before I even leave the house. I go to an early morning appointment and then the studio. I drink my coffee with cream. There is something comforting about that, a little luxury, since I more often drink it black. The studio is aglow with the warmth of sunlight. I sit on cushions on the floor. I write for awhile, but don’t paint. I feel gratitude for the canvas sitting on the easel and its willingness to wait for me until tomorrow.

These tender days, they still happen. The sun continues to shine. My heart travels entire continents of emotions. I’m peaceful, then agitated, then grateful. I get swallowed whole with sadness, then decide to give up on whatever I’m working on and instead give myself over to editing some Lusitano and PRE photos from Spain. Yes, horse medicine. Sadness gives way to the grace and strength contained in those images. I am in awe of the beauty I’ve witnessed in this world. I wonder where life without Carl will lead me. My heart has been forever altered. Surely, this could be a gift if I allow it to be?

I try to imagine what heaven feels like. I attempt to plug into this feeling as directly as possible. This feeling of Home, I turn it into a map. A conduit, a pathway for every next step. In these moments, I feel closer to God, I feel Carl’s tremendous peace and happiness. I feel some of heaven’s presence on earth. It does exists, in glimpses. Only glimpses, all along. It is all our earthly selves can handle.

I get hungry. I make brown rice. Eventually, the cabin fills with it’s warm scent. I intended to make a vegetable curry to go along with it. But the rice smells so good. I eat it straight from the steamer I cooked it in. I am satisfied in it’s simplicity. I remember that I will be ok. I will make it through. I experienced God in a hundred different ways today. Brown rice and Spanish horses. Little by little, my heart begins to mend.

For breakfast: coffee steam and candles.

I’ve been obsessed these past two days with getting this blog up and running. Everything published before this post was originally written and shared on Facebook. I’ve gathered those posts here for the sake of congruity and perhaps even for safer keeping. I’m grateful for the space and connection Facebook originally provided, but at some point, it became difficult and inappropriate to share my heart on such a haphazard platform. I had entered a desert. The lowlands. It stretched out in front of and behind me, in seeming infinity. It was a place of dirt and dry earth. There were mountains, but they were in the distance and only served to contain me in that low spot. I needed to walk alone for awhile, in that deep valley of sadness. And, in doing so, my faith walk got deeper, too.

As I write this, it dawns on me that Jesus also spent 40 days and nights in the desert. This was about the same amount of time that I spent in my own dusty barrenness. I’m not saying that I am like Jesus, but it should not surprise me that there is something to be said for the sacredness in this time of desert walking and wordlessness.

It has been 4 1/2 months since Carl died. It seems like an agonizingly long time and yet, as the days and months and years will continue to pass between us, I know that someday I will look back on this day and realize that the distance between now and then was miniscule. But time stretches. It shrinks and expands and then doubles back on itself.

For over a week I have found myself, for the first time, suspended in a place of happiness, inspiration, hope, even giddiness. I have felt energized by some strange and unexplainable joy. It felt like God. It was God. It is God. It felt impossible to feel so much joy in the face of so much loss. I don’t fit the mold of what I imagine grieving “widows” of unexpected tragedy to look like. Yet I also know that is what Carl loved about me. That is, he loved my optimism and passion for life. And that is what I loved most about him. Of course, God knows that even the unspeakable loss of the man I loved with my whole heart could not stop this life force within me, even tho, at first, I so badly wanted it to. I am both devastated and satisfied in a way that I’ve never before experienced. I cry as I write this. I feel like a conundrum, an oxymoron, an absurd paradox. All last week I was on the verge of breaking out of my skin with a renewed sense of euphoria and hope. Today I simply feel like I’ve made it to the edge of the valley where I will sit and rest for a moment before continuing my walk into the foothills and, eventually, someday, maybe even the mountains.

I created this blog so that I might have a space that I can more openly write about my journey through grief. I’ve been a wanderer my whole life, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would travel through a landscape like this. All I know is that, like Jesus after his 40 days and nights in the desert, I am hungry. But it is a strange hunger. Not for food, but for more of God.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ~Matthew 4:1-4

As I write this, I once again notice how Carl’s bible smells like him. Somehow, in drawing close to God, I feel closer to Carl, too. I draw close, not for Carl, but because of him. I draw close because this is what was meant for me all along.

“I am a bow on your hands, Lord.
Draw me, lest I rot.
Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break.
Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break?” ~Nikos Kazantzakis

For those of you who have found me here and are reading these words, thank you for journeying with me. I pray that, even in breaking, grace might be found.

with love and honesty,
Jessie

love notes.

ONE DAY YOU REALIZED

…so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened, and long ago and in the dwelling place
in which you lived before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise,
that first set you off and then drew you on, and that:
you were more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach.

~excerpt of poem from ‘Santiago’ by David Whyte

I’d like to tell you where I am, where you might find me these days, but it seems I am somewhere very far away. I would like to find the words to describe to you this place, but there is no language made for it. It is a place of deep wooded paths, dark watery oceans, cold moon-glow and softly falling snow. And yet…it’s not even that. It is a parallel place. Precarious in both its comforts and its pain. It’s a place of lost maps, the journey I must make. But then…there are those brief and beautiful moments when I feel truly, gently held in the hands of God. Sometimes, I have to crawl out of my skin to get there. This hopeful transformation? It still requires all of me. Perhaps from here on out it always will.

Carl. I love this photo of him. He texted it to me along with a love note from the woods outside my cabin one morning when he went out to feed the horses. I could have just as easily looked outside the window and saw him standing there, but it seems that it is in these sweet moments and tender gestures that love is built of. He already had my whole heart, but a little later, when I finally did look out the window and saw him walking back towards the cabin, I saw the gift of a man whose heart I wanted to live out my whole life with. Louie, my big goofy Chesapeake, was beside himself with his own happiness over having this newfound companionship, too. There was a lot of happiness in these woods that day and all the time surrounding it, too.

And now? All this unknowing. Where do I begin? I struggle with how to proceed. My map keeps getting blown away in the cold wind. But always, always…there is this sense of Carl’s love keeping me company, even here, now, from this short-sighted vantage point. I lean in towards this quiet space of listening and learning. Here I am. Mapless. Guided only by some great mystery.

But wait…let me ask this more clearly: “How do I proceed?” This is the question I ask God. It turns out that, as well-intentioned as I may have always been, before Carl’s death, I had it all wrong. As authentic, spiritual and honest as I was trying to be…I had it all wrong. For two months now I have been asking this question and feeling my way in the dark towards a better understanding of the answer. You see, I can feel the answer, even if I can’t yet see it or hear it or put it to words. Silly for me to think that I can have it all neatly spelled out before its time. I want clarity, knowing, a guarantee. Instead I am offered Faith and Trust. It’s like holding water in my hands. Even so, I know that water has the ability to carry me far. All that matters is whether I can look into the eyes of this Great Something and not let fear or doubt draw me away from its invitation. The most horrible thing has happened. Carl is gone, carried out of this world in a grinding collision. Is it possible for me to draw strength from even this?

Yes, I think this is what is being asked of me. I am being asked to draw strength, even from this. We planted a seed. Now it is time to let it grow.

I love you, Carl Bratlien. With you, I want to keep this song alive.

{originally published Jan 8, 2015}

The language of tears

The Language of Tears. It would make a good title for a book, even if I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself just yet. As I laid next to my cat in the loft this afternoon, I made an apathetic list of chapter titles, too (titled by tear characteristics). I thought about how, supposably, the Eskimos have hundreds of words for ‘snow.’ An elaborate vocabulary created to express something so integral to their day to day life. I’m finding that such linguistic extravagance would be useful these days. Tears of deep grief are made up of an entire assemblage of body movement (or lack of), emotion (or lack of) and moisture (or lack of). Within the never-ending combination of these elements is a difficult and extensive dictionary yet to be written. This conversation that I’m having with myself seems to trail around with me. I climb down the ladder from the loft and realize that the conversation continues outside while standing on the porch, too. This whole experience–like a secondary self–accompanies me endlessly, simultaneously a light and a shadow.

“How are you doing?” This question, surprisingly, does not bother me. More times than not, the person asking truly cares and is really wanting to know. I take a moment to survey my inner landscape, then layer it with what I’ve experienced in the minutes/hours/days/weeks leading up to that moment. Then I filter it through whatever hopes or impossibilities that I imagine might lay ahead. It’s a complicated process of distillation to answer such a simple question. And more often than not, I’m just as interested to know the answer as the person asking it. You see, I’ve been mapping my journey. I don’t know why. So that I won’t get too lost, most likely.

Trying to memorize Carl is like trying to memorize yesterday’s sky. But I try because, over time, I am afraid he will slip away from me. My attempts at language and map-making are equally impossible. I stand at the edge of this ocean of tears and pray that I will not be left in this desert forever. How can I be existing in both places at once? And then, in another moment, I realize that I am right here, next to the pine tree brushing the horse or doing the dishes. I eat cold beans from a can. I try to remember Carl’s smile, even the shape of his teeth. A million combinations of elements create this strange existence. I take three naps. I’m still sick. I feel immense gratitude in the obvious and the least expected. The ancient Chinese had many words for the temperaments of the wind. These names for things are magical. They allow us to know a lot about the many moods our tears or the sky might take. So many combinations of elements, constantly changing. The Sami have a thousand words for ‘reindeer.’ There are nearly 800 languages spoken in India, with more than a thousand dialects beyond that.

Grief is the most complicated language I have ever known. A love language made of tears and sky, earth and snow and memory.

I love you, Carl, in every language and all landscapes. Yes, even this one.

{originally published Dec 13, 2014}