Merry Christmas

When I sing in my head, I sound just like Shawn Colvin. Or maybe Emmylou Harris. Or Lucinda Williams. Some strong female lyricist who cuts straight to the point with a clear, bluesy twang. Where the heart is palpable. The pain not so far away. The solution perhaps still unclear. But the power and strength of her voice is undeniable. Unshakable. And it’s been a while since I’ve shared my thoughts with you, my big bad intraweb world. And mainly because I haven’t been sounding right in my head. The words I type, the songs I sing, it all comes out wrong. Flat.  Missing something.  And definitely nothing like Shawn. Or Emmylou. Or Lucinda. Because I haven’t really had the time to just stop. To sit. To absorb.

It’s Christmas Eve and I can’t get over how un-Christmasy I feel. The glow of the tree is sparkling in the reflection of the computer, the shiny presents stuffed under the boughs and stockings bulging with fun, secret little packages and bundles. These are the moments I wait for all year. The only time of year I love turning off all the lights but the Christmas tree, and just sitting. Watching. Thinking. Being thankful. And it’s all so beautiful, pain-stakingly so, that it makes me feel even less connected to it. Excited by it. Moved.

At the risk of sounding down-right depressing, this has been a pretty rough year.  Among my worst, I'd argue.  This has been one of those years that has tested my faith, stretched my skin, and challenged my assumptions. My faith that it all works out. My belief that everything happens for a reason. Which I still believe, but perhaps now with greater suspicion; without the same reckless abandon I once had for my silly not-so-serious life.

At the start of the summer, by best friend was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. We spent weeks processing what it meant for her. I went to her doctor’s appointments with her. We cried together. I got scared for her, taking on some of her burden, which is what we do for the people we love. We share more than just the good times. Not too soon after, I ended a relationship with a man I loved deeply. I spent weeks crying. Not eating. Feeling like the whole world had been taken away from me.  And I've spent months trying to convince myself I'm better off without him, something I'm maybe just now starting to believe.

Then in July, my father was diagnosed with cancer. CANCER. A scary, mean, dirty word. A word that makes the hair on your arms stand up. And no matter what they tell you, no matter how small or big the diagnosis, positive or negative the prognosis, you can’t help it. You cry. You freeze. You curl up in a ball and decide he’s dying. Or, rather, assume he is. You decide it’s over. (And considering this came on the heels of probably the most significant break-up of your adulthood, you double-time fall the fuck apart.)

And then after you’ve had a good ugly cry (underline that), and about 3 bottles of wine, and half a pack of cigarettes, you sort of sit up and ask yourself: What am I doing? You wonder why you’re laying on the deck at midnight and wearing sunglasses in the dark (which I was) and where the time went. You immediately feel guilty for being so self-absorbed and so unbelievably fragile. He has the cancer. Not me. And break-ups can't kill me.  Then a few days later, after thoroughly beating yourself up, you ease up on yourself and decide maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all to get stupid drunk and cry and hate the world. Or to worry yourself sick. And it goes on, thus and so, until you have more concrete answers. Until you know more. Until a treatment begins. A surgery happens. A test comes back from the lab.

And when the answers come back, “bad but not deadly”, “significant but not life-shattering”, “advanced but treatable”, you take a deep breath and pray to any and all gods you find available. You have one of those deep cleansing breaths. And you wait. And you pray. And you think happy thoughts and you dig yourself deep into your work and your schoolwork and you do everything you can to keep from going back to that place you were in just a few weeks ago, drunk, on the deck, wearing sunglasses at night.  But you never really release that worry; that anxiety that something could go wrong at any minute. Something could change everything in a matter of minutes. And in order to survive, you just tunnel. And become so heavily immersed that you actually lose yourself. Like legitimately. Because its all you can do.

And such has been my life for the last six months. And my best friend has all but been cured. My heart has all but mended. And my dad has survived. And he’s living, perhaps more now than ever before. Because that’s what surviving cancer makes you do. And the tests are coming back clear; those dumb-ass cancer cells unrecognizable. And you don’t realize how much you’ve been carrying it in between your shoulder blades and underneath your belly and behind your heart until all of the sudden it’s gone. And you feel a strange sense of relief. A spiritual release you didn’t anticipate. And you look in the mirror and you hardly see yourself anymore.

And then, because it’s just the way the world works, you start it all over again. And a million times in between. Because when you’re in this space, everything takes twice as much work. Each breath takes twice as much oxygen. And bad things never happen in isolation. One after another the bad luck trickles in, partially because you’re not exactly feeling so optimistic to begin with, which is like an open invitation to the dark side of life, but partially because I think this is just the way it’s meant to happen. It. Life. Cascading. Spinning. Rushing.

Just last week, my step-father had triple bypass surgery. Another quick, scary diagnosis that knocked the breath out from under me.  How quickly a little chest pain translated to a majorly invasive surgery.  Last Friday they split open his chest, drained his blood, stopped his heart and repaired it. They warmed him back up, gave him back his blood, and sewed him up. Put him back together again. Like Humpty. Or Dumpty. And two days ago he met me in the driveway at the end of a long drive south, made even longer by a temperamental rain storm and holiday traffic. Standing. Breathing. Smiling. Walking. Alive.  Slower.  With greater caution.  And with wounds yet to heal, but alive.  Perhaps more now than ever before. Because that’s what procedures like that make you do.

And somehow here I am on Christmas Eve. Nearly six months since my last post, feeling some mixture of happiness and content, depression and fear.  Sitting in the living room with my mother and stepfather. Listening to Nick Drake. Watching the lights twinkle. Napping with the dogs. Writing this. Wondering how it all works. Feeling so lucky to have life. To have health. To have the great blessings we have. And questioning what it has to do with Christmas. And wondering if my lack of Christmas spirit is actually a real, honest Christmas spirit that has little to do with the materialism and the false sense of joviality, but more to do with the magic and the miracle. Less about what I’ve spent and what I’ve bought and more about who I’ll see in the coming days. The boiled-down nitty-gritty parts of Christmas we rarely take the time to see, or acknowledge. The parts where we sometimes have a broken heart that isn‘t easily mended. The parts where we get scared. The parts where we don’t always know what happens next.

Wondering how these cells in our bodies are connected to our bones and our muscles and our hearts. Our spirits. Our families. Our friends. How one little cell can create such a ripple. One blockage. One group of clots. One tiny virus in our bloodstream. And thousands of tears. Nights of sleepless angst. Days of worry. Countless reactions.  One small moment.  And boom, it all changes.

How small things really do matter when you’re scared and feeling helpless. That friend who called. That card that was sent. That hand squeeze under the table that let you know you were loved. Supported. Protected.

How it’s great to love what you do, and to find solace in your work, but that you have to love yourself, too. And you can’t lose yourself so much that you can’t find yourself again when it’s time.

How much it matters to just be present. To take time to sit. To listen to music together. To hear each other breath and know it’s the most important noise on earth. The noise of being alive. Of sharing space.  Because our time together is limited. 

And maybe my Christmas take-home message is that none of us have all of the answers.  And that life is never easy.  Maybe I’ll never quite understand the year I just survived, or the one my father, my step-dad, and my best friend survived, too.  Maybe years from now I’ll look back at this moment, these collections of moments, with a clarity that helps me understand. Helps me grow. Helps me heal.  But maybe I won't, also.  And maybe that's okay.

And maybe we can’t control what happens to us, but rather we only really control how we react to what happens to us.  And how gracefully we allow ourselves to fall apart.  And come back together again.  Like Humpty.  Or Dumpty.  How long we leave the cracks in before we fill them with new stories and new ideas.  How much we allow ourselves the capacity to be alive.  How often we ask our loved ones to stand a little bit closer.  To hold hands.  And to love each other harder.

So this Christmas, which doesn’t really feel so much like Christmas at all, I wish for all of you (and myself) the great gift of compassion. Of understanding. Of time for healing.  And family.  Of great friends.  And good health.  And good food and wine.  Of life.   

May we all have grace, humility and strength.  And most of all, love. 
Merry Christmas.

Praying for Pink

I’m surrounded by noises that are rough and abrasive. I’m flying home from my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve spent the weekend listening to soft words. I've heard pieces of scripture read in soothing, quiet tones. We’ve shared stories and memories quietly with each other; gently acknowledging the way our eyes get wet in the corners when we think of her. We've been trying to be safe zones for each other, protecting one another from the outside. There has been a hushed silence forcibly placed on our lives this weekend without us asking for it—just an assumption that we couldn’t handle the noise that life makes all on its own. A correct assumption, I might add.

Suddenly I’m sitting in an airport, surrounded by people who can’t sense that the dark circles under my eyes are there because I haven’t sleep well in weeks. They don’t know that I’ve cried more in the last month than I have in the last year. They can’t tell from looking at me that last night I found myself so overwhelmingly sad, I had to excuse myself from a family dinner to run warm water through my fingers. That I had to sit down on the closed lid of a restaurant toilet to hold my face in my hands and take deep breaths.

There are children running around, with the happiness only children can have in an airport, and an anxious teenager behind me is chattering nonstop about her week at the beach. A woman across from me sloppily shoves food into her mouth—noisily chewing this disgusting thing an airport calls a sandwich. She drips food all over the seat she barely fits in. A man runs his wheeled luggage over my foot. He doesn’t apologize. And I can’t be upset with these strangers—these insensitive, disgusting, obnoxious strangers—because after all, I’m not walking around with a sign on my chest that says fragile. The experience is grinding and I can’t help but feel oppressed, attacked, and singled out.

The airport messages are blaring above my head, reminding everyone to limit their luggage, to queue up quickly and efficiently, and to follow the millions of rules that are now placed on all of us, surely, for our greater safety. There is a symphony of noise coming from behind the ticketing desk; clicking and beeping and the obnoxious noises coming from walkie-talkies. I feel like the people who work here have no regard for how noisy they make this space—how frequently their messages are repeated and overlapped with others. There are machines backing up. Loud people scream into cell phones. And I’m just looking for a quiet corner to sit in and write. I just want to release all the millions of things I’m thinking about right now. But I feel tongue-tied sitting here alone. I feel like I’m in such a strange space—this zone of grieving, sadness, and overall relief.

Finally, there is a break in the noise. A plane boards to Atlanta. For the time being, it appears the slobs, the anxious teens, and the insensitive owners of wheeled suitcases have boarded their plane to their final destinations. There is a soft silence that falls over this end of the airport. A wash of relief. A chance to breathe. Temporary, but necessary.

Four hours ago I sat in a quiet cemetery, thinking quietly to myself how peaceful this place is; an expansive cemetery covered in old live oaks. Moss hangs tenderly in the air. Despite the overwhelming sadness of this space, I’m astounded by how beautiful it is. As we sit through the short and tender graveside ceremony, I look forward at the small metal box that holds my grandmother’s ashes. I desperately want to open the box, let her breath in the humid Florida air. I’m feeling stifled thinking about an eternity spent in a small metal box. I want her ashes to float in the air—for her body to be here with us. I want her to be released, not held. I want her to laugh and share and cry together. I want to smell her—to feel her skin; to hug her soft frame. And I know that I’m being irrational—that what’s left in that small, metal box is basic biology. It’s the ashes of bones and cells and proteins. Her spirit has left us and gone forward. But I’m not sure how this space will feel without her. I’m not sure how long this sadness will linger.

Two weeks ago when I came to say goodbye to her, I knew death was around the corner. I saw him creep in with silent feet. I watched him slow her breathing and curl her toes. I listened, as she fought him entering her heart. He shut her eyes and turned off her memory, for good. But he did us all a favor—he stopped her pain. He ended her suffering. He closed her book. He wrote the final page. He took her home. And I can’t hate him for this. She was ready. She was tired.

But right now I’m sick to my stomach. I’m exhausted. I’m annoyed. I’m sad. I’m grieving. And I’m stuck in an airport—surrounded by all the things I hate most about America. I’m hoping that getting home and breathing deep makes this week easier. I’m hoping that all the people in my life can respect my need for quiet, my desperate hunger for gentleness. I’m hoping for relief. I’m praying for serenity and grace. On my first trip to Ghana, one of the people traveling with us asked the group, "I wonder what color the sand will be?" Another girl on the program thoughtfully responded: "I don't know but I'm praying for pink." This is what I'm doing right now. I'm sitting on a beach of gross, dirty, cold sand and I'm praying for pink.