a letter to loss

When you ask me how I’m coping with the recent loss of my mother, my response reflects the confusion of a Magic 8 Ball:

I’m OK.  I’m so fucked up.  I’m lugging around a screaming heart in my chest.  I’m a whitewater of love.  I’m wickedly blind.  I’m dying.  Come back later.

And it’s hard not to be hard on myself.  See, there I go again.  But the truth is, no one really knows how to accept death because every death is different.  Well, there are a handful of folks who seem to have a grasp, but as a person staring into the shadows of loss, I can say there are more unmarked trails than lit ones. 

There is no 12-step plan to manage or to stop this grief.  I’m suspect to the negligence of any claims that love will obey and isn’t ruled by total chaos because the deeper penetrated my arterial vein, the more I spin into the unknown, be it into ecstasy or horror.  Or both.  Most certainly into both. 

The best response I can give you right now is that I am learning to be a constant dancer.  I birthed both of my babies while fearlessly swaying and stomping across wooden floors, so it figures that in the face of death I’d be sweaty in the core of the mosh pit.  Every day reflects a newfound embodiment of letting go.  Interpretive dance at its rawest. 

Some days I’m arm and arm with love.  My mother is so close I can feel her peppery breath to my cheek, and the warmth of her fingers on my shoulder.  Other times I’m standing alone at the middle school dance, paralyzed and awkwardly reaching out for hope, for a body, only to find false idols and blisters. 

Then comes Sunday, the day my mom left her life, when I hit into textured walls of nostalgia and longing.  My nose bleeds and the ache burns my bare feet up to my chest and out through my skinny arms.  I look for her and she is nowhere.  I call for her into darkness.  Like a child in the throes of tantrum, I scream violently for her throwing myself against the door that separates us until I succumb to surrender.

This continues day after day, week after week.  And damn, the only thing I know is that I’m so thankful my mother taught me to dance in our living room.  Without those moves I’d have no idea how to waltz with life and with death now. One step at a time.