Our oldest child, who now calls himself Dolphin, told me recently that everyone dies and everything changes but it’s ok because girls keep having babies. Life doesn’t give up, he added, brain splittingly.
In moments like these, his depth swallows me. Here I am scrambling to find a thru line, the next phase, the way forward, and here he is, 5 years old, teaching me about impermanence. I settle back a bit and feel spacious trust.
I need that teaching. I have a new fear now—of abandonment. Coupled with having infinite needs as a family, it’s tricky. My best friends used to tell me about their abandonment fears and I would try to understand. I couldn’t relate, but I listened and asked questions. Now it’s in my nervous system. It makes me quiet and watchful, alert to subtle changes in another’s state, watching for signs that they may get overwhelmed or hold a secret thought of escape. I apologize more than I used to. Dolphin reminds me it’s not about abandonment, it’s about surfing the coming and going and being open to that which doesn’t change. Everything material is leaving us. One day you will die, Dolphin told me, but I can always talk to you.
In the first six months after Michael died, I felt a strong need to not hang on too tightly. I had to let him get far away. Not that he did get too far—he visited in many ways, in every dream every night for six months. Being pregnant then and waking a lot, I was remembering my dreams, so many dreams. In them, Michael was transitioning—at the door between life and death, much like he was in the ICU last July.
The constants are interesting, relationships that change but remain in some form or another. Transfigurations. This spring as the plum trees were in blossom I felt again in relationship with Michael. Now as more purely a spiritual friend, without the messy tangles and dear complexity of the everyday. I find myself telling him things, laughing with him. It’s nice. I’m grateful. I miss his embodiedness. I miss watching him do dishes, from behind, his strong arms and narrow hips, his long self bending in rhythm to the music he invariably had going in the kitchen. That soft curl of hair on top flip-flopping from side to side. Soap suds flying.
I still get the New Yorker subscriptions in his name, they arrive once a week. I flip straight to the back to the cartoon contest and every now and then I come up with a response and scribble it down and pin it to the fridge. I want to show it to him. I want to share my mind with his.
It’s pretty close to a year now. I haven’t watered the fruit trees since the day he went missing. They’re needing it now, this far into a drought. But it’s scary. I’m hesitating to go out there. Nothing sounds more lonely to me than watering the garden, a year later. Seasons are real, they have cycles and myriad associations, but other than that I have no idea about time. What is a year? When Ezra was conceived the plum trees bloomed, with Dolphin there were maple tree flower buds appearing outside our bathroom window in Toronto. When the Nootka roses bloom on this island it’s salmonberry picking time and the humpback whales are migrating by. When the orchard trees need water it’s nearing the time Michael died. When it’s time to pull up garlic, it’s even closer.
I trust that this first year will be the hardest. I trust that the edges of this loss will soften some over time. And I trust Dolphin when he says life doesn’t give up. I’m reaching for that. One of the things I’ve learned this year is that relationships and love are the most important things. They persist. They challenge me into the depths of my life. They go on even when they don’t. I wonder what you feel as you read this. I wonder how you will respond to the anniversary.
For me, the anniversary is many moments. The 13th is the day he didn’t return. I sense that it was in the 4-5pm window that day that he became unresponsive. On the 14th he was declared brain dead, and the organ transplant surgery was on the 16th and began at 8 pm. Sometime during the anniversary days, the 13-16th, we will visit the beach near our home where some of his ashes settled into the ocean last year. The kids and I will toss herbs into the water, light incense and float small boats out on the water. We will write a message to him in a book the kids use to share things with Papa. I’m planning to get a tattoo on the 13th of July, the day he went missing. An image of the tree we married under blending into his lungs. The things that continue.
Wanting to do something positive at this time, I signed up the kids and I as organ donors. Have you done this? I encourage you to. Opportunity is lost. I recently learned that Michael’s capacious lungs are thriving inside someone whose life is now extended. I assume his kidneys are too. Magic.
Our family wishes joy and love to the recipients and their families.
A lee side of this time is the web of everyone that showed up to support the boys and I around Michael’s death and in the months after. I can’t thank you all… but I can try to, indirectly. Here’s a list in no particular order. My warmest thank you to:
- Our immediate and extended families for their practical and emotional support. To my parents who’ve done and continue to do extraordinary things day and night (as I type this my Dad is pottying Ezra).
- The ENSO Foundation in Kelowna and specifically Melissa for administering the GoFundMe campaign.
- To everyone that gave to this fund. Ten thousand bows to you. Your support has been essential in this last year and will help us in the coming ones.
- The medical staff who tended Michael at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. To his two amazing ICU nurses who provided one-to-one care with compassion and respect. To the gentle, thankful and resilient team of transplant surgeons and nurses. What hard work, and what an incredible service. He would thank you.
- To my Womyn friends who arrived in spades from all over by airplane, ferry, bus, hitch and bicycle. Thanks for holding my hand, making sure I ate, making me tea, running the bath, labouring with me, holding the baby, cooking meals, cleaning house, staying up late with me to remember very important things, and for reminding me that sparks don’t go out unless you let them.
- To everyone on our Island and beyond who showed up to cut the lawn, clean the house, water the garden, deliver meals, bring flowers, de-moss the roof, sand the deck, stage the house, and help sell the truck.
- To those who scooped up the boys with open arms when they most needed it – Erin, Jude, Katherine, Susa, Karin, Scott, Steve, Taryn, Rose, Lara, Jen, Anne, and Dréa.
- To Michael’s publisher Shambhala, and especially Beth, for your incredible love, patience, and commitment to Michael’s work.
- To Jody and Diane of PIHL Law in Kelowna, as well as Beverly Carter Notary in Victoria. Thank you for helping make this last year of estate admin as smooth and caring as it could be.
- To my midwives at Cook St. Midwives in Victoria. Thanks for taking such good care of Ezra and I.
Lastly, thank you Michael for weaving together all of these people in my life. I’m forever rooted to you through this web of support. It’s a full circle. I can imagine him saying thank you, to each of you.
Michael loved two things the most—his family and sentences. This week I received my copy of the revised Inner Tradition of Yoga that he’d completed before he died. It’ll be released to the world on the 17th. I look forward to turning its pages together.
May we all be safe, well, connected, and inspired.
Carina
Organ donation sign up links. It only takes a moment.