Grief – Page 2

April 1, 2018 By HallieZ 3 Comments

Find Me Tomorrow?

You seem very far away, this weekend, up on that cross, Jesus.

Or in the tomb.

Or whatever.

I am unable to access the emotions that defined 37 years of Easter Weekends.

This was the holiday he chose to introduce me to his family.

This was the time of hope, life, all bursting out and up.

I feel numb.

I am shaking a fist at you, in my heart.

Why are you doing this? Is it for a perfect forever after? The eternal to come?

Because F*** that, I scream at you,

I want heaven HERE.

It is less depression this year, and more grief.

Do you know what it is LIKE?

ALL MY SIBLINGS… their spouses, my parents. 13, 14 people? Just gone from my life? My husband. The people who should have had my back NO MATTER WHAT. The people who had pledged to love and care for me… Gone.

Forsaken?

Maybe God forsook you, Jesus, but your mom was still there.

What if they had all died in a plane crash, I ask you. What if I was the only one who survived? The grief of that would be enough to kill the average girl. This feels worse. They are dead to me but alive and I don’t know how to grieve the living.

Jesus-on-that-cross. I don’t know how to connect with you. I feel the loss of the old ways, the steady in my tracks normal ways of doing these religious days. I believe you to be real, but all that gives me is a numb sort of peace, today.

I vomit the fear and the worry and the anger out at my friend. She served you too, overseas. We served you SO DAMN HARD. We loved you and it was all for you… and this being forsaken and left alone still happened to us.

What are we supposed to feel? We ask the question of each other, and don’t mind that the other doesn’t have an answer.

I shared a joke on my facebook wall today… about the women at the tomb.

It was funny, and ironic, and it started sinking into my grief-logged brain this afternoon.

I AM these women.

You’re dead and gone and I am lost, forsaken, alone.

Religion kept me from pouring out my love and grief in the days right after your death, so I have finally come today.

I have no hope for resurrection, but with every beat of my heart, I am screaming at God to give me something, anything, to hold on to.

Tonight I wash dishes. (notice how much deep thinking is happening over my sink?)

I imagine myself, walking with the women I love through the garden, toward your tomb. I imagine what I would be feeling, what I would be thinking. I imagine the weight of the grief may feel somewhat similar to the grief I have felt all day as I think of my family.

I want to be first to the tomb. I want to lay my head on your chest, and let the tears fall. I want to beat you with my fist and scream out my anger and fear. I don’t know where you went, but I want you to come back.

I want you to hold me, and tell me the pain was worth it.

I want you to wipe away the blood and the tears.

I want you to wash away the sweat and the exhaustion.

I want heaven HERE, dammit.

I want to the behold the resurrection and the life. I do not want to sit in the darkness of sorrow.

Jesus on-the-cross. Here I am, tonight.

The moon is rising, but it’s dark all around me, and I am numb.

Just me.

Jesus in-the-tomb.

Find me tomorrow?

March 26, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

Happy Birthday to My Son

This day. A sacred day.

The day my son came from his mother’s womb.

I know well the opening, the blood, the sweat, and the tears that brought him into the world. His sisters came with the same rush. The same yells and the same power.

I like to imagine him, the wrinkles, the snot. I wonder if my silent boy cried, or if he just stared, unblinking, into his mother’s eyes.

Words fail me.

This day, my son began a slow march of loss and grief that no child should ever be forced to travel.

When I look back at the things I do know, the day he was found in the street next to an orphanage, the day my friends saw him for the first time, and thought of me. When I think about the phone call, and my return call saying YES…

I can’t tell you it was all worth it. Because that seems to shallow of a thing to say in the face of his loss.

However. He is mine and I am his. He is beloved and belongs.

On this day of his birth, we celebrate with legos and streamers. We plan nerf gun wars and we are about to go pick out the birthday donuts.

On this day of his birth, we honor his family of origin. We honor their lineage, their courage. We honor their tears. We honor the travail in which his mother brought him forth.

I have a million things I want to say about this boy.

He is 6 years old today!!

A million things I want to tell you, I want the whole world to know.

And yet, I feel a shift has come.

6 years old, and I feel his story becoming his own in a way that is different from before. I feel the sharing of his story now, today, is more private. His coming into our family was a loud bang, an event, a great to-do.

Part of this year, is him stepping into the quiet. The unknown. The world of his own choosing.

My son.

My only son.

You did not smell of me. You didn’t want me. I was afraid of you, and wanted you more than life itself. Very few things in the world have forced me to confront the darkest and lightest places in my soul the way your life has.

My son.

A miracle. A treasure. I love you forever.

Mama

March 25, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

TOO MUCH

Be quieter

Hold your tongue

Just listen

You. Are.

TOO LOUD

You don’t need to cry

You are just being emotional

Enough already.

You. Feel.

TOO MUCH

You asked for it.

You knew this would happen.

It’s RIGHT.

Your Grief.

TOO MUCH

Too Free.

Tone it down.

Flirting. Misleading.

Your smile.

TOO MUCH

You.

Who you are.

Your desire.

Your dreams.

The passion.

Your energy.

Your truth.

Your love.

Always. ALL WAYS.

You are.

TOO MUCH

We. Are. All. Done. With. You.

March 17, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

Yes, I Changed

I look out the window at my desk.

It is a view to die for.

I listen to this song.

The words beat in my heart, I dive into the wonder of Creation outside my window.

So many times, he said to me:

You’re the one who changed. I am the same. You weren’t supposed to change.

That wasn’t the deal.

Out my window, the trees look like they are clapping their hands. The winds are high.

I see the sheen of the buds, just under the skin of the trees.

They are about to break out. It’s going to happen overnight. I can tell.

Everything is rising.

Everything is being called up.

What can the buds do, but answer, and bloom?

I feel the weight and power of the river.

It cannot be stopped.

The current is strong and it remains.

Where would it go, but to the ocean?

Sometimes faster.

Sometimes slower.

Everything rising.

The Canada geese alight.

They fight.

Water splashing, the geese are rising.

They are being called upward and outward.

Where would they go, if not north?

Yes.

I changed.

I mean, I didn’t, and I did.

I had taken it for granted.

Daughter of the land, child of the seasons.

I thought that was what we all did.

I thought that was what we would do together.

The call to my soul was everything rising.

It was buds that could do nothing but bloom.

A current that could only go faster.

It was a bird in flight, who could not be caged.

I changed.

A girl became a woman.

A woman grew children.

A body stretched and rebuilt.

A heart wept and was healed.

Things were seen that could never be unseen.

And yes, I changed.

I changed.

Watching the trees clap their hands wasn’t enough anymore.

I had to clap with them.

Feeling the ocean dance around my bound body made my heart scream.

I had to break the ropes and dance in the ocean.

Where could the seed go, but toward the sun?

Where could the heart bend, but toward love?

I struggle to let go of what was, and what wasn’t.

There was only one way for me to grow.

That was toward LOVE.

Upward.

Outward.

Blooming.

Alive.

Moving.

Changing.

YES,

I Changed

February 26, 2018 By HallieZ Leave a Comment

Diamonds

I am walking out of the grocery store.

Yesterday, my friend told me to ask the Divine One to heal, to bring hope and freedom to the sexually traumatized parts of my mind and body. She told me to ask for specific moments of healing, and that she KNEW they would come to me if I asked.

After more than a year without flashbacks, an event had come out of nowhere this week, and started the vivid images and memories playing like a tape on repeat.

“what do I do?”

I ask, and it is a sigh, a sob, and a prayer.

The tapes play on silent, but the subtitles read:

Replaceable

PROPERTY

Old news

NO CHOICE

Saggy

WORTHLESS

THEN

I hear it like a soft whisper.

“loosen your waist”

“open your hips, let them swing the way they were meant to”

I imagine my skeleton, the way my bones move and glide together, the gait of a human being, in slow motion.

I breath deeply.

I drop my waist. I open my hips. They sway and swing.

I lift my eyes, instinctually, and a smile spreads across my face.

The girl scout cookie mama catches my eye, and we grin at each other, I suspect we are in on the wonder of it together.

These words pulse in my heart and up into my throat.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

And just like that, another wave of healing has broken over this weary soul.

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

What I’m Writing