365 days have passed. An 'opened' letter to my sister Rebecca

 Dearest Sister Rebecca,

 Ah yes, I remember this day just a year ago today. I remember it so very well. It's carved deeply into my soul and it will always be there each time the cycle of time and dates repeat. It was one of the most difficult days I have ever experienced in my life, and likely the most peaceful you had experienced after all of this life business! You did it so well, the living, the dying. And there's no way I don't miss you. But I'll share some of what I have been wanting to write to you over this time, because as we both know, writing is our sacred space with one another. As sisters. 

I was at moms the other day and I was walking down the hallway and all of a sudden I smelled you. It was totally unmistakable. It was like you were standing or walking next to me right there and I thought, "That's Beck!". It's one of those things I think we maybe don't notice so much when we are around someone, the specific scent of them. The one that is only theirs when they are walking the earth. And maybe when they pass, and when suddenly that scent returns out of 'nowhere', it is so visceral and real we cannot deny it. And then, like such things do, the memories of the connection you had with them become triggered and surface, which they did for me in moms hallway. 

In that moment, it was both comforting and a deep pang of missing you all at once. I was going to ask mom if she had something of yours in one of the rooms off the hall, but I decided not to so I could just stay with the mystery of it all. So, I just stood there in the frozen moment of my love for you. Surrounded by the scent of my sister,

It's not easy at times you not being here. I still fall into a dizzy haze of disorientation at all that we went through in 2015. I've wanted to call you 1,000 times and just talk it out and sort it out and cry it out with you, since you were there, and we were so fully in it together. All in. I don't quite know when that will all heal, or maybe it's not meant to totally, but I know it has taken it's sweet time and will continue to change in me as I can find space to let the truth that you're gone in a slice at a time.

I have faith that I will continue to find the joys among the dark. I know you would and do encourage me to continue to live.....and I am beginning to do so again in the ways that feel good and right and where my feet find steady ground. But please let me flash back, if just for a moment because I feel you here, and I know you are reading as I write and I still so want to share something of this remembering with you......

Remember you, me, Alexander, mom. Kat, Joel, Kevin. Dolan,, Annie, David, Cheri and all the other family and friends in the surrounding circle that walked with us and held us all so close? Remember the fucking insane immediacy of trying to hold on so close and navigate at the same time through the most turbulent of waters? Remember that first night at the Kabuki when we finally got Alexander to CMPC? 

 You the most stunning, strong, courageous mother. I know you kept your boy alive with your pure momma love, and I think also along with those bright colored Popsicles we fed him hour by hour. Remember that same night you drew that hotter than hot bath you took at 1am in the deep Japanese tub with your bath salts and the scrubbing cloth you brought with you knowing you'd need it? I remember the steam falling out into the room and fogging the sliding doors on our 12th floor room. I was watching some blaring TV show that filled my mind with the much needed numbness. We stood on the balcony, looking out to the Japantown square, the SF night buzzing and you and I in silence. 

Even these long 365 days later, those memories still surface first, soon after the memory of the actual day you left. It's like the time-line and the memories still start with the end and then go backwards from that, and then maybe at some point begins to drift into the times before that year. It's a strange sensation to keep going over the recent past, and not being able to enter into the past-past which is where the perhaps "happier" times might live. 

 Please know, I am so totally grateful that I was able to be there within that time, and I don't regret one moment spent. It was real, raw, pure life.... and life at it's depth. Happy times or not, what I do know now is that there was more love happening in all that than any I have ever experienced before or since. I will always remember. The love remains. Our love is alive and living. 

And then I roll back into my childhood with you. You washing my hair on a Saturday morning, in the kitchen sink, when I was six years old, on Sea Wolf Drive in Santa Rosa. You were probably made you do it as a Saturday morning chore, but it was our time, big sister to little sister, and I think we both knew our true connection. I realize now how you always took care of me, and I felt your love among the larger teen aged challenges you had within the family being the oldest sibling. You playing The Beatles loud from your teen aged room. It was 1976. I only wished we had been closer in age and shared more music together. But I still love the St, Pepper album which I attribute to your influence! 

Flash forward 1982. You're now living in Japan and you've essentially escaped the confines of the family. It was well timed for you. You needed your freedom. I 10 or so, receiving letters from you from across the sea with small origami folded in the middle of the fine Japanese paper and tiny animal stickers on the envelope. You knew how to reach me. I loved you telling me of your time there, and I imagined you living a life of adventures and freedom. You loved that culture, and I imagined you fit in so well with your gentle ways and your attention to details. And you also told me you "danced" there. As I child I did not know what kind of dancing you did, but as I learned later you seemed to have swooned the US and Japanese sailors with your fluid moves and likely made more money than you would have here! 

1987. You're 28 now, I'm 16. You returned from Japan and moved into dads apartment and you had come home pregnant with Alexander. You met his father Alan in the Philippines and fell in love. He was a musician, you met him in a club, and you were head over heals. Alan was an island man and he was beautiful. But he stayed behind on his island and your son met him only once as a infant when you returned to visit. You asked me to be your birth coach and even though I smoked a lot of weed and I liked to party with my friends, you trusted me as his auntie, and we did the birthing classes together. I took it very seriously. So when the word came on that afternoon that you were in labor and I had to leave school to come help you breathe, Alexander arrived quickly after I got to the hospital on the late afternoon of Nov 7th, 1988. 

That I know was your happiest day, and the most amazingly beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. The boy. I remember spending weekends at dads with Kevin, Kat and Joel all helping take care of him. I loved taking care of him, and all the time we spent just hanging with the wee one. At some point you got back on your feet and were ready and moved out of the apartment, but I know that time was a true moment of family togetherness and Alexander being the light in our lives. 

1999. It was pouring with rain one night and I remember calling you and asking you if I could come and stay with you and Alexander. I had broken up with my girlfriend and I was a total wreck. You without a blink drove out to Sebastopol and picked me up no questions asked. You helped me breathe during that time until I could get back on my feet. I will always remember that generosity and your love for me.

2015. Late September. We sat outside in the courtyard under the redwoods at Memorial Hospital, Alexander was up in his bed on the 5th floor, and we took a break and went outside for a heart to heart. You told me you were "ready" to go. Ready to die. Ready to leave the Earth. You shared your dream you had a few nights before, and I listened. It was of you, out in space, floating, looking back at the Earth. You had dads navy sword in your hand. I asked you what you thought that dream message was about, and you said that you didn't feel scared floating out there, and that dads sword was your protection. I asked you if you were going to miss the Earth, and you said yes, the beauty of it, and the people you loved, but not so much of the bad things that were happening on and with the planet. I asked you if you would promise to send me messages from wherever you were after you left, and you said yes, you would. I said I was going to miss you so much, We started crying with one another. We held one another for awhile, just the beginning of saying goodbye. And you have sent the promised messages...and I will continue to look for and notice them.

 ........And suddenly like that first memory in the hallway, I have just returned to this day this hour a year ago. It's 4:55 as I write this and you left your body for good at 5:13 Dec 30th, 2015. I had just left the house where you were taking your last long breaths. I put my hand to your heart and told you I loved you forever. Joel arrived, Dolan was pacing the room. I left at 4:15 and went to the movies with Annie. We sat down with our popcorn and I got the call right as the movie started that you had just passed. I remember the shock that hit me, (it never doesn't hit like a thousand waves at once), and then that release that flooded through my body knowing you were finally free. It was not an escape this time though. It was simply your time to breathe again. 

 I sit here with these memories all fully surfaced now and feel more of them awakening. It's good, and I am grateful that they have because I was not so sure where they have been hiding. You, my sister, have brought them alive again in me today, a day I will always remember too. I know you have walked with me through them again as well. Such a full and wondrous life huh? One moment after the other with the connections we make with one another being what remains most alive within us. We shall continue. 

Wherever you are Beck, I know you know we will meet again beloved sister......When it's my time to join you. But until then, I will keep hearing your whisper in my ear "It's ok baby girl.....it's all ok."

With Eternal Love.

Your little sister Molly

We have all come to pass......

I'm moved to speak about death, grief, and the grieving process. I wanted to speak to it because as some know, our Western culture still overall considers this very real and present topic of collective human experience, as taboo. 

In my mind and heart, I find this cultural taboo quite unfortunate to deal within because I am not the type of person to pretend I am not affected, nor one to attempt to shut my feelings off for the accommodation of others. I mean how could we not be affected by death? How can some pretend one of the hugest things that happens in their lives almost not be noticed or somehow not be allowed a voice? I don't buy it. 

Key word: Pretend, a.k.a Denial.

But what I do know in my studies and personal experience with death and the grief path, is that until we can truly give full permission and be not only with our own grief but those of others as well, we will in fact be continually stunting and feel a missing of a whole huge and beautiful aspect of our own soul, as well as an authentic, vulnerable, real connection with others. That's no fun at all now is it??

So let's break this down some more, and in doing so, let's also just tell the truth shall we? 

First off, generally people don't want to think or talk about death, nor do most people want to feel anything that reminds them of their own mortality. I totally get that....it can be freaky, weird, trippy, and scary to ponder, because it is one of the absolute unknowns and that, in and of itself, puts most people right over the edge. Welcome to being totally out of control! But, in my opinion, we are in fact meant to grapple with this very "out of control-ness" during our existence here as human in physical forms so we can learn to surrender. And should we learn that surrendering good and well, the very last and final surrender, which is death of our bodies themselves, might be a more familiar and natural experience. 

Truth: Death will and does happen. It just does. So what are we going to do with that information? 

And in that questioning, it's unfortunate that the thing that often times is the most confusing and mystifying and unknown in us, for most it cannot be something that we can allow ourselves even a daily or monthly space to reckon with. My feeling is that we need to do this so as to begin to understand who and why we are. Just give this temporal knowing a solid space to be heard, even if it's painful and frightening. 

And besides that, it's unfortunate when we simply assume and hope that there will automatically be receptivity from, and refuge with others to embrace us in our grief and suddenly find that is not always true and at times is just not going to happen. We can feel so lonely in our grief at times, even around the closest people to us. Some say it is a path we walk alone, which in some ways it is, but we need also to reckon with the fact that yes, it likely makes others whom are not directly dealing with grieving a death 'uncomfortable' to have to even look at or open themselves to feel the above noted facts. As a culture we are "scared to death" to acknowledge death. 

Note: We need to give ourselves and others this honest space of refuge and embrace. 

A small story example: I don't know if you experienced this in your family as a child, but I recall at age 10 or 11 a close family friend passed away and I wasn't directly told by my parents or any adult for that matter. It was a feeling of a deep off limits secret that was floating around, and there was just a heavy sorrow around the 'adults' that had no vocal explanation to it. Then I realized when we visited, that she was never there again. But she had been there all my life until then, and I loved her and missed her, so I was perplexed. In my child's mind/heart she literally disappeared forever. Poof! Confusing to say the least, And what was I to do with that sadness and confusion if there was no space and it was off limits to voice it?

For a child, that secret feeling shit floating around is viscerally obvious. But no one would just say she died, and that no one really knows where she went, but she wasn't coming back. If that had just been spoken then maybe we could have asked our innocent child questions, and maybe we would all have a good missing cry for her, and hopefully from that bond of collective loss we could have moved on together. That would have been honest and real, which is most children's set-point,

And in retrospect the adults were the ones that couldn't deal with the loss and grief, and the kids then had to linger in the confusion of unspoken sorrow. There is no fault in that, as adults are just as confused about it all, but there might have been a better way. The way of truth telling even if we as larger children don't know the answers. Because we don't know the answers. But we can comfort our children because loss and grief is universal no matter what age you are,

Note: We need to talk about death with children as it arrives even if it frightens us. We, as "big people", have to hold the line of truth for them. 

Then there's just the question of what is ok to feel and not ok to feel in our culture/society. Why in all of gods green earth would we be given tears if we weren't supposed to use them well? I am not encouraging a long life of being stuck in sadness and grief, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that shedding the tears only helps us to feel more of the love. The love of the one we are grieving. The love of our own self and the compassion for the tender fragility of our own hearts. The love of this life that we all know deep within is a simple "hello, and then a gentle goodbye." 
Note: We will have to say goodbye no matter what.

I say let's come together and speak to it all. I say let's stop attempting to convince ourselves we are alone in our grief. I say if we know someone is grieving that we reach out......and then reach out again...... like it is not only their grief, but our own as well and the reaching towards is a bridge that heals the loneliness that comes with loss. Let's continue to learn from other cultures that honor this process and are more willing to admit that we are truly here for a moment and we love others deeply for that moment, and when we have to let go of another because they have died, that we are surrounded in a full circle of acknowledgement and support. 

Truth be told, we are meant to grieve together. We are already silently doing so. We are connected so closely and we are meant to witness one another in this so as to create a common connective balm. We are meant to go directly towards a broken heart, as uncomfortable it might be, because it is our heart as well, And we are meant to bring our courage, vulnerability, and presence, even if we "don't know what to say." Most times words are not what is needed, it's more about the allowing that voice of the grieving one to share with us their words......or more importantly their tears of sacred love. 

Note: We are all in this mystery  together. We have all come to pass.