Hymns to the Silence...

January 29, 2011

What a week this has been. My nephew and his wife learned on Monday that the baby she was about to deliver was stillborn d/t a cord accident. Devastating. The news brought with it a flood of memories from my own personal experience of this unique kind of loss 17 years ago. Strange, isn't it, how you can be transported so immediately back to a long ago emotional time in the simple blink of an eye. The rush of the large painful emotions brought a sudden reminder of what remains in the back of my emotional closet no matter how far removed from the traumatic event. Yep, tucked rather safely in the back of the closet--probably buried under other significant, accumulated life memories and seemingly collecting dust is this, this large cardboard box. My family's tragedy this week forced me to reach into the dark closet and take the box out and attempt to delicately open the tucked, folded flaps (heavy sigh) to have a peak inside. I was trying to be so careful. I wanted to control the experience of the emotions that I knew were hidden in that particular box. It was not to be. The grief could not, would not, be held back. Rather, it came bursting out of the box along with every other triggered feeling related to the loss of my infant son. The box should have carried a warning: Contents Under Pressure. The grief! The sadness! Yes. I felt carried back in time. All of it was in there--the anger, pain, anguish, fear, despair. The questions still without answers. The tears. I mourned yet again at the magnitude of what was lost then and now. Can I ask just one more time...why? Why Kevin, why Elle?? It is an unanswerable question. I know that we all have them. Reliving a trauma reflexively causes us to ask again anyway. Perhaps we hope there is now an answer. Perhaps we just need to keep asking.

Surprisingly, in the box, I also encountered tenderness, love, peace, hope. I was able to take a look at each emotion. But more importantly, I was able to feel them all. I embraced everything. Opening the box and acknowledging what it has held for so long has been humbling. I am still processing it all. I think the experience this week has allowed me to appreciate what it means to live life fully. Doesn't Joseph Campbell talk about it? The experience of being alive. I am grateful to be alive. And I'm feeling...feeling all of life. The pain, the sorrow, the heartache, the joy. Everything. No intellectualizing, no stiff upper lip. No. Instead, this time around I am fully present to the hard emotions also. Not just the easy ones. It means that I cry and sob if I need to. I get angry. I'm sad. I ask, 'why me?' knowing there isn't an answer anyway. I give voice to all the guests in my emotional home. As Rumi so insightfully wrote centuries ago:

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

I am letting the emotional guests visit. Sometimes the guests arrive together. Other times, one at a time. No matter. I treat them well. They are gifts. Gifts of being alive. And I try to remember to say thank you as they leave...

Sadness and grief are visiting today. I have accepted them and allowed them in. They are but two guests in my expansive house. And I honor their presence.

Rumi's Guest House is a reminder to me. A reminder that when I am in the thrall of painful emotions I may want to consider accepting them as they are and allowing them their full expression. Now. In this moment.

I'm trying. Hard as it is...I'm trying...