A member of our community announced today that he was diagnosed with cancer,  so I immediately made it a point to allot a period of time in my day to dedicate to meditation. It’s important for me that in a crisis,  I have sanctuary, a space to get me alone with my breath.

As my mind unfurled like an oriental fan , the moments of my life flooded in like an eternal river calming & serene in it’s  violence.

I’ve had an uncomfortable companion in death throughout my journey on this earth starting when it almost took my life while I was struggling in the tumultuous drug addled womb of the woman who conceived me. Unable  to care for me she loved me in the purest way she knew how, by abandoning me to the care of another.

  Death found me again in the ailing body of my foster mother. My earliest memories consisted of doctors visits & oxygen tanks, moments of pure terror watching my foster mother suffocate. Visceral sense memories remind me of rubbing lotion of her dry moisture deprived skin. Especially vivid was the day she died. Getting off the bus that day was like embarking on the moon. I was confronted with the lifeless vessel of the only parent I have ever known. They say that time heals all wounds. I don’t necessarily believe this to be the case, it does however offer a sense of familiarity as a shock absorber,

but the pain…

No one can prepare you for that.

A few years down the road saw a series of encounters with my adversary but the piece  de resistance that ushered me into my darkest hour was the day that my partner came home from work with a bewildered & scared look on his face. The silent refrain that hid behind it a tumor the size of a golf ball  and subsequent metastasis that were waiting in stage four at the moment of his  diagnosis.

It’s the craziest curveball  I’ve ever experienced. All our plans for the future, our up in coming vacation through the Panama Canal, the moments of laughter, baking sweets & home games came to an abrupt & startling end. My man, so brave during his epic battle that lasted a year. So sure of himself and at peace he was at letting go. The tragedy he shrugged off behind kind ocean eyes that peered directly into my inner sanctum. The well within my consciousness where he will always have a place.

Grief is a lifelong process that is non linear and is dynamic in it’s myriad manifestations. The closest experience I can allude to is river rafting. There are stages where the waters are choppy, twists & turns through seemingly impassable valleys & steep drops that challenge one’s sanity. Yet there is a calmness in the background, a ever flowing stream from whence all life emanates. An equalizer that calls us back to the waves, back to moment of our birth.