On Ashes: The Outtakes

This post is an add on to Katherine's piece, On Ashes, published on her blog Helping Friends Grieve.

After sharing the story of spreading my father’s ashes, other people’s stories have trickled into my life. Many more people than I had expected responded with their stories of the ashes they have spread and those that have yet to be spread. I should preface this piece by noting that there appear to be a variety of experiences that surround the process of spreading ashes and a multitude of ways that individuals interact with the process.

From what I have seen, we seem to strive for this seemingly magical moment where everyone finds peace with the death, the birds may sing, the sun rises above the mountains, and we know it is time. Of course, my description of the sun and birds, is a hyperbole, but it is meant to show that reality gets in the middle of our plans. The mishaps, planned and un-planned plans, and stories of carrying ashes around (for months or years) captivate me.

As always, many people have a story, and I am going to take the liberty in this piece to weave the narratives of others in with my own story of how I ended up on top of various mountains and rocks to spread my father’s ashes. Ultimately, I had my magic moments, the sun did rise above the mountains, the birds did sing, and I was overcome with a sense of peace---but not without the reality and hilarity of mishaps along the way.

Last summer, I had my first brush with what I call the re-personification of someone in the presence of their ashes. As we were walking into the small church in the center of town, a family friend asked me to grab her mom out of the back of the car and bring her in. Of course, I knew that her “mom” was the black box of ashes safely tucked in the back of her. This box, “her mom,” had accompanied her on her recent road trip, yet the banality of the request made me give her a double take. We joked that her last trip with her mom had been this road trip she had recently taken on the east coast. My family friend had visited her friends, accompanied by her mom, in the black box, in the back seat. In this moment, an uncle snapped a shot of me, in a cute blue dress, ready for the funeral, arms full of giant yellow sunflowers, with a small backpack, containing the black box, on my back. It is so mundane, yet, her mom, has such a huge presence.

I realize these stories may sound a bit crude, if you’ve never had ashes in your possession or reached in a box and physically touched someone you have missed for years. However, the thing about ashes is that they have to be transported (or at least stored somewhere) to wherever you plan to leave them, thus, you must interact with them. This moment of interacting, somehow forces the presence of the person who has died. Momentarily, the person takes a physical form or a presence in your journey, a journey they are no longer part of. Rarely, as living beings do we come so close to touching death. Rarely does it feel like something you can touch---something that can simply slip between your fingers if you open them just a crack. Yet, the presence of the ashes momentarily relieves the gaping hole experienced by someone’s absence. On the drive home from spreading part of the ashes, I was alone. I simply buckled my father, in his black box, into the passenger seat in the front seat. In a moment of unrelated frustration, I expressed to him a sentiment about wanting to be outside, running and climbing in the mountains---something only he a few others in my life understand. Perhaps I was able to have that thought pattern because my mind was attuned to his presence.

In my journey home to Colorado to spread my father’s ashes, I felt this sense of presence. I carried his ashes to Columbine Mountain outside of Winter Park, I carried them to the top of a peak at over 14,000, I climbed with them up a rock wall at my family’s cabin, and finally, I took them on a multi-pitch climb---testing my own climbing abilities. I felt invincible, as if the ashes could protect me, after all my dad had touched the ground in each of these locations, in his living life, so I imagined him guiding me there in his afterlife. I imagined, the natural world, making way for me to complete climbs, knowing that my father had to be returned to this very location. It all seemed clear as thunderstorms split, showing lightening on each side of our rock face, but leaving us safe and dry. The irony that I felt he needed to be returned to the natural world, the same world that had captivated his imagination and led to his early death, was not lost on me. But in that presence, it really felt right, and by right, I mean, that there was no other option---when someone is home it simply feels right.

As I wrote in reflection to spreading my father’s ashes, after eight years without touches or embraces, to suddenly touch his body, although reduced to ash, was astounding. Yet, I am embarrassed to say, a small part of me was disturbed at literally touching a dead body---after all, in spreading the ashes, you physically touch them. I had never really considered the consistency of ashes, but I imagined the fine ash left by a camp fire. I was surprised at the small remnants of bone that weighed down the ash when I spread it on my palm. Reaching my hand into the black box, only brought about more questions of how his body had become reduced in that manner. I teetered between loving the closeness I felt to my father and being concerned when suddenly the wind picked up and the ashes flew back at me---covering my jacket and black pants with white and grey dots. What do you do next---wash your hands? Wash your clothes? After all, those grey dots are still part of him. Or---as Coree---so appropriately notes after finding herself spooning her “dad” into an urn, what do you do with the spoon? You can’t just wash it off---after all, it has ashes on it.

Yet, you laugh with the process. After hours of climbing to recreate a picture of my dad on this specific rock in 1979 and to spread his ashes there, I reached the point---100 feet down on a free rappel. I managed to open the medicine container I had stored the ashes in with one hand (the other hand firmly on my rope---as I was still hundreds of feet in the air). As I prepared myself to spread them, the wind grabbed the ashes, whipping them up into my face. I was startled, but more than that, overcome with giggles at what a joyful hilarious moment this was. That picturesque moment became a hilarious struggle of me trying to rappel, laugh, and somehow get the ashes out of my eyes and mouth.

Like everything else, it wasn’t as planned. Yet it was a moment in which I felt closer to my dad and closer to his sense of home---which after all, really was the point.

Uncertain Summers

As a child, growing up in the United States, our lives flow around the September-June cycle of the school year. Autumn signals new clothes and an assortment of pens and notebooks for the classroom, winter hints at building snowmen on the playground, spring brings more gleeful smiles and the itch to abandon the classroom, and, finally, summer---the season in which our routines change. As a child, summer quickly became a season marked by less school, more exploration, and more quenched curiosities. As a young adult, eight out of the past nine summers, have begun with plane tickets, visas, and a packed bag. Summer meant leaving home, continuing the exploration and often times expanding the sense of curiosity. Summer meant touching, feeling, and experiencing what I longed for from the corners of libraries where I spent nine months each year. Although May is the month of the greatest transitions of my life, packing up my big blue backpack in May is a routine. Items that I pack are carefully chosen, hoping to be of use within the uncertainty of the experience. The only certainty in packing is that change and exploration will be a part of the experience. This May, I finished school for the last time and I packed up my bedroom. I put the backpack, and many other suitcases, in the back of my car. No plane tickets or carefully packed items this May. The first day of June brought the beginning of my second adult summer in the United States and with it a familiar wave of exploration and yearnings.

While I begin to map out the next step, or, what in so may ways, feels like the first step, I find myself desiring stillness and a quieter mind. This “time off” or “time to figure out what I really want” is about listening. It is about centering myself around a vision for my life. Yet, the yearnings for other moments---nostalgia for past moments and longing for potential future moments creep in. My answer to anyone’s question about what I am doing is: “laying on the floor, writing in my journal, and I don’t know.” The latter of which is the only truth in the sentence. Yet, the image of lying on a cold tile floor feels healing, and brings me back to a white tile floor that I spent many hours stretched out on digesting days in the field in Rwanda.[gallery]

Yearnings for the past and future quickly turn to memories, which seem vividly recalled based on a certain emotion or desire that exists in the present. Memories pull me back to childhood summers. Images of late nights at summer camp, huddled around a flashlight; of teenage summers, complete with long bike rides due to the lack of a driver’s license; and, of the sound of my family’s backyard on summer evenings, where the sounds of crickets blend into laughs coming from a croquet game. The fluid pace of the memories slows to rest on these tangible past moments, seeking to syphon off emotions from the memories, to re-create this sense of “memory-worthiness” in the current summer. There are memories to be made this summer, but they do not yet feel captured in time, only in hues on Instagram.

On the porch on long summer evenings, I push my thinking forward, briefly leaving the memories, and moving to the next steps. Pondering creating a life that doesn’t get up to explore new dreams in new places each summer, to a life that is 10% more predicable than the most recent incarnation, to a life with a slightly more stable community. Yet, it feels that the two halves of my brain run against each other, playing tug-of-war, and pulling me backwards into childhood unattached freedom, yet forwards into the next move, yearning for stability. I remain physically stuck in the middle, attempting to throw away any resemblance of adulthood, to let the childhood memories seep in---to joyfully spend summer evenings riding my bike, to play so hard on the beach that I am sore for days, to sit on the porch or curl up in my tent as the light fades---to embrace the uncertainty of the moment and to simply enjoy existing---even if just for these few months. Knowing that these memories will be ones I revisit from the next version of my life.

May.

Just the word makes me anxious, or rather, I should say anxious-excited. May.

I can’t remember May without a major life transition. In May of 2009, I said a tearful airport goodbye as I moved to Honduras. The same situation repeated itself in May of 2010, although with different people and a different country. In May of 2011, I took my first cross-country solo road trip. Although terrified of spending 2,000 miles alone with just an atlas, I found a sense of peace-in-transition accompanied by Country Roads and Wagon Wheel. I arrived in Boston, stored my belongings, and moved to Peru for the summer. In May of 2007, I left my college campus and transitioned into the working world. In May of 2006, I moved to France for the summer. The list goes on and on, but always, there is May 2005, when I transitioned to being fatherless.

Here we are again---nearing the middle of May.

May 2013. The giant pink flowers blossoming across campus signal the period of transition, the beginning of summer. Like each May before it, this May will also be full of goodbyes and life transitions. May 19^th will mark the last time I will transition from school to the next step. Even as a child, May required a transition from school to endless summer days. Although at that age---the longer days meant more time for make-believe worlds to unfold between the trees and gardens in my family’s backyard. Perhaps this feeling of a sense of freedom from childhood should be re-kindled, as this summer appears to expand in a timeless manner.

In-transition.

I cherish the space that opens up when we are in transition. With one foot in the life I had been living and one foot in the next life, nostalgia mixes with excitement and hope in a way that makes me feel alive. Moments feel more colorful, last minutes with friends more meaningful, decisions to jump on a plane to who-knows-where more daring, and even, our communities seem more forgiving---allowing us to leave, grow, and love them from a distance. In the past my “in transition” times have included one backpack, adventure, and plane tickets. However, this May is different.

As I take one step out of my current life and community, I am not sure where I will be taking the next step. This May requires a new comfort with a lack of a plan, an attempt at finding comfort in standing still. It is a new type of transition, changing life phases without changing location, quite yet. How do you lean into a transition without physically packing all your belongings? Or knowing what you will be moving next?  I hope the endless summer days will allow the space for this period of “in-transition” to settle and for quiet moments to unfold in which some of the bigger questions can be answered.

In celebration.

May 20^th is the yearly marker of the passing of my father and the years of healing that have taken place since then. This year will mark eight years since he died, and in some ways, eight years of feeling like I am in-transition. Hopefully this year’s transition, though standing still, will allow for a new, peaceful form of celebration.

Healing: A Sense of Community

A new sense of community emerged this week in Boston. Last Monday we watched in fear as tragedy marred one of the most beautiful, treasured days of the year in our city. We held on through an anxiety-ridden week, hugging our friends a bit tighter and smiling warmly at strangers. Friday night closed with the end of a day-long manhunt and city-wide lock down. The city breathed a collective sigh as the suspect was caught. People ventured out into their neighborhoods, finally turning off the news.

This week, signs of strength are everywhere. Café signs show love for the city scribbled in chalk hearts, restaurants offered free meals to law enforcement personnel, and Syrians sent a message love through a painted sign---that was shared thousands and thousands of times on Facebook. The spirit of this city is still here, yet the questions of mourning and healing are only beginning to emerge:

As a community, how do we grieve? How do we heal?

Acts of violence, so close to our home affect us. The effect may be new or it may trigger old emotions. In the past week, I have watched those around me struggle with emotions spanning from indifference to shock to deep sadness. I urged my immediate community to be compassionate with the experience and allow yourself to be affected:

It is okay if you feel off this week. It is okay that you can’t concentrate or don’t want to sit in the library, even though you have so much to do. It is okay if you feel grief, or emotions you can’t identify, even though you don’t know anyone who was physically hurt or weren’t even at the event. It is also okay if you don’t feel anything. It is okay if this tragedy reminds you of other losses in your life. It is okay to miss people or moments that have nothing [on the surface] to do with what happened on Monday.

In consideration of healing, I return to stories. The world of grief and healing is full of stories. Stories that make our hearts ache and bring tears to our eyes. Stories that touch us deeply, resonating with our experiences, bring our losses closer to the surface, and in their own way, heal us. My own story of the Boston Marathon encapsulates one of my best memories: the spring, the sheer accomplishment of running 26.2 miles, and, which I did not know at the time, my last day with my father. In honor of that experience and the events of the week, this past Tuesday, I put on my running shoes and Red Sox shirt, and headed out the door into the spring air. What I needed to do was run, remember that joyful day, and spend time feeling through the grief that bubbled up out of the surface in the face of new tragedy.

Feeling, hurting, and all the other associated emotions are signs of life, signs of caring for one’s community. Be compassionate with yourself in this process. Do what feels right for you. Heal through allowing yourself to engage with the process. This is our first step as individuals that make up a truly wonderful community. As a community, we can soak in the love pouring from all corners of the world. And, within our responsibility to love these “corners” back, as individuals did by holding up a sign sending love back to Syria in Davis Square, we can reflect this sense of healing and hope.

The city I envision heals fear through love and community.

Two Weeks

Two weeks ago, tucked under my covers and cursing the still-too-cold-April, attempting to sleep after a tough discussion, I felt crushed and thought “I’ve had enough of feeling like this” as I stared at the ceiling. I turned over and managed to count backwards until I fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, the “I’ve had enough" feeling persisted, along with a desire for change. Before I climbed out of bed, I committed myself to making space for more positive thinking and dreaming. Moment by moment, day by day, I decided to commit myself to beginning a process. A process that I had put off (unintentionally), with a variety excuses such as well “this is a time of transition (i.e. in two months you don’t know where you will be living, what you will be doing, or how you will be getting by), of course it is hard” or “your life isn’t exactly as you had imagined it, of course you feel this way.” But two weeks ago, I decided enough with the platitudes, I’m striving for great, not just getting by, and I’m not waiting to start. Two weeks isn’t enough time to show consistency or deep change worthy of earnest reflection.

However, making a public commitment to a process of loving yourself fiercely and re-writing an openly positive narrative takes brave words, quiet trusting moments, and the accountability of self and friends.

Quieting the voices

Long discussions with friends [and, just about everyone I meet] have left me certain that I am not the only one who battles internal voices. Much of the time, these voices urge me forward, empowering me, nudging me to take a risk---but every once in a while, they catch me off-guard and fill my heart and mind with self-doubt. On the suggestion of a friend, who recommended a new practice, I am spending a few minutes a day in front of the mirror. The goal is to repeat the phrase “I love you” to myself, until the self-judgment fades and my softer, self-caring side emerges. While it appears obvious, being accountable for loving yourself, actively, shifts your frame of reference to a more whole, more loving version of yourself. As Brene Brown says, this is where the “whole hearted” begin from.

The pesky surprise voices of doubt are now meeting some resistance.

Training and un-training muscles

Some of the cycles of thinking I fall into [or rather, allow myself to fall into], I have developed and practiced over years. Their less than blissful cycles interrupt my day. As one of my favorite blogs wisely notes, “years and years of training were required in order for your mind to reach its current level. This is your work. And just as it was trained, it can also be untrained.” As I try to re-formulate my brain around positive thinking, I feel resistance from old patterns of thinking. I feel that I am attempting to change the channel before an old show, one of self-doubt that I have seen before, plays a re-run in my mind. What does it take to break these and reconfigure the cycle? What if instead of thinking through the same pattern of thoughts, ending at the point I began, I vary the questions: What is the worst thing that can happen? I try to get underneath what is really going on.

However, some of the thought patterns are old habits, in some way comforting. They need to be thrown out the window into the beautiful spring air. Each time I break a cycle, I celebrate being one step closer to the person I want to be. Each minor win is a victory.

New Dreams

How do we dream new dreams? How do we know what to aim for? And, then how do we build the path there? Now, facing the end of my formal education, I am realizing that I don’t have set dreams for the next step or even the steps beyond that. Where I sit today was, in essence, the end of the “dream plan.” I don’t take it for granted that I have accomplished some of the goals I set for myself. Yet, this wonderful life must be bigger than that, there must be more I want. Of course, there are hazy visions of things I’d like to do and the person I want to become, but I want to continue to strive for understanding and visualizing that person and that place.

I want to put a stake in the ground and fight. One step at a time and the active decision to be happy, made at every second of every day.

The Art of Returning

I have fallen in love, unconditional love, with so many places. Various weeks or months into living in a new location, I often declare it “home.” This is not a sense of growing roots or settling, but rather a feeling of comfort and belonging. To give a few examples---I claim my home town of Boulder, Colorado, to be heaven-on-earth [thus, my true love], I claim I fell in love with living abroad in Nicaragua, I claim I found my career in Uganda and Rwanda, I claim I felt more secure and loved in Washington, DC than anywhere else thus far in my journey, and, finally, I claim I re-found happiness and bliss during a year long journey in Mexico City. All of these places are homes. 

This story has two parts: 1) the magic, wonder, and awe of a huge, vibrant, culturally-infused city and 2) the impressionable and open place in which I existed when I found myself living in Mexico City.

I have a theory that you should try to return to places you fell in love with through living there within a year of leaving. That amount of time allows the freshness to remain in relationships and in most cases halts significant enough changes in the city landscape, such that you won’t recognize your favorite blocks, cafes, or parks. Within nine months of leaving Mexico, I returned for the first time, yet I could already feel the changes---I missed my friends and many had already moved on to new experiences as well, my Spanish faltered, but above all, I already felt far away from the person I had embodied when I lived there. The context of this blog post is my second return trip, which comes exactly two years, or better put---a whirlwind of life---after the first visit.

Returning to a place is always accompanied by so many questions ranging from the more mundane (Will my favorite park still look the same? Will the coffee shop on the corner still be there? Will I remember how to get to my old apartment?) to the deeper, more existential questions (Will I still love the city? Will I regain the sense of freedom I had when I lived here? Will I still feel like I belong here? Will I feel like I could live here again?). For those of us who have moved between cities and countries, it is always heartbreaking to leave while at the same time inspiring to move and settle into a new community. In the back of my mind, I imagine past homes as places I can always return to, like visiting old friends or family. They become pieces of me scattered in the world that I can collect, if I return to walk the same streets and share coffee in the same parks with the same friends. Of course, I could easily, fall back in love with the bold, colorful buildings, dry summer days, bustling city parks, and long fun-filled nights. Who couldn’t?

Part I: The city that left an impression

Roxanne Varzi, the author of Warring Souls, describes cities as landscapes that individuals walk through, writing their own versions of the city as they walk. In her eyes, the individual experiences a sense of poetry in the city that they write as they walk and inhabit the space. Returning to Mexico City meant revising and adding to the story that I had written years before. Walking around certain parks and on certain streets brought back dormant emotions, some of which exist in the past, and I briefly visited them, and others, re-ignited bringing me back to the joyfully open and tenderly vivid experiences of the past. Re-writing the poetry, as Varzi would call it, requires openness to re-experience a city and to then reconcile new experiences with what you fell in love with in the past.

The magnitude of the city still leaves an impression, from the top of the tallest building in the centro historico, you can witness the city stretching on in every direction. Although your eyes can sense the cars and people 43 stories below, it is nearly impossible to comprehend over 22 million people sharing this space. It is breath taking. Every element feels more vibrant, buildings burst with colors, food with flavors unimaginable in my Boston life, salsa dancing with a sense of glee. Even the light cast by the sun setting over the zocalo feels more radiant. Returning doesn’t change these elements, in fact they feel more alive and more intense---almost as if the point is to confirm my stories and memories.

Part II: The girl ready to be molded

As vulnerable as it is to write about why we make major life decisions, it is important in the context of this marvelous city. I moved to Mexico City mostly because I was ready to spend a significant amount of time abroad and I had a friend living there. The combination of those two simple facts landed me in this particular city. Moving had meant uprooting a world and home I had created in DC---of close friends, a wonderful job, and a boyfriend of a number of years. The year passed as I healed, taking the training wheels off and experiencing a new sense of freedom and fulfillment in living abroad.

Although my memory would like to re-write the story of Mexico City as full of magic and glee, the year did not pass without challenges, questions, and heartache, as ripping out roots often causes. Some questions which are not and cannot be answered by moving or even the passing of time. Yet, returning after a number of years away caught me off guard, as many of the same questions of uncertainty surfaced, as though triggered by spaces I used to inhabit. Past insecurities gently haunted me, illuminating today’s struggles that mirror those from a few years ago that my current self had attempted to grow and learn from. But, there they were in their gut-wrenching openness.

----

Silently walking, questioning my life, Varzi’s words rang true---as I rewrote the stories and the memories, capturing them in my current space, not just in the magical, gleeful past. This is a long term relationship, with this enchanting city, and I can only imagine the new stories my future self will write.

Re-writing Our Narratives

“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.” – Luis Buñuel

Over glasses of wine with good friends, I felt my newly acquired academic vocabulary sneak into normal catch-up banter. As I shared the details of events that transpired since I last saw my friends, I referred to “my narrative,” “story-telling,” and “memory.” These words permeate each line of my master’s thesis and much of my graduate school studies. Throughout the past year, I have searched for every line of academic literature on memory and the role it plays in defining the story of an individual as well as its cohesive and divisive power within a community and society. It is an academic search, with a personal quest at its heart.

The blurry lines of my thesis refer to the difficult, painful memories that feel hesitant and, at times, unspoken in Rwanda. The individual stories of a past marked by suffering give way to a national narrative for the country. In his most recent book, Phil Clark discusses the idea of “truth-shaping,” which draws on the fluid nature of memories---allowing them to be molded into a cohesive narrative. The idea of blending stories into a narrative brings me to the essence and power of storytelling. What is told? Who tells it? What is kept for oneself or even silenced? What memories are shaped into a new narrative? How does this process take place?

To borrow words from Pierre Janet;

“Memory is an action: essentially it is the action of telling a story.”

While the case study of my thesis considers the Rwandan conflict and subsequent process of healing and rebuilding, the theories of the role of memory, separated from the conflict, transcend into my own life, infusing into my own story. The internal reflection stimulated by the notion of truth-shaping and allowing memories to take a more fluid nature, inspires a yearning to re-write my own stories and critical moments that define how I got to where I am.

What if I could reframe my memories, drawing on the positive, the lessons, the growth, and build upon whatever heartbreak lies within them? It seems that as an individual I could reach a place of deeper healing and, perhaps, create a more positive narrative that would not only impact how I saw the past, but how I could envision the future.

Uncertainty: Leaning In

There are always questions. There are no definite answers. Simple and peaceful, yet anxiety-provoking thoughts that Cheri Lucas shares in her blog post on collective memory and joy.

As I look forward at the next few months and the end of my formal education, I imagine joy-filled moments with friends, explorations of a city I have yet to truly give my heart to, and dedication to newly emerging passions and people. And, then, graduation, followed by the extending void of the rest of my life. Various years ago, as college ended, I knew I would live abroad at some point; when I lived abroad I knew I would go to graduate school. And, that is where the plan ended. My ten year old routine of setting goals for the new year, slipped between my fingers in January, as I couldn’t envision the next step. The feeling: true uncertainty.

Uncertainty is one of those mixed emotion words. It inspires youth, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, chance, and jumping in head-first. Its less satisfying other side, provokes anxiety and worry, stalling forward momentum. However, there is no escaping either side, as my thoughtful friends gently remind me, almost everything in life is uncertain. Someone, clearly more comfortable with uncertainty than myself, stated “uncertainty touches the best of what is human in us.” I feel it grabbing at what is most human about me, but perhaps not always the best part.

So, I posed the question to my community, asking how they handle uncertainty?

The response echoes both love and frustration with uncertainty. People both thrive on it and run and hide from it. One friend distilled the moment of power found in uncertainty, drawing from it a sense of self situated in the present. The past is past and the future is not-yet-known. C’s words powerfully bring comfort into the daily experience;

“Life is always like this---every single moment is filled with some sense of uncertainty because we don't know what will happen one second from now. . . but the more you can practice being in the present moment and letting go of both of these things, the more well equipped you are to handle times of "uncertainty" because you are actually accustomed to living your life riding the constant wave of uncertainty. Perhaps more important is to just accept this uncertainty because that is the nature of things. . . Really, the only thing we ever have is this exact moment. Our own minds get in the way of attaching absolute truth to either the past or future . . . to live in the present moment is to acknowledge that the only thing we have in uncertainty. . . the only choice we have is to experience each moment---both joyous and sad---as it unfolds.”

J shared a quote inspiring a sense of inner peace;

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” – Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And, A, always practical;

“I tend to simply acknowledge that [the uncertainty], more often than not, I don't have answers and don't know what will happen, and attempt to just do what feels right at the moment.”

And, E, who strives for comfort with uncertainty:

“Uncertainty is the world of infinite possibility. Once you are certain, you are much more limited.”

Uncertainty inspires a certain leap-of-faith, of leaning into the unknown and taking a chance. Our faith in being happy, healing, and loved in the future depends on our comfort with taking this step. And, yet, as Cheri concludes in her post, “this shared uncertainty is comforting.” Perhaps, it is what ties us together as humans. Perhaps this why it comforts me to understand how my community loves and equally dislikes uncertainty.

In other places, lives, and selves abroad, constantly in transition, uncertainty colored every moment, experience, and relationship. Nights seemed endless, conversations deeply meaningful, and bonds stronger---in essence a sense of power in youthful flashes of self-discovery. Yet, the moments were at times root-less, and I felt the uncertainty needing a rest. I dreamed of graduate school as a place where I could hang uncertainty up in the closet for a few years and settle into community and a more predictable life. Yet, the fun-inspiring side of uncertainty slowly shifted as the future-focused anxiety seeped out of the closet.

Other friends wrote of the challenging side of uncertainty, the side that we are all aware of;

“. . . this is something I have been working on my whole life. There were and still are times when it makes me physically ill and totally unable to cope. . .I try to control the things I can. . .I always find it very comforting to organize my drawers.”

. . .

“I wrap myself into the fetal position until I find a new way of framing the situation so I can handle it.”

. . .

“I simply try to avoid it.” [end of email]

The emails from friends confirmed my suspicions that there is no right way to handle uncertainty, just the way that works for each individual. It can be scary, dark, and lonely.

Once you begin paying attention to uncertainty, it permeates everything, from over-heard conversations in coffee shops, to secrets friends share, and even to the conclusions of academic articles for class on how people handle uncertainty;

“People’s willingness to act depends on how knowledgeable they are/feel; however in most contexts individuals must act based on predictions.”

It seems obvious, of course that as humans we act based on predictions. What are the other options? The article seeks to explain types of actions people will take based on their knowledge of the outcome. In a world, where knowledge of the outcome is more of a desire than a reality, our decision-making is rooted in our prediction.

We are left with the leap-of-faith and creating positive predictions that allow us to take the risk---apply for the job, ask the girl out, plan that trip, make the move, and whatever uncertain plans you have. Leaning into uncertainty is a sense of freedom that makes us human and calls us to trust ourselves.

Reclamation

How do we reclaim spaces and moments that we used to exist in and define ourselves by? Loss takes with it pieces of our daily lives---pieces that sustained us and brought joy to our lives---whether we lost a home, a community, a relationship, or a person. I’ve experienced moments of mild unease or anxiety in returning to places that used to be “home,” or meeting up with people who used to feel like “home,” re-doing activities I used to do in relationships that felt like “home.” However, there is power in reclaiming these as my own; there is power in actively creating my own home. During this chilly winter season, I have been reminded of how reclamation is a powerful part of my own healing process.

Nearly seven years ago, on a typical sunny day in Colorado, my father was killed in an avalanche. He was skiing inbounds at a resort, following the rules. Without much conscious thought, I put my love of skiing (and winter outdoorsy-ness in general) in a metaphorical closet, nervous to tempt fate and to unsettle my own emotional healing.

My most recent story of reclamation happened this past weekend, among friends, high spirits, and blistery icy slopes in Maine. Leading up to the trip, I approached downhill skiing as something “I used to love” or that “I can still do moderately well.” Since my father’s death, it ceased to be a defining factor in my life. I had skied a few times in the years between that day and this past weekend, the most significant being a visit to the run he died on. The blue and white sign at the top of the run now reads “David’s run.” But, that experience, was more a sense of visiting---visiting the place he died, visiting his world---it wasn’t mine.

In Maine, I chased guy friends, who will always ski faster than me but are willing to pause to let me catch up, down the icy slopes. In some moments I felt transferred back into childhood, peacefully enjoying my skis gliding over powdery snow. In other moments I struggled, silently cursing the ice and shrubs sticking out of the snow. A sense of bliss followed the entire experience, aided by the surprise of still knowing how to ski and the forging of new friendships---where we share values related to being outside. Values that represent “home” for me. I am not sure what exact transformation took place or on which ski run, but skiing felt comfortable and peaceful. I can welcome the world of skiing and the community it encompasses back into my life.

Central to the outdoorsy world I grew up in, my family spent holidays at a YMCA camp tucked away in the Rocky Mountains. The camp is set between downhill ski resorts and hundreds of miles of cross country skiing. It is a gorgeous winter heaven. The year after my father died, we retreated to one of these cabins for a painful and lonely Christmas. We passed the holiday estranged from each other, engulfed in our individual grief. The camp felt haunted by childhood memories and impossible images of the future without my father.

It was six years before we plotted our return this past December. Together, we visited a sign the camp constructed in memory of my father. This year, the same space felt peaceful and healing. I felt my family take a collective deep breath and embrace this space, which was once ours and now is ours again. Reclaimed.

Curled up by the wood fire, I smiled as my mom and sister took out old card games, which contained records of highest and lowest scores throughout the history of our family playing the game. They lightheartedly reminisced about my dad’s competitiveness and my grandmother’s love of dominos with joyful memories of past holidays. As the pain withdrew from the memories over the years, we stepped back into our relationships with each other and again became a family that visits the places where it grew together over and over again to make new memories.

Grief: Mapping Your Online Community

I learned the phrase “Community mapping” at age sixteen while volunteering in a small community in rural Paraguay. At the time, the notion of mapping the resources in a community seemed clear. Quickly drawn on a piece of paper---the community school, church, homes, the dirt roads connecting the dots, and the fields that spread in the spaces between houses. The stick-figure buildings my host family drew to mark the previously listed sites represented the physical locations of where community manifests. They leapt off the page as a visible sign of the strength and resources held within this community.  At sixteen, I transferred this model to my life in Colorado---my school, my home, my family’s cabin, and the places where I spent time with my friends.  My map made sense, I didn’t question my places of support and where my community came together. The intervening twelve years of moving and creating new communities---including online---threw a wrench in my map. It no longer fits on one page or within a single community. I access much of the pieces of different communities in online spaces, including gchats from friends who still inhabit past homes on other continents, Facebook messages from childhood friends, and following twitter feeds of friends-I-haven’t-actually-met, who share a common journey.

Grief and loss often throw the individual into an unknown emotional space, where the “community map” becomes increasingly important. It creates a sense of one’s resources and places of support; showing the individual the strength of their community(ies). For many, the communities of support blend between in-person, phone, and online communication.

Admittedly, the online space trends towards the more positive aspects of life, as Jenna Wortham notes in her article, Talking about Death Online, “This is more than trying to decide how carefully polished you want your online image to be. . . . It’s about the way social software is slyly engineered to get us to participate---we are encouraged to brag about our lives, and present ourselves as living our best lives each day and year.” Between updates about babies, engagements, jobs, and school---loss becomes just another post that slides by not really resonating.

Engaging with more difficult, heart-wrenching topics, such as grief and loss via social media opens the individual up to vulnerability. For many, loss creates moments of intense need to reach out to one’s community. The online platform is not necessarily designed for in depth sharing or support, as posts and tweets have character limits. The feeds stream by, not allowing the adequate time or ability to respond to a friend’s post. As Jena Wortham writes, “However, when it comes to talking about death and grief in a non-abstract way---that is, when dealing with the loss of a family member, a partner or close friend---it gets much, much trickier. It doesn’t have an appropriate reaction face, a photo that you can reblog, a hashtag.” I often wonder as I see friends hesitantly posting memories of their lost parent how our ability to comfort each other spills into this medium?  How much of our ability to empathize in person actively translates with each “like” we give to their posts?

As a firm believer in allowing each individual to chart their own path for grieving and healing, online spaces may become mechanisms for both. In my own process, I try to push the boundaries of what feels comfortable to share on Facebook, twitter, etc. I don’t shy away from posting pictures of my father, marking what would-have-been his sixtieth birthday, the sixth year since his death, or my travels to places he would have loved. However, the accompanying text is often positive, such as “missing your adventures” rather than engaging with the harder, empty feelings of loss. While I can’t express my “full self” in this online space, I trend towards sharing what I can with this online world. As my community is spread throughout many places, online becomes the place that I receive (and provide) support from so many communities at once. Online, I am reminded of the people beyond the Facebook photos who love and care about me---through likes, comments, and quick emails after they see the post.

Beyond our individual experiences with grief and healing---Facebook has become a community in itself, creating a way to memorialize those who have died. Two of my “current” Facebook friends are people who have passed away. Their profiles remain places where friends and family leave notes---sharing life updates, memories, or simply typing “I miss you.” In a world where visiting gravesites may not be practical, the online memorial space may bring us closer together.  In her blog post, Online Mourning and The Unexpected Refuge of Facebook, Cheri Lucas (another Equals Record writer) discusses her experience with a friend’s death;

“A few hours after receiving the news, I wrote something and shared it as a Facebook note. I posted scanned photos from college—precious moments of youth, debauchery, and experiences I had never shared publicly—from nearly 15 years ago: onto his profile, our friends’ profiles, and my timeline. I sat in front of my computer, clicking on photos people tagged of him: images that conjured memories, that stunned and confused me, that made me feel grateful for knowing him, that devastated me because I realized I didn’t know the man he had become.

Alone, I sobbed. Yet I sobbed with Facebook open—his life revealed and exposed in bits on my screen, his friends spilling tears on his profile. I sobbed at home, by myself, but also with everyone else. I had never given in to the community of Facebook until that moment. For the first time, its communal space had comforted me.”

The possibilities of online spaces to bring us together are endless, we can share memories of those who have died, sharing our own healing processes, and of course, share our joys. Yet, as Wortham also notes, we don’t yet know the outcomes of creating online communities that don’t support the whole breadth of human emotions. However, we should trend towards sharing our authentic selves, our whole journeys---and in return, we should support others who do just that---comment on posts people share about those they have lost, about their difficult moments---engaging with the full spectrum of emotions, will only make the blissful moments stronger.

Much of my community is online, thus my grieving and healing cannot be completely separate. However, as with all pieces of grieving, this is personal---and we will each have to carve out how we interact with our online spaces. Yet, striving to make these spaces open to deeper human interaction, will only bring us closer to each other, and as a community---closer to healing.

Home

Faded ticket stubs, dried rose petals folded inside notes of high school love, gleeful photos of attempting to blow out candles on childhood birthday cakes, and journals describing firsts---the first time away from home, the first crush, the first heartbreak, and the first encounter with grief. A whole life, a full life, is contained in the dusty leather photo albums and journals, remnants of a world before Facebook and iPhones. This past life, which I visit upon coming “home,” feels distant. I associate with the girl in the photos, whose memories I find in my childhood bedroom---the one smiling in the photos, wistfully blowing dandelion seeds off a dark green stem; the one who scribbled “BFFs” on the back of pictures and saved notes secretly passed in class, attempting to immortalize friendship; and the one with the mischievous grin of adventure-scheming, creating imaginary worlds in the backyard. Yet, she feels distant.

Home is now packaged with the holidays and my trips are fewer and shorter. At times it astounds me that over ten years ago, I packed my bags, ready for a new world in Boston. Without fail, upon returning to this bedroom, my attention is drawn to the old photo albums (which I aptly called “memory books”), scribbled notes, and journals---each full of its own memories. Perhaps by searching through the past I can find answers to the persistent questions of the present. Perhaps simply reigniting the memories, the feelings, of a life contained within a single community and countable friendships, will bring resolutions to questions in a life not contained by space and experiences.

What pulls me to these photos and scribbles is the inability to return to these cherished moments---childhood, a past sense of friendship and family, or, in many ways, the version of myself that existed here. As the brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review, How to Move Around without Losing your Roots notes, “. . . home is where we are from---the place we begin to be.” Home is where the “self” I began with is.

As a wise friend told me recently that we carry the “versions” of ourselves from the past with us.

The self in the photos is confident in belonging; joyful, yet naive to realities beyond her world; and, yet this self longed for understanding beyond her immediate experience. While the current version feels distant from the photos and scribbles, so much of the searching, creating, and defining in my life was born in this mischievous grin and the very first iteration of home and self. The notion of home, even if it is past, challenges me to assess changes and growth, while tying my current life back to the Colorado landscapes, the house my father built, and friendships helped me define who I was in the beginning. As distant as I may ever feel, my current self is rooted in this past narrative of home and place. If home is an experience of “belonging, a feeling of being whole and known,” as the HBR article describes, it is not my current self in the place that “I began” that feels at home. Yet, the self I remember when I visit may hold joyful child-like insights and mischievous adventure schemes to inform my continued search for this notion of “home.”

Surprise Packages

Taking a cue from R, on the idea that emotions can come in surprise packages, often at untimely moments. I hesitantly consider surprise loneliness. Not that I have ever claimed to be able to wrap my emotions up and tie them off with beautiful shiny bows. However, their ability to catch me off guard, especially during the holidays, never ceases to amaze me. To contextualize this, somewhat public, account of emotions, I must preface it with my nature as a community-centered person, who attempts to stay close to friends that at this point in life scatter the globe. In a typical extrovert fashion, I draw my energy from engaging with the incredible people in my life. However, the flip side of this is what a close [introverted] friend refers to as “the extrovert’s dilemma.” At times, I find loneliness lurking in the corners when I am physically alone. While most of us don’t fit neatly into the categories described by these buzz words---the bottom line is that since I was a little girl I have attempted to develop my introverted side. Goal lists spot my travel mole-skins; “become comfortable with spending time alone” is scribbled on the top of each one. I long to not wage battle against the lurking loneliness.

Loneliness: the creeping sensation in my gut---throwing me off kilter in a simple moment, invoking memories---both joyful and sad; nostalgia for distant places and faraway people, people I will never see again, moments that cannot be reproduced. It zaps my [fairly] romanticized view of the world---the snowy, almost timeless, afternoon, drinking a picture-perfect latte in a café, lazily reading, and it drags me back to a different form of reality, where I am huddled in a corner pouring over my text book, sucking down coffee in a manner that is far from relaxed. Its creeping nature takes the color out of every day moments and the tranquility from the serene present.

Off-center. The word that encompasses my general attitude towards the holidays, especially in the current version of my current life where it feels increasingly important to cement one’s notion of home and family based on where you spend the holidays and who you spend them with. Latent in these often gleeful conversations, loneliness plans its sneak-attack, filling me with unease. Last week it snuck in. At the end of a night of guitar-filled singing, surrounded by incredible friends, warmth, and love, I found myself cleaning up wine classes, the sign of a thoroughly enjoyed celebration. I felt the creeping sensation, tears welling behind my eyes, as my mind struggled to stay in the present---searching for past moments of contentment as well as loss. Where did this sneak attack come from?

Today a new friend remarked, he already felt nostalgic for today. The day, or rather the moment, had not yet ended---how can that happen? Perhaps, it is a cue from loneliness, itself, that the moment is good, hold on to it.

It consists of its own category: loneliness, with an element of surprise. It’s not grief, nor loss---it’s not fear, nor anxiety---it is a reminder of the present, anchoring me to the feeling of being alive, on a continual search for a sense of home, community, and place. And yet, even when I have found these, for me, being completely un-lonely, means situating myself in the present, letting go of the other places, peoples, and moments I am nostalgic for. So for this holiday season, with a sense of unease, I am retreating to a café, ordering what I hope is a perfect latte, to watch the snowfall and sit with a sense of loneliness, knowing that it anchors me to my present life.

The pieces of the mosaic

In loss, we retain memories; in memories, we hold on to pieces of what we have lost Memories. Pieces of the past that flow---in and out of our minds, called back by imperceptible senses in our present. The flow is unpredictable. In seconds, I may be transported from sitting in my kitchen, eating oatmeal and mapping out my day, to a past moment---a memory of my now-deceased grandmother slathering butter on my oatmeal. A fleeting memory of a carefree, cherished childhood snow day enters my conscience. In the next bite of oatmeal, I return, reluctantly, to the present. The memory draws a thread between my present mind and past moments, filling my heart with the happiness of a glorious November snowfall while my stomach turns and I long for my grandmother’s adventure-filled love. I return to my oatmeal as the thought crosses my mind that no new memories will be created together.

Memories lost, memories preserved.

Last week, I visited my still living grandmother on her 90^th birthday. Armed with my camera and a fool-proof plan to ask hundreds of questions, I set out to capture her stories. Over carrot soup in the confines of a nursing home, I heard tales of my grandfather’s embarrassingly junky car, the twenty-seven cats that lived on her childhood farm, and tales of working as a young nurse. Through stories, I attempted to create memories of my grandfather to fill the void where I only hold a few---he died when I was five. As my grandmother hesitated between thoughts, I slipped in more questions---How did he propose? What was your wedding like? What did you think when my mother first brought my father home?  Most of my questions remained unanswered.

Through snippets of past moments, I cherished her stories. Yet, her touchingly vivid memories did not become mine. I yearn to experience, to feel the memories, and to create more connections to my past. I yearn for a deeper understanding of the people I have lost---in a sense create new, closer-to-present memories with them. What was my father like as a teenager? Do you remember meeting my other grandmother? Again, unanswered questions.

I like to think that some of these memories are preserved for her safekeeping; they are not for sharing. Perhaps, they have lost their color over the decades of life. A few of my questions caused a smile or giggle---a clear sign of a memory returning to the surface. When my grandmother is gone, will these memories be lost? My own romanticized imaginings of my grandmother’s childhood farm or my grandfather’s triumphant return from war will have to suffice. Will my version of idyllic farm life become the stories I tell my (future) children?

Memories of loss.

Memories of loss span time and place, as I grow, move, and experience new forms of loss---of place, childhood, friendship, family, and at times the loss of a sense of community and home.

The dull pain of the present intertwines with the gut-wrenching pain of the past. At times, memories bring to the surface the moment my father died, the days, weeks, and months afterwards, tough break ups, saying goodbye to wonderful places and friends with tear-stained cheeks---each moment at times still vivid. Though, some of the memories now appear hazy, they shift along with my life, their color and aching fades. The narrative is no longer one of brokenness or unglued pieces; it is now an assortment of memories, flowing in and out in sleepy afternoons and early mornings.

I suppose we have a choice to remember or not; to cherish moments flooded by memories or push them down, burying them. In this false binary, I choose memories. I choose the potential emotional shifts, the latent sadness, the surprise happiness---the joyful childhood moments, the utter sadness of sudden loss, and the longing for communities that no longer exist.

These are the pieces that woven together create the mosaic.