Again, I Cut Flowers in My Mother's Garden

Things are very different than the last time I wrote about this.

I'd come down to Washington to get away from things and find some quiet. The rest of my family had taken off for vacations to points north and west. My mother was alive. She was traveling as well. So, I was here and everyone else was gone. I'd come to do some writing, that year's counterpart to this writing project. I may also have been finalizing some things for the poetry collection that was published a year later.

Well, maybe some things are the same.

I've been invited to contribute to an anthology, so I'm creating a mini collection. I've got some poetry that I've been wanting to see if I can connect around a loose theme. It will be an interesting challenge to capture my mind.  

Of course, even though many things are the same, everything is different.

But I've arrived. Evening has fallen and while the late afternoon light touched the garden, I cut some of the hydrangea bloom I've been eagerly anticipating. It will be the last year. Most of what is coming this year will be firsts, but this will be the last blossoming of this garden I will enjoy.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what my mind is on most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Here's a link to Cutting Flowers in My Mother's Garden, July 2, 2018 -

https://kateknodel.blogspot.com/2018/07/cutting-flowers-in-my-mothers-garden.html

40 Days

The morning has been quiet.

And the minute I pause before typing, a lawnmower next door begins to sing. The note is discordant against the morning's peace and, yet, as I continue to type and it continues its relentless movement, it becomes part of the soundscape. There's a sense that what I expect, what I hope for, becomes replaced by something else, something not quite so welcome.

It's been 40 days since my mother's death, 40 days of walking through the wilderness of grief. A new landscape I would not have chosen to explore, but one that is mine nevertheless, a peaceful early morning interrupted by the sounds of power tools. 

I think of Elijah asleep at the edge of the wilderness. He is exhausted, emptied by grief and trepidation around the future. He's lost his determination. His sense of self. His sense of knowing.

His sense of connectedness.

He wakes briefly. An angel is there with him. A cake is being cooked over a fire. It carries the fragrance of presence and nourishment. There is a jar of water. 

Eat. Drink. You will need your strength for the journey ahead.

It will be 40 days of crossing an inhospitable landscape, one that a rare person would choose. But it is the only way to Horeb, the mountain of God. There are times in life when only God's companionship and counsel will do. This is one of those times.  

It is a solitary journey, the only companionship a belly full of grace and a journey cloak of memory. An angel had been there, weaving it with words, water, and journey cake.

Finally reaching the mountain, climbing, climbing. Hiding in a dip in the rock, the only shelter from the elements. Fire, wind, earthquake. 

Silence.

A voice calls his name. 

Why are you here? Come out. Feel my embrace. 

Remember who you are and that you have things to do.

He stands, wraps his mantle around his bony frame, and steps into the very power, presence, and palpability of God. There, on the precipice, more vulnerable than he's ever been before, he finds his footing. Begins to walk. Climbs down and moves forward, back across the landscape. Differently. 

What has changed for him? 

As I think about it today, I'm thinking that the beginnings of grief are a deep sense of aloneness. The movement through the landscape is discovery around presence. But there's also a sense that the awareness of being alone is true as well. Deeply true. And, yet, there's also a sense of companioning that we put on like clothing. It's available to us, but separate from us. And as we continue to live into this new thing, we get used to it. It becomes what is now real.  

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What is Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what is on my mind most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

A Hundred Years of Happiness

It's a state of mind, of course.

It took me about 36 days to learn this last year. My summer writing practice was themed around happiness. Around awareness and intention, actually, for that is what it takes. 

Happiness is a spiritual practice, a mental practice as well. It's a great example of how thoughts, awareness, and intention go a long way to creating our reality. It's why people can survive terrible things, because they companion themselves and their experience with life-giving thoughts, awareness of what is exists alongside one's own suffering, and intention to notice where the small things in life testify to something beyond our thoughts and our experience.

I remember reading about a woman's experience with something so horrendous that most people would wonder how she could survive it, how she could find even a small measure of happiness within it. She spent her days watching the paths of butterflies that summer, and the ways they flew in and out of the place that held her captive. She reflected on her awareness that there is life beyond, around, and even within her experience, and this awareness gave her strength and courage to meet the experience of her days. 

That was her experience.

A memory came up on Facebook today. It was the writing from my blog on this day last year. I reread it for fun. I notice that sometimes as I am encountering my days during these summer writing projects, similar themes or awareness or insights rise out of my experience and my reflections. This one was about noticing the small things in life and allowing them to shape how we experience our lives, or at least the day before us. 

At the bottom of my daily writing, I always restate my theme and say something about it. Last year's was - A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing project that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Interestingly, on this day last year, I wrote ~

                                        A Hundred Years of Happiness . . . 

I didn't notice it at the time. I noticed it only as I was looking back on that time, a time that each moment of my days was wrapped in an awareness of my own happiness. Blessings, The ways I am fortunate. My desire for peace, prosperity, good health, contentment. The small things in the day that make me smile, like how cool the morning are and how wonderful it is to open the windows and smell what makes the Earth green. The fragrance of nectarines ripening on the counter and the sweetness of strawberries in season. The ways sunlight dances on the leaves and the leaves dance on the breeze. The soft blue skies and soft white clouds peeking through the frame of trees outside my window. The orchid that hasn't stopped blooming since my last birthday.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what is on my mind most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

 

Fish for Breakfast

I'm restless this morning.

All I see are open projects, things left undone, papers that need to be collected and recycled, things out of place, things that have no place yet.

A coal seam in the landscape of my home.

I look around and feel bewildered. Where do I begin? It seems that this needs to happen before that can be done, and that needs to happen before something else can be done. Layers upon layers of things calling for my attention. 

My attention feels like a limited resource these days. And I'm not sure that there's enough of it even on a good day to begin to clear things.

So they sink, dead and decaying organic matter that falls into shallow and stagnant waters. Buried. The temperature increases and the pressure becomes greater. The compression and heat turn it into something harder, and harder still.

Carbon? Diamond?

Sometimes I open my fridge and look inside when my thoughts feel too big. I notice the fish I took out of the freezer last night to thaw for dinner tonight. The two small glass jars with stewed veg and sautéed veg that looked good but that I had no idea what to do with when I moved them from freezer to fridge. I'd cooked up all that just before the unexpected trip to see my mother in the hospital. 

The oven is preheating and the mahi mahi is seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper in my cast iron skillet. The jars of veg sit on the counter. I'll add that when the fish is mostly done to heat everything together and combine the flavors. 

My tea has gone cold while I've been writing.

The skillet goes into the oven and I set the timer I brought home from Mom's. It was a gift from my daughter to her grandmother. It looks like a chubby blue bird with big eyes and yellow feet. My daughter said, "Please take this home with you, Mom. I like thinking about you using it and it being in your kitchen now." She told me to take other things too. A set of beautiful, hand-painted measuring bowls, a small plate with a beautiful quotation. 

What has heart and meaning will find its way in. In the meantime, there's fish for breakfast.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began, and this is what's on my mind most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Elucubrate

The street below my window is hushed.

Inky darkness blurs the view.

It is so late that I do better to be in bed than at the keyboard.

Yet. 

Yet, time runs short. 

Midnight oil burns at 11:09.

Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.

Creating Space: Three Months for Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began, and this is what's on my mind most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Quotation from Frances Quarles, Emblemes, 1635. (the first printed reference to the midnight oil)

That's the Thing

There are days when the only thing I want to do is vent.

Today is one of those days.

The thing is, venting does not always make me feel better. 

Sometimes, it just winds me up.

My colorful reminder from earlier in the month hangs next to my kitchen door.

It says, 

                     Create Space Today - to do one small thing that brings joy, happiness, or expansiveness - What is it?

I can't think of anything right away, so I close my eyes.

And breathe.

In through the nose to the count of five. Our through the mouth to the count of seven.

I do it over and over again.

There it is. That's the thing.

Creating Space: Three Months for Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began, and this is what's on my mind most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

The Art Waits

I stacked five pieces of art from my mother's house in the back of my car yesterday morning. 

Later that afternoon, they were stacked in my son's living room. One leaned against the wall, the others rested on a table, white sheets of spongy paper between them on top of the glass. I sighed as I saw them there. While my brain organized this new information.

It's part of dismantling my mother's house, her home actually. The house will remain intact. The things that made it particularly hers, and a home, is what we're dismantling. 

My place looks similar with stacks of artwork leaning against walls, waiting. Waiting for how they will come together in my home. Similar stacks of art wait in my brothers' homes as well. There are pieces my daughter will take, my nephews, and others who we're not yet imagining. 

The art waits, some of it still hanging on the walls in my mother's house.

She had a lot of art. 

I don't know how she did it, put so much art on so few walls and made it look good. 

But she had an eye for beauty. And for pattern. And for placement. 

I can't get the image of stacked art, waiting, out of my mind. Like seeds carried by birds and planted in new places to flower in another bit of land. The tree hangs heavy with fruit that falls to the ground, and the seeds are planted and life renews itself. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.  

Me, Happier

A box of happiness arrived at my door today.

Turns out that it's not magic. You have to work at it. 

I was watching a local PBS station recently, not the big one, one of the smaller ones. I love their programming. They often have some old, funky offerings as well as those PBS-offered-only-when-they-are-fundraising-personal-wellness shows. I love the specials with Dr. Daniel Amen and his work with the brain. It seems that the brain really is the control center of everything in life, including happiness.

Last year for my summer blogging project I spent 100 days noticing what was emerging in my life around happiness. It seems that just being aware of happiness and directing some energy toward it raises my happiness level. What I've noticed in the intervening months is that when I am not intentionally cultivating happiness, it can slip away and I can fall into habits that actually undermine my happiness. 

All of this is borne out in Dr. Amen's studies. We have to work at it. At least a little. And we have to have some awareness around it and direct some energy toward it. 

Is it weird that I've started thinking about happiness while I am grieving?

Probably not. 

I know that I cannot escape the grief I am experiencing. I also want to feel better, to grieve in healthy ways and not throw out my well-being while grieving. To be as intentional as I can about all of this. 

At least when I am in my right mind. 

Dr. Amen talks about seven "secrets" to happiness. Of course, calling them "secrets" is a way to get people's attention. They're pretty predictable. Things like do healthy things for and with your body. Think good thoughts. Don't believe everything you think. Give attention to relationships -- spiritual, family, friendships, social, professional. Take some time to think about what makes you happy. It might not be the same thing that makes other people happy or even something you have assumed about yourself.

It's the first on the list of "secrets" that might stymie us a bit. "Know your brain type." Dr. Amen is a psychiatrist who also studies the brain structure (not simply symptoms and behaviors). He's identified types within everything he's studied - types of ADD and ADHD, for example. One kind of treatment does not fit all the types. He's done the same thing with the brain, relative to happiness. Identified what he calls five brain types. And, of course, you can have a dominant type and a combination of other types figuring in to your own unique expression of these types. 

The box of happiness that arrived at my door contains the everything-you-need package to really dive in if I want to. I'm starting with the book. I have to admit, though, that it's slow going with the reading. His material is so dense and my attention span so loose these days, but it feels like a good place to begin. There's an app and a 30-day plan, but that feels like it's too much right now.  

It's just fun to know that a box of happiness has arrived at my door, and that I can open it up and poke around and pull out what I need for today. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.   

Kitchen Table Philosophy

Some nice bread and cheese.

A glass of cool water, infused with lemon and basil.

Birdsong.

Sunshine.

A breeze. 

We choose what we see, the story we tell. 

Mass shootings.

Politicians run amok.

A billionaire class that would starve the rest of the world.

Divisions among people. 

Rape of the Earth.

All of that is there as well, existing in the same moment.

We choose what we see, the story we tell.

Some nice bread and cheese.

A glass of cool water, infused with lemon and basil.

Birdsong.

Sunshine. 

A breeze.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Solstice Morning

The day is exquisite, soft and filled with bird song.

I'm stunned by the silence, when usually the sounds of car engines and lawn power tools punctuate the early part of the day.

I look around at the chaos in my space - my apartment strewn with Amazon boxes and things I've brought home from Mom's, things I haven't tidied in the normal course of days. There's also the chaos in my inner space, as my brain maps the new world in which I've landed. A landscape without the usual markers that tell me I'm home, safe, and nourished. 

It's ironic that the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere shifts into being when the sun crosses the zero degree of Cancer, the sign of the Mother, and I am learning what it means to be without mine. I'm thinking about her so much, how much she loved life, how much she loved her family, how much she loved her home, how much she loved me. 

How much she loved.

Someone once wrote that grief is the price we pay for love. I'm not sure I would say it quite that way, but I certainly feel what he or she was trying to communicate. 

I spent some time this morning, in my morning journal, thinking about what my mother valued, what shaped her life. I came up with a list. I'm not sure it's exhaustive and I wonder why I chose what I chose to see today. Here's a glimpse:

What would Mom want? Our happiness -- she knows we could never forget her. What was her life about?

Making a beautiful home. Lovingly prepared meals. Travel and adventures (mild, safe-ish adventures). Laughter. Enjoyment. Art and Culture. Knowing where we come from. 

I am thinking about her values. Duty. Service. Family. Pleasure. Moderation. Caution. Country and citizenship. Having nice things. Although later in life, she became more measured around money and spending. Responsibility. 

There has to be more. What am I missing? Why are these the things I see today? 

A lone pickup truck guns its engine, drives off, and the street is quiet again. 

Except for birdsong. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.  

One Month

The truth is I really miss my mother and the thought of never seeing her again makes me feel very sad. 

There are other feelings too, but I do not dare to open the door on them very far because when I do they feel powerful, like I might drown in them. Waves crash over me and pull me in their momentum out to sea. 

A rip tide of the heart.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Father's Day Fete

The day was beautiful, sunny in the high 60s-low 70s. Perfect for mid-June. 

Had lunch on the deck of a local eatery. It's usually good, but today the service was careless. Things like double the wait time, being seated at a dirty table that had not been re-set, food arriving before there was flatware available. Being overcharged for the wine. I kept my mood up, was patient, kind, and relaxed. The server kept asking if I wanted to speak to the manager. 

No. I want to have a fun, carefree lunch. 

Walked down to the local indie bookstore. I've been wanting to stop in for awhile but haven't been in town. Picked up a book I've been thinking about reading for a few years and spent time on the porch swing. An achingly beautiful day, gentle swinging, holding a new book -- lulled me into a glorious ease, a wakeful nap.

I wouldn't say that I sucked the marrow out of the day but I did make broth with the bones.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

   

Little Pleasures

I had lunch with a friend a week ago. 

She made a yummy poached fish with herbs. She also offered some really nice water -- one steeped with cucumber and mint and the other with lemon. 

I ordered some pretty carafes today to make flavored water. There are three in the set. One for cucumber and mint, which I'd never thought to put together, one for lemon and basil, and another for some kind of fruit and herbs, probably berries or peaches or whatever else might be in season as the summer goes on. I like strawberry and basil together. I'm thinking of trying tarragon with something.

We planted herbs around the house this year. My landlady died on Epiphany and her son bought the house and moved into the apartment downstairs. I asked if he'd mind if I plant herbs out front. He thought that was a great idea and said he'd see about planting tomatoes in the backyard - in pots or a raised bed. We have to figure out where the best sun is out back. 

The spring was unseasonably cold and wet and by the time there was sun enough and warm temperatures to plant the herbs, I had left for Washington to be with Mom in the hospital. I thought I'd be there a few days and it turned out to be almost three weeks.  

When I came back, Bob had planted the herbs, and flowers as well, everything we'd talked about the weeks before I left. There was something deeply compassionate in his doing that. And today I'm drinking water that has been enhanced by the basil and the mint that we've got growing out front. It feels like a gift. Of course, it is.

I'm forcing myself toward little pleasures - like beautiful and delicious water - to help balance the sadness I am feeling over my mother's death and the dawning reality of her being gone. 

In Mary-Frances O'Connor's The Grieving Brain, she talks about the way the brain maps changes in life. When we're born, the brain maps the new landscape . . . who picks us up when we cry, who feeds us, whose face it is that meets our little faces. And when someone core to our life dies, the brain needs to map that as well. To map that they are not there any more. The empty space that is new in the landscape. Personally, I think that if we were not cushioned from the shock of such a death by this brain mapping, we might die ourselves or go mad. 

I think it helps us in the mapping of the new landscape to try new little things to meet ourselves there. Things like beautiful and delicious water. It's pretty much all I can manage right now. 

And it's enough to meet the moment.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

That Girl

When I was that girl, I had a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother.

I sat on my grandmother's lap as I blew out the candles on the cake my mother made for my thirteenth birthday. 

One month ago, I was a mother and a daughter.

Today I am only a mother. My daughter is only a daughter.

The matrilineal line is lonely these days.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Weather Report

A storm is coming.

I hear thunder. It's come up suddenly. The day has been dark, cloudy, soft. Not unlike a down comforter in winter.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Wide Open

My mind is blank. Overloaded.

I look at my calendar to try to find a free week, a week that I can simply unplug from communications devices and from work, so that I can rest. I think about taking off for wide open spaces. I think about a night of undisturbed sleep. I think about sitting on the sand and watching the ocean. Sitting on a rock and watching the sky.

I close my eyes and clear space in my mind. Just thinking about the ocean, the desert, the sky brings them closer. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.  

Later That Day

I'm looking forward to dinner with friends.

And thinking about something other than grief and death.  

Later that day: it was wonderful.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Encore

We were at the cemetery today for my aunt's burial. 

The grass has nearly grown back on my mother's grave. 

One day it will look as if the ground has never been disturbed.

Hundreds of deep pink buds are about to open on trees that grow over my grandparents' and great-grandparents' graves. 

I want to see them bloom.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

A Beautiful Day

The family gathered today to say good-bye to my aunt.

It's been two years and six weeks since she died.

Pandemic paused these kinds of gatherings and left families with bewildering space. 

It felt good, finally, to celebrate her and to commend her to God's everlasting embrace.

Everlasting.

Unending.

Eternal.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Skirting the Rabbit Hole of Things

I am back in my mother's house.

This morning, while writing, I was distracted by the many things that still remain here, even with her gone.

And it is not simply the things I can touch.

But also the things that touch me.

I paused the writing and began to move around the room. And then I returned.

There are times, in the morning writing, that I drift away or fall away or slip down some kind of rabbit hole of thought. 

Today it was something else, as I rose and picked up this thing, or drew my fingers across that thing, or paused and touched a memory attached to something else.

But in returning to the page, I skirted the rabbit hole of things and returned to myself .

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Death Is Not Done with Me Yet

 I woke to another liminal space this morning.

The day is a bridge between places again, between rivers of my life, between . . . just between. Tonight, after a full day during which I must somehow squeeze in some packing and tidying and watering my plants, I’ll drive back to Washington, back to Mom’s house, and into the space of death and family grief once again.

My aunt died two years ago, a casualty of COVID-19, when she was unable to get a surgery she needed because medical resourcing was dedicated almost exclusively to meeting the challenges of the pandemic. My aunt and uncle had been planning their 50^th anniversary celebration. Her death, just weeks shy of their anniversary, was a cruel irony.

I remember writing a tribute the morning after she died. I wrote about the open space of grieving that the pandemic demanded, as families were unable to come together to support each other, to celebrate, and to bury loved ones. I wrote about the sheer bewilderment of my uncle as he was left with the solitary task of planning a celebration of my aunt’s life (someday) instead of the partnered planning of a celebration of their life together.

Then we all waited.

Waited for the pandemic to end. (It hasn’t.) For the right time to gather to celebrate my aunt’s life and to grieve together. (Is there an obvious “right time”?)  For the confusion of the new landscape to begin to clear and show us its markers as we find our way through unfamiliar territory.

More than a month ago, my uncle decided it was time. We set the date. June 12. We began to make plans. A beautiful memorial celebration at their home with family and close friends. There would be food and flowers and storytelling, and the wearing of bright colors instead of the dark shades of bereavement. I began to think about what a memorial two years after a death might look like. How to celebrate, remember, honor, and grieve now, without taking us all back into the days just after her death and into the immediacy of all that. I began to pull together readings and prayers and poetry.

What was it? A week or two later that my mother went into the hospital, and then died a week after that, and then a week later the funeral and burial, and a week later the trip back home (for me), and now another week later and I am going back and our family, still raw with my mother’s death, will gather again to remember and celebrate my aunt?

I pause. Close my eyes. And breathe.

And we will . . . show up again for each other and for what life and love call us to. 

 

 

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What’s Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Mending the Heart

Everyone has been so kind. 

There have been invitations – dinner last night and tonight, lunch tomorrow. All prepared by friends at home. Someone stopped by the office yesterday with roses, freshly cut from her garden and fragrant. She also brought a small gift bag with tiny bottles of essential oils and a small packet of tea. Chamomile Comfort.

When I came home from work yesterday, my arms overflowing with gifts and kindness, I saw a box on the step and the corner of a greeting card envelope in the mailbox. The box was from my favorite chocolatier – Kakawa Chocolate House in Santa Fe. Friends in one of my writing groups remembered. The card was from someone whose mother died a few years ago. She remembered the love and support given to her during that time and offered it to me. It’s a beautiful circle, that kind of connection.

When I came home from Mom’s almost a week ago, my footfalls on the hardwood floors echoed like sounds in an ancient abbey. I move through my space as if it has somehow become strange and a little unrecognizable. There has been a shift at home that mirrors the shift in my larger sense of home.

My brothers and I have been talking a lot lately. I think we are weaving connections to bind up the places that have been rent. That word. I always think of something Jeremiah said in the Bible, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Isn’t that what grief does? Rend the heart?

I was talking on the phone last night to a friend whose husband died suddenly last weekend. He asked what I was doing to take care of myself. I told him that mostly I am trying to be attentive to my heart. That there actually is something called “broken heart syndrome.” Takotsubo cardiomyopathy can follow an extreme stressor, like the death of a loved one, especially in women over 50. It turns out that you can die of a broken heart.

So, the people who love me are getting it right. Fragrant, freshly-cut roses from the garden, beautifully crafted dark chocolate truffles, lovingly prepared meals and company, a flood of cards, essential oils and teas, phone conversations and so many other things that remind me that I am not alone.  

You see, for most of us, our mothers are the first and most constant source of love in our lives. Even before we draw our first breath, we live under her heart and her heat beat is our first language. 

When that disappears from the world, what then?

 

  

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What’s Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Unpacking a Photograph

There was a long shelf in my mother's living room where she kept the wedding pictures of her children. 

Mine was still there, even though I've been divorced for almost ten years. It's a photograph that echoes one of my grandmother as a bride, long white gown with the train sweeping around me. My attendants’ bouquets encircle me. I think it was probably a popular pose in the 80s, one I wanted to make sure the photographer took. I was young and hopeful for all the beauty and wonder of life and love and of building a life and family together.

Mom kept that memory for me.

When my husband and I separated, I put the wedding album and all the framed photographs we had in our home away in a large bin. The bin is in storage along with bins that have many of our other family photographs. It was too difficult in those days to look at them. To see what had died.

But I love that my mother kept the memory of the girl who stood on the threshold of all the wonderful things in life, who was radiant with joy and ready to step into a new expression of her life. In my mother’s house it was one of many beautiful family memories.  

I can’t help but think I am standing on another threshold as I grieve the death of my mother.

Bereavement is liminal space. An old life has ended. The landscape of the new is not clear. There is a radical reorientation of everything. New maps are being drawn. Literally.

There is something this writing wants to capture today – the way a photograph captures a moment in time and makes it live forever.

Love is risky. We know that the people in our lives come and go. And to love them is to acknowledge that one day we will lose them. But we still take the risk. We open ourselves to loving and to being loved.   

Yesterday I unpacked the photograph and set it down quickly. Charlie was coming for lunch and there was food to prepare and the table to set and time to spend together. This morning I walked into the living room and picked up the framed photo and held it in my hand. 

It was a living thing in my mother’s house, a piece of a larger family story. I’m not sure what it is today, or where it belongs.

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What’s Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

 Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

One Small Thing

Yesterday it was flowers, and a trip to the store to buy ingredients for a nice meal I'll share with my son today.

I am finding that with grief the landscape changes moment to moment. Distraction does not work with me. I need space to feel my feelings, to map the changing topography. What does work, is creating space for life-giving things, even small ones, like three beautiful stems of lily or three vibrant sunflowers or taking apart a sweet onion with a nearly perfect dice and concentration on my knife work. 

Releasing the fragrance of fresh dill or a juicy lemon. Seeing the beauty of a savory pilaf come together and then adding just a bit of dried apricot to tease out some sweetness.

To tease out some sweetness.

I'm thinking about the sweet things in life today. And about balance. I'll work some today and play some. Spend some time with my son, making and savoring a beautiful meal and a nice glass of wine. It's a chardonnay. I didn't think I liked them, but while I was away a few months ago, researching California Central Coast organic and biodynamic wines I discovered this bottled sunshine. 

I hope it tastes as good at home as it did under the pergola at the vineyard.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Aha! Moments

I had one today.

My world has become very small, contracted. Between habit changes with the pandemic and full-time transition work and worry about a parent, helping, death, and grief, I've let go of many of the things that made up my life before the pandemic and many of the things that have felt expansive - like travel, museums, art galleries, cultural events, and just going out and walking around and stopping to explore new places that look interesting.

I've been spending a lot of time alone. Too much time on Zoom. Too little time in nature. 

Like so many people, I think I may have internalized the thought that "all this will blow over." Logically, I know it won't, but I'm not sure I've really explored this. I've been distracted. I may have created habits without intention. Or with only the intention to keep me safe and weather the crisis.

The world as I've known it has ended.

But it's tricky because so many things look the same. Like the view outside my window. Like the view inside my walls. It's the view inside my head that's changed.

The common-sense wisdom after a major death in one's world is not to make any big decisions for a year. One needs time to manage the shock, not to be reactive. But are there little things that I can do to bring about some small relief in this newly identified and named feeling that my world has become so small? How do I not turn it into a big project that feels exhausting? What can I do today? One small thing that helps me to feel expansive?

Great questions, but here's the rub: I look around and all I can see are things I need to do. I could take the next hour and do some of the small things that need to be done - like carry out the recycling that I usually wouldn't put outside until pick up day. It can wait in the bins instead of in my kitchen. That would clear some space. It's one small thing. 

And now for the expansive. Ugh. There's not enough space yet for me to see. Especially since I'm just visualizing space rather than really having it. So the one small thing for today is to find one small thing, once I've cleared a little space, that can bring some joy, happiness, and expansion to my world. And to trust myself that I will follow through. 

But, just in case, I'll make a big colorful reminder.

Crating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

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When Interruption Shows Up

It is inevitable.

Night writing late at night after a long day at work. It's the fifth year of this writing practice and I still haven't figured this one out. So I simply show up and count myself grateful to be able to do that. To create the space I need to show up for the writing.

But it's also been "one of those days" in other ways. Blogger keeps freezing, so thoughts get interrupted and it's hard to get into the writing flow. Interruptions lead to pauses in my thinking or lost trains of thought, or frustration that takes me out of the stream what might like to show up. I learn to live with these circumstances and show up nonetheless.

I could make a list of the things today that could keep me from writing; the things I've mentioned are just the small, annoying things. 

I've returned to work after having been away unexpectedly. Projects at work have been interrupted; the flow of what I might have been creating at work a few weeks ago has evaporated. Tomorrow I'll be in the office and attending to things that have been waiting for me. There are projects around the house that need my attention. 

What's showing up today is interruption. 

But I'm thinking about the big questions that come with these small annoyances. Like why they bother me so much. (The annoyances, not the questions.) Like what they might be pointing to that I might be ignoring because it feels to big too address. That's the thing about night writing. Here in the dark, things that want to stay hidden find it harder to hide.  

Creating Space: Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Tree of Life

Everything feels weird.

Home does not feel like home. The few little things I brought home from Mom's seem strange and disconnected in my space. Of course, truthfully, things are a mess. I lit out of here very quickly almost three weeks ago, leaving a bit of chaos behind me. There are boxes and bags of recycling that need to go out. My kitchen table is covered with paper and dishtowels and books and mail I need to go through. I haven't unpacked from my trip yet. I did water the plants. They were hanging on for dear life. 

I feel strange too. Not quite right in my body. This morning I lost it. Lots of tears. I felt inconsolable and deeply alone.

I went to my dresser, to a box Mom gave me in 2015. It was filled with things she made for me that had messages attached - mother/daughter connection-type messages. The box had held a gift that my daughter gave her grandmother several years before. Mom repurposed it to hold a gift for me.

It makes a beautiful kind of circle.

 And I think she made it for just this time. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Drying My Wings

The list is long.

I'm getting ready to leave my mother's house and head home after these threshold weeks. It feels like a new world that needs new maps. So I'm not sure what to expect. What to find. How I will be with all of it. These weeks have been a chrysalis and I have come completely undone. I know the next step is to break the seam and emerge. Dry my wings. Fly. 

From flower to flower. Gathering nectar and pollen to nourish and create.

It's the right season for it.

The moisture hangs heavy on the green in my mother's garden. Flowers that were coming into blossom when I arrived are spent. Peony. Azalea. Rhododendron. Mountain laurel. Even the first blooming of roses is spent. But there will be more. The spiderwort continues to bloom. When I come next week there may be hydrangea. I would like to see one more blossoming of Mom's hydrangea here. 

There are many lists, it seems. Not just the one that lets me know I've done everything I need to do before I get in the car and drive away.

Mom always stood at the back door, waving and calling, "I love you!" as we drove away. 

And if I am truthful, I will admit that each time I went in these last years, I took a long look just in case it would be the last time I would see her standing there.  And the last time was. The last time. That was April 29. Another Friday.

I drove away, waving to my mother who was standing on the threshold of her house. Three weeks later I held her hand as she stood on the threshold of life and death. Today I'll cross the threshold of the house again for the drive back home and the threshold will be empty for the first time when I look back. I'll cross the threshold at home and everything will be different there too. These days of threshold crossings leave me so much to reflect on. I've felt cocooned here, cushioned a bit from it all.

I notice that when I use phrases like "it all," I've hit my edge and it's time to lay down the work for the day. Tomorrow I'll be writing from a different place, with a different view, at a different table. My most familiar writing spot. 

But I wonder as I sit here today in the place I always considered a change-of-scenery during these writing projects, whether that will be a world-turned-upside-down too.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Among Her Things

It was a week ago that we had my mother's funeral.

I'd come to Washington because she was in the hospital, and by the end of the week she had died. This was not what I expected when I got here. Sometimes death comes quickly and unexpectedly, and I think it might always be a shock.

I've spent the last few weeks at my mother's house. I feel close to her here, among her things. Where I sometimes catch a breath of her scent. Where I turn around and see in my mind's eye a scene from a memory. Where I can pick something up and feel her. Where I prepare a meal in her kitchen and feel her with me, laughing.

I'm taking a few things home with me. I wonder how they will fit into my house, into my life. I'm not quite ready to let go of the house that was home to five generations of my family. That held our celebrations. That I've known as home since my birth when it was my grandparents' house. 

There is so much to think about, to reflect on, to get used to. When I think about writing about it, I feel overwhelmed. So I decided just to start writing. One piece of writing will never hold everything, just a piece of the story. The empty page feels like a canvas. My words, brush strokes. An image begins to emerge from the space and the color. 

I'm not yet sure what I see. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up. A daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.