Figuring Out Life While Aging
I wake sulky, reluctant, reviewing my resentments, lonely, yet don’t want visitors. Nothing satisfies: the sun is too bright; Our home too quiet. I want to hide. Another funeral - sitting huddled within myself, fists clenched, trying not to listen, wanting to leave, shaking. I crave - a softening in my throat, eyes that don’t itch, a conversation no longer available. Somewhere there is joy, waiting, perhaps, to flash through me, again, but now I’m grieving.
Grief, like an infant
held to my heart
whimpers,
and I don’t know
how to comfort.
I walk on,
hoping for silence,
past homes
where death has
also visited
on this dark street.
If I could weep,
if I could mourn,
if I could comfort
(if i could silence
this abandoned child),
Perhaps I could rest.
Like a sign finally read after years of passing by, turning down the path I’m required to take, asking what happens in this time called “grief”. There’s work to be done, putting a life away, hidden fears discovered, and stories told of what I was too close to see in our shared time. The busyness loosens and tasks frustrate. Suddenly I am distraught and yelling, lost ind alone, shaking in anger. Sometimes my voice wobbles and eyes tear. Sometimes I am happy in a new moment. Sometimes I don’t know who I am. Some who have walked this path tell me it never ends, but it has corners of comfort and grows less steep and rough. I want to be . . . I don’t know what this “new normal” is yet.
Bardo
In some schools of Buddhism, bardo … is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
The sun angles wrong on my eyelids;
I resist waking in this strange place.
I feel my father’s room;
The plants gone, the walls striped
Of the photos of the many people he loved,
The chairs and chest huddled together,
The bed barren, the lounge chair empty,
His life in boxes
To be removed.
Learning Living 