Fall arrives in all its glory as I slowly go about replenishing my emotionally exhausted self
and beginning the sad and exciting process, of looking for a new home after 14 years in my magical cottage in Eden.
Fall is truly here. The miracle of clouds returning. The early rains that came like a monsoon and began the yearly greening along trail edges. Everything washed clear and sharp. The crusty dust of dry summer earth gone. The trees turning the intermittent jewel colors of a California autumn. The temperatures crisply in the 60’s.
Some eight weeks after I fell from a chair onto the concrete patio at my former partner’s house (one insane night on the way to her death), the damage to my poor body seemed finally to have healed. No more spasms and discomfort meandering from one buttock or hip or iliac crest to another when I do more than minimal walking. Back at last to joyous nighttime meanders to the creeks and daylight hikes on the trails. Such a blessing to move freely again. Such a practice to be patient with the slower process of recovery in my aging body.
October has been a time of gradually reclaiming the rhythms of my own life. Of recovering from the fall. Recovering from the seemingly endless busyness of tending to the affairs of B’s life as and after she lay dying. Recovering from the emotional exhaustion of having been so unexpectedly and, seemingly, so utterly drawn back into the enmeshment with her
Still bits and pieces to deal with in the final stages of “closing out” her life. Though I’d keep thinking it was done, there’d always be yet one more niggling thing to handle. Sending out copies of the finally arrived death certificate. Writing an explanatory letter to those creditors still trying to recover monies from her non-existent “estate.” Ending the forwarding of her mail to me. Receiving and passing on her ashes. (One of her old friends is planning and coordinating a memorial service for her later this month.) With the transfer of her ashes, perhaps I’m finally free of all the external “stuff” of the process.
There hasn’t (yet?) been the sense of release I’d thought I would feel from knowing that I’ll never see her again. From knowing that I will never again have to hold myself safe and separate from the pains of tales that she’d share in our occasional, casual meetings downtown in Ojai. Instead, there’s been just the sense of simply being back in my own ordinary life. In my life as it was for so long before I found myself swept up in the vortex of my involvement with her illness and dying.
The intensity of this last journey with B so undid me: Re-experiencing the still broken, inconsolable part in me that could get so caught up with her yet again–despite all the years of separation, distance and deep healing work. Finding myself so desperately struggling to make things “right” for her in her dying. Tangled on such a primitive level with trying, one more time, to have the enormous efforts of that little place in me acknowledged and appreciated by a broken, needy, angry, bitter woman who was B, who was another version of my biological mother. Coming, in a deeper way than ever before, to understand in my cells that it was not okay ever again to place this little being in such a dangerous environment. Remembering yet again that this little one that never got what she needed when she was little-in-the-world can only ever be seen, acknowledged and appreciated by me. That only I can tend her in me. That I cannot tend her by tending a parallel broken little part in some other being. Stunned by my having been “lost” to all this knowing in the middle of my re-engaging with B in this terrible time.
Despite all the replenishing nourishment of being back in my ordinary life, I find I’m still feeling somewhat hollowed out. Left with a lingering sense of emotional depletion. Feeling a deep sense of weariness as I explore reconnecting with my closest friends. Parts of me want to catch up with these women that I dearly love. These women with whom I’ve had such little contact during the “siege.” Yet, as I have dinners and/or walks with them, I feel myself at once both present and not-all-there. Almost as though I’m behind glass. I listen deeply and I share deeply but somehow the old familiar juice isn’t quite flowing.
Some of this feels connected with the time of year. This is always the season in which I feel intensely pulled to withdraw, to fold inward into aloneness, into stillness. But, there is also clearly some added overlay from having just been through such a profound and wrenching time. From having been through re-opening the deepest woundedness in me. From working with and releasing yet more of the toxic residues of my past(s). There is in me, just now, something like a reluctance to engage deeply in my usual way with anyone I love.
As is so often how it happens, I don’t seem to feel any similar reluctance to engage deeply in my work with clients. Somehow the structure and framework of the “work” allows me my usual openness with these women about whom I also care so deeply. This, as always, amazes me.
As I write/feel my way through all this, it seems absolutely clear that my experience is the experience of a person who is in deep grieving. I’ve no sense that I’m grieving for B or for my equally damaged biological mother. More poignantly, I am grieving some intensely hungry, very early part of me who is once again giving up hope of receiving from the outside that which she never received when she needed it. Who, once again, is being transformed by that very giving up.
In the course of walking through to B’s death with her, I gave up trying to make it a “good death” by my standards. I finally released her to the (to me, awful) death she was choosing for herself. I, one more time, individuated my inconsolable one from her inconsolable one. I, one more time, came home to the grief of accepting how ultimately inconsolable the inconsolable one in me really is–despite all the wonderful self-mothering I do for her.
It’s been an enormous amount of psychic work. I can see now that it may well be quite some while before I feel ready to be fully re-engaged with my friends. I’m feeling the need to do “unplugged” and my birthday retreat weeks on all the “every other weeks” that I’m not scheduled to work in November and December. This solitary time feels so very nurturing to anticipate. I feel so blessed that all my closest friends are women who understand “from the inside” that this is what I most need right now, even as parts of me miss the deep contact with them.
In the midst of all this resting/recovering time, Spirit has brought me yet another “big thing” to embrace. The owners of the property on which I’ve lived these past almost 14 years have given me the sad news that I will have to give up my magical cottage by April first. A plan they’ve started and aborted several times during my years here seems finally to be on its way to actualization: They’ll be doing extensive remodeling, needing my cottage as a base from which to supervise this construction on the main house.
The news came the day before we hospitalized B the very week that she died. I couldn’t really begin to take it in till a couple of weeks later. Knowing that this long chapter of my life is coming to a close has made me even more acutely aware of all the wonder of this extraordinary house and this incredibly beautiful land on which it and I sit. I am even more keenly present in every moment than I usually am. Aware with each ministration to my gardens that this may be the last season that I’ll be doing just this, just here. I feel such an intense mixture of sadness, poignancy, curiosity and even excitement at where I’ll be taken from here. It all feels quite huge!
I’ve settled into a pattern, on Wednesdays and Fridays when our local paper comes out, of looking at the 3 or 4 new relevant rentals in Ojai. On Fridays, I also check out the free, weekly-updated list of area rentals that one of our local realtors sets out. Some of these listings never make it to the newspaper. It’s all rather low key since there’s never very much available in the category I’m likely to be looking at. I, in usual Ojai fashion, tell everyone I know that I’m looking.
I feel open to wherever it is that Spirit has in mind for me. Not frantic or worried as I was 14 years ago when I’d had to leave the last wonderful place that I’d rented for 6 1/2 years. Back then, I couldn’t imagine ever finding something as wonderful as what I had. So much angst and fretting. Then in the 12th hour, this wonderful cottage magically appeared! Though I sorely grieved the letting go of my old house, this new house was endlessly more wonderful than the old one. As if that had been the “rehearsal” and this one the “performance.”
It’s remembering that extraordinary experience that calms and centers me through this impending loss. I trust that, even while I haven’t a clue about what could be “better” than this little magical cottage, Spirit has a hand in it. Something just right for my “next step” will surely appear when it’s time.
Between now and that moment, I seem to be getting into “trying on” the houses that I see. Arranging my life and my furniture and my “organic garden in containers” in each somewhat likely place. Exploring what of my “stuff” I can imagine giving up. Seeing what feels absolutely essential. (Washer/dryer hook-ups, secluded space for my sleeping tent and for my hot tub, lots of light–these seem to be the most necessary considerations.)
In the 6 weeks that I’ve been exploring, I’ve fallen in love with two very different places. One I was seriously considering was majestically in the middle of wildness but way too expensive. The woman rented it to her brother-in-law after a lot of back and forth-ing, thus saving me from the possibility of a financial choice that I think would not have been the wisest for me. The second was feeling quite affordable and quite perfect even though it was actually “in town” rather than out in the Ojai “boonies.” That fell through just this week when the electrician reported that there was no way we could pull in a 220 line for the hot tub given the state of the wiring at the meter.
In each case there was sadness and disappointment about not getting the new place. But, right in the middle of that was the unmitigated joy that I would get to stay here in my Eden for that much longer! My fantasy is that I’ll get to stay here till the very last moment–even as I do continue looking each week. My even bigger fantasy is that the owners’ plans will once again get derailed and that I’ll get to stay for much, much longer.
There’ve certainly been some huge and intense challenges for me to face this year: A scary big fall in March that left me feeling vulnerable and shaky on my feet for a long time of healing. A breast lump in May that opened me to contemplating mortality and serious illness in a more than theoretical way–until it was proven to be only an inflammation. The whole three month descent into hell that was my enmeshment with B during her illness and dying. And, now, this prospect of losing my magical home in Eden.
Yet, I find that it’s only rarely that I think of them all together like this. More, I’ve found that I seem just to show up in the middle of each one and meet whatever there is to be met. Then, each one is merely where I find myself in just that moment. It may be very intense in just-that-moment. But in each just-that-moment I always find that I have just what I need in order to cope with and to learn from and to grow myself through the experience. There is certainly a lesson in this!
Originally published November 2004
