It’s All ‘My Work’
I rub my cousin's back and hold his hands as we stare at our grandmother's dead body.
It has taken over a decade of healing to offer love and support in a good way. My true nature—one of deep intimacy. Buried under years of fear, pain, and abuse. It feels good to be touched by me, especially when it's desired—a recent revelation.
My aunt tells me stories of brokenness after losing a child. I sit with her, held in palpable mists of immense grace.
I was born to be the one who can sit here with her and say hello to it all—no stuffing away, disassociating, discomfort, or changing the subject to something 'lighter.' Just a creation of space for being with the pain of existence.
I walk around the town where I spent the first 3 years of my life.
The place where we all watched my Mother slowly die. Her gravestone is here amidst layers of primal body memories.
I tell everyone I'm coming back here, and they don't know what to say. How can you be excited to return to a place ridden with tragedy? I hear them think.
I come here to pick up all the pieces—all the pieces of him, of her, and of me.
The same pieces that you wonder where they are when you feel like you should be feeling happiness. The pieces that, if you're lucky, you notice are the very things that would allow you to be deeply present with Life—with this moment. The pieces whose absence keeps you searching for fulfillment in comparison, distraction, and vanity.
I come back here to put myself back together.
We walk to the park where I used to play. I sit underneath the Crepe Myrtle trees and close my eyes. I am entranced by the symphony of the cicadas. Their sacred swells take my whole body with them. Streams of tears roll down my cheeks. This holy little creature carries a song of such magnificence that it manages to drown out an entire city. This is sound healing at its finest. In only seconds, my consciousness is surfing, and my body is relaxed.
Did 2-year-old me love this sound as much as 30-year-old me?
Do these trees remember me, remembering them?
Are these cicadas the great-great-great-grandchildren of ancestors who once sang my little body to sleep?
Singing me lullabies of time as a circle. Toning reminders of eternal okayness that they knew I was rapidly losing. It feels as though they knew the decades of torment that were about to ensue. They were with me all along—guiding sing me to sleep amidst sobs. Pain to wisdom. Wisdom to pain. One more time—spin the karma. I stare at this ancient creature. I feel it seeing me, seeing it. It knew I would come back one day and lay my gratitude down. We have lived this moment together before.
I slowly walk up the brick stairs of the condos where we lived.
I enter the gardens, and immediately, my breath deepens. It's an oasis of respite. The perfect place for a soul to leave a body. An Eden in the middle of a busy and loud—yet quaint town. Immaculate water views. But at this moment, I am enraptured by the gardens. Ivy spills through and over brick terraces. Billowing, perfectly shaped Crepe Myrtle’s structure a calm ceiling. Sunlight dapples in, offering a welcomed and intentional shade. Red brick floors and walls. Gorgeous cream pillars. Wrought iron metalwork crafted with intention. My Mom wanted to die here. In this garden.
I close my eyes and remember walking along the brick walls.
Does my body remember this, or does my mind know how to fill in the storyline? Perhaps both.
"Caught you!" My Dad yells as he jokingly grabs my small child's body with his hands. The only time we were a family was when we were held in the roots of this ivy and masonry of these bricks. I am so calm here—suspended in a cradle in time—swaddled by the family my body remembers, knowing I am on the bridge of birthing my own.
I come here to say hello to a past that everyone seems to want to forget, that has seeped its way in and through the marble cracks, the over-stuffed chestnut drawers, the parts of the house we don't go in. All of these memories live in boxes in the garage that I recently learned cannot stay there anymore. Out of sight, out of mind. Keep everything looking fine on the surface; maybe everything underneath it will disappear. Maybe I, and my story, will disappear.
I journey here for the little me who wondered about a life that felt more like a forgotten fairy tale than a reality well-lived. I think we were happy. My heart tells me I was loved deeply. Is it okay to fantasize about a time I consider heaven, that was everyone else's hell?
I am here for the tears of each family member. The first responders—the grandmothers who took care of me and the aunts and uncles who lived with us. The grandfather's left alone working and wondering. One of them knew his only daughter was dying. The other, knowing his only son, was lost. The 3 brothers watching their 1 sister die. The aunts not knowing what to do. The young cousins—absorbing it all. The woman dying, pressing herself into Life, with all of her might — extending her time from months to years.
I come here and press my bare feet into the cobblestones and my cheeks into the warm red bricks. I run my hands through the waters of the Potomac.
For our grief has grown gardens.
In my pilgrimages to these lesser-known holy lands, I, without fail, meet ongoing wisps of pain. Mine and theirs. Theirs and mine. I don't expect it to end anymore. I welcome its deepening and refining. It's expansion, a mirror of my own.
In these unrecognized sacred sites, I uncover a diamond of my lineage. Didn’t they tell you? All sacrifice comes with a blessing.
This time, it's the bedrock laden with shimmering minerals drumming the shamanic tone of my extended family’s no matter what.
Maternal and Paternal sides. A gathering of wholly invested ancestors and living relatives alike. The nuclear family was lost. From its ashes, the extended circles lit on fire.
We will be here, no matter what. We will drop everything. We will hope. We will not look away. We will walk in and through. We’re not going anywhere.
It's not a question or a thought. It's an extension of our very existence.
I am asked about it often—this no matter what-ness. Devotion. Dedication. Commitment. Perseverance.
How is it cultivated? Have I always been like this? How? Where? From who?
I don't know.
The grief-filled oceans of my lineage imbue the blood rivers of my body. The mycelium of death—young and old—make up my very bones. The chains of abuse structure my DNA. The stark dichotomies of Life live in the song of my voice. The soils of where we have been and the seeds of where we are going are amber flecks in the green-brown universes of my eyes. This no matter what swells like cicadas humming my soul into existence. A gift of lineage I vow to no longer take for granted.
