rainbows

I am in a funk.

For some reason the rain which usually refreshes my spirit and fills me up a bit is just making me feel really sad. I feel sad and lonely. I feel an emptiness, like I have been away from home for a long, long time. I am sitting here at my desk with the windows open and I can smell, hear, and see the rain. I could just reach out and let it run through my hands. It is beautiful, but in a mysteriously abandoned kind of way; like it could rain forever and wash away the world.

I feel uneasy and aimless. I don't have any real goals. I think about a lot of things but rarely make decisions. I have become a really bad decision maker. I would just rather not have to decide what to cook, when meet up, where to go. I am just too tired to care most of the time.

Have I mentioned that I am mostly grey? I have so much grey hair it's crazy. I look at my roots with dismay and wonder what is going on in my body that I don't know about. What kind of stress is manifesting itself in my bones, muscles, skin, and hair?

I have returned to the old, comfortable habit of living for tomorrows. Tomorrow things will be better, happier, shinier. Tomorrow my house will have sold, my zinnias will have bloomed, my house will be clean, I will be able to afford a break. Tomorrow I will be ready to take care of my body, lose weight, meditate, be still.

I feel like I need a good cry and a soft lap to curl up in. I need the comfort of a mom who will pet me and let me cry it out like am little kid who has just broken her favorite toy. I don't want someone to feel like they need to fix me. I want to fix myself. But I can't fix me today; I won't even try. I just need to cry like I am going to cry out every last drop.

I was thinking of a time when I felt most loved. It was a few days before my Maggie's birth. I was with my Auntie C. I stayed the night with her and woke up to the smell of blueberry buckle fresh from the oven. The windows were open and the Pacific Northwest breeze was making the curtains dance in the sunshine colored room. We ate the delicious buckle for breakfast and then walked a few blocks to her sweet friend's house. I was gently ushered upstairs to her massage room filled with soothing music and gorgeous, crazy sculptures. I quietly undressed and laid on my side surrounded by pillows. The room was dimly lit and I tried very hard to relax. I felt heavy.
My Auntie and her friend came in. They both laid their hands on me and silently poured love in to me. Then the friend began massage work. The pressure of her hands, the stillness of the room, and the quietly whispered words of encouragement and peace, the silent prayers offered for me- it was like I was breathing in pure love. I began to cry. I admitted to my fears of pain and failure. I heard their tender, compassionate groans, "yes, yes, yes", saying that they understood. They called me "brave" and "precious" and "strong". Wherever the friend stood working, my Auntie stood opposite, smoothing, caressing, holding me. They allowed me to cry it out and didn't try to change me. They weren't afraid of me and didn't ask me to stop or hush. I had permission to feel deeply and pour myself out; and I was filling up as quickly as I was emptying.
When the time came, they stood on either side of me and just laid hands on me. I felt the warmth. I knew, in their own ways and with silent words, they were fervently praying over me, interceding for me. And as quietly as they came in, they left me there. I wept. I was flooded with relief and courage and peace. I had never felt so whole and healed.

I recently finished a good book. There a was chapter that made me think of this experience. Traveling Mercies. "'Traveling Mercies,' the old people at our church said to her when she left. This is what they always say when one of us goes off for a while. Traveling mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound." Anne Lamott goes on to write about the death of a friend. "I walked in to their houe at nine, into this wooden palace as familiar to me as my own childhood home, the walls covered with framed photos I've been looking at for thirty-some years... Bee's eyes were red from crying, the brown irises clouded with sun damage from our tennis years. We walked hand in hand down the hallway to where Mimi lay asleep on her bed, breathing in the loud labored way that means the end is near. Bee and I talked for a moment, and then she sat in the chair beside the big bed, holding her mother's hand, and I lay down beside Mimi, because she was the most gregarious woman I've ever known, flamboyant and loving as the Broadway stars she loved, and she seemed a little lonely. Bee held Mimi's hand to her face and her chest; I stroked Mimi's shoulders and smoothed her hair. We talked to her the way you talk to a sleepy child too troubled to fall asleep. We whipsered that we loved her. We told her over and over that we would stay with her as long as she needed but that when she was ready, we were also willing to let her go. And that she was safe, with God here now on this side, and in a moment with God on the other. Traveling mercies, I whispered in her ear. We said prayers softly...and we lit candles, and held Mimi lightly so she could take off when she was ready. The space between each breath became longer and longer, until an hour later there was all space, and she died... It was just such a blessing to have been there helping Bee bathe her mother's body with beautiful soaps, smooth her skin with lotions, working as thoroughly and gently as Mimi must have done forty-three years ago, when Bee had just been born."

I wish for a bed of hands and whispers when it's my time to leave this world. Until then, I want to love deeply with my words, my hands, and my heart. This love- it's the rainbow in our gloomy, soggy world.