Tasting Mercy

Last time I posted I wrote about my breathes. I could not stop counting each one. I could not help but feel as though each new breathe came a little too late, but just in time. Somewhere it was happening. I was preparing for this moment. Somewhere I knew it was coming. In many ways I have been waiting for this moment for my entire life. To finalize the loss my spirit had always known, and that I only recently understood.

In my letter to you (Dear D.A.D.) I told you. Somewhere I had to believe. I had to accept the painful possibility that,

“One day I hope to be swimming back towards the shore and I will look back on you. Struggling. Maybe drowning. And that will have to be okay”

and that is what happened. very literally. your lungs filled up with liquid. you could no longer take a breathe. in a sense, you drowned, ever so slowly.

I hope that you know that I did everything I could do for you. But, knowing this doesn’t mean there is not more I wish I could have done. I will always live with this. Not in regret of what I could have done, but rather, what I WISH I could have done. Those may sound similar, but they are immensely different. One is based on tangible, lived, everyday realities of what is possible, and one is based on the dreams of possibility.

And so I am pulled between painful and sad dreams of possibility… what if, what I wish, what I long for- and the great promise and beauty found in the possibility of the dreams we have.

Today I felt a slight relief.

It is getting colder outside. You can feel the change in your bones. Night by night. The darkness is longer, colder, and quieter. The leaves are falling. The trees are letting go. They are preparing to rest.

This is the first winter I will not wonder if you are cold. This is the first winter I will not hurt from imagining your pain. This is the first winter that I will not buy you a jacket. This is the first winter I will not worry about your shoes being wet. I will not cry imagining the grey, cold, wet, slush knee high, trudging through, waiting for buses, walking, stumbling, alone. I will not feel this painful imagining. I will not pray that you do not fall on ice and freeze. All of this will not happen, because you are no longer bound by the painful reality of the senses. You will not be cold. You will not be hungry. You will not feel pain. You will not cry. You will not be afraid. You will not yell. You will not feel lonely.  You will not beg. You will not walk, head sunken into your chest. You will not wish for me and be denied. You will not feel shame.

So where do we go. where do we go from here? You return back to the elements from which you emerged, back to the universe from which you came. And me… ? where has this journey taken me so far?

It is said that grief is like an earthquake, when it hits you, your world falls apart. When you put your world back together again there are aftershocks, and you never really know when those will come. The waves through which grief is expressed in my days is very difficult to explain, let alone anticipate. Most of the time I simply do not have the words. In particular, the sadness wells up in my body and often has no where to go. Even when I try to let it out, it can not escape. It is this overwhelming physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual experience that leads to the taste of mercy.

These weeks have been so immensely painful.

Grief. Sorrow. Regret. Broken dreams. Painful realizations.

Rage-filled awakenings.

I think I knew this day was coming. I think I was feeling it coming really soon but I was hoping for something else.  There is so much happening in my mind. I feel relieved that you no longer suffer here on earth, I feel sadness for the longing of another hug, I grapple with guilt for thinking of what more I could have done, I feel angry for what this illness does, I feel disgusted by how little we offer those who need our help the most as a society, I feel frustrated by a system that fails someone so desperate. I feel my head pounding constantly… my body is aching everywhere… I’m exhausted from sadness…but more than anything… my heart. It’s crushed.

I am not without guilt. No matter how many people tell me. No matter how much I know. My body aches from the possibilities, which it never knew. It is exhausted from the wishes that were never realized.

Our last phone call was too long ago. I called you after a month or so of worrying. I wasn’t receiving your incredibly overwhelming and frustrating hourly calls anymore. My voicemail was just empty, a thing is had never known. “Hi Dad”. “Beta” you said while crying softly, “I knew you would call me. I knew”. Right now I can’t even remember the last time I saw you. But I remember so much. It’s painful to know that I will never see you again, never hear your voice, never wipe your tears.

Every time I could, every time you asked, every time I knew you had nothing and were alone…my heart has broken a thousand times for you, for us, for what was, what could have been, what never was, what always will be. The possibilities of it all.

I will always wonder why you didn’t call me yourself. From the constant barrage of calls and messages to the silence. It may well be in fact, that you knew. And you wanted me to survive. You wanted me to remain on shore. You knew that as much as I tried to believe that I wasn’t making a choice. I would never have not tried to save you from drowning. Maybe you knew it was too dangerous for me. I will believe that you wanted to protect me. You wanted me to survive. It’s part of a fantasy that emerges every time I see my daughter in the arms of her father, feeling protected and safe in the grips of his love. This is the place I will leave your final days.

Do not mock a pain you haven’t endured

You know Dad. I always had a dream for you. That you would not suffer. But it never came true in the ways I thought it would. In the ways I wanted it to, on earth. You never tasted the peace I dreamed for you. Would it ever really have been possible? For what possibility exists for a life of regret, loss and broken dreams. A life where every single day you felt alone, you were reminded of the greatest losses of your life. And where you could never find the way back. Lost. Your death. Filthy. Painful. Lonely.

But then I realized.

You were in your own space.

You were not hurting anyone.

Simple. Alone. Independent. Generous. Dignified.

And if I were to imagine your dreams, what would they be? I know one for certain. Perhaps the only one you had. The dream that, in the depths of your lonely suffering, you would call for me… and I would come. One last time. Every time. Again. And Again.

How do you breathe without dreams?

Maybe. Just maybe. You let go of that dream. And that liberated you from me. I was both the last breathe and a push further under. And my dream for you in this moment is that you got a taste of mercy from the depths of decay. And you knew you could let go. Of me. Of this world. And you walked unafraid towards the warmth, cleanliness and light. Submitting yourself. I hope the cold, dark, smell, fears, filth, the complete submission to the overwhelming possibilities of the prison of your senses has finally been set you free.

What do you really possess, and what have you gained in this life? What pearls have you brought up from the depths of the sea? On the day of death, your physical senses will vanish. Do you have the spiritual light to illuminate your heart? When dust fills your eyes in the grave, will your grave shine brightly?

I hope you are enjoying your freedom, “the release of the spirit from the prison of the senses into the freedom of God. Just as physical birth is the release of the baby from the womb into the freedom of the world. While childbirth causes pain and suffering to the mother, for the baby it brings liberation” (Masnavi III:3556-60)

And for me.

You suffered. And created suffering. Your life. It is this type of life that seems at first to be the exact opposite of ‘a life well lived’. At many moments, well meaning friends expressed the idea of “Despite it all… Despite your difficulties… in spite of it all… look at where you are” and I understand it now, sometimes there are those amongst us that suffer for us. It is not in spite of… It is because of… It is because of your suffering that I have met compassion. It is because of your death that I now have tasted the beauty that is Mercy.

I can only hope that mercy brings her compassion to my lips so that I may taste the beauty of her promise, for myself. That when I am alone and I can finally journey to possibility, it is with promise and not only despair. My heart pulls me towards dreams of possibility. To the fantasy that possibility cries. And so I dream. And I mourn the impossibility of the fantasy. But perhaps, in your death, part of my suffering dies too? And so I wish to mourn the longing and fearful side of imagining, and to embrace the beauty of possibility in another time. In another place.

Set me free. Not so that I may run. But so that I may remain standing.

Be responsible with those hearts who have been entrusted to you. And for this, you will need to practice compassion. For yourself. And for those around you. Do not mock a pain you haven’t endured. And remember how lucky you are to have loved.

I got to love you.

And that is due to one person. A Women. Young. Determined. Afraid. Alone. Kind. Generous. Loving.

Asha ~ Mama ~ Hope.

You let me love him. Despite how hard that must have been for you. Your heart had to let go of so much to make this possible. I know now the strength that it must have taken. To trust the world. To believe in us. To know that the universe had a plan for us. You are the women I hope to become. You seemed to know so long before I realized it. Mothers know somewhere a sacred truth about their children, and must accept it in order to be free, “You are apart of their story, but you do not write it”. Thank you for allowing me the great blessing of feeling this pain. There is so much beauty in suffering. There is so much compassion to know. There is so much mercy to embody.

Two days before I found out I said it out loud.

“I’m ready. I finally feel strong enough. I am going to call him next week”

So I had to journey into desperate and painful places to heal my spirit from the unknown pain that I body carried and that which weighed so heavy on my heart. And just at the moment that I found myself at the shore, I looked back… and that is when it happened. you were gone.

Watch now the autumn leaves fall. Following the sacred rhythm of the earth. Knowing that when leaves die, the tree remains. We cannot resist that which cannot be resisted. We must let go of that which is not meant to remain. The tree when “well planted cannot be uprooted, and what is well embraced can not slip away”. Autumn teaches us to let go. Each new wind brings possibility. And as we rest this winter, remember that soon the leaves will sprout towards the heavens again. Nothing is lost. As they say, love never dies. It continues on.

Letting go in order to remain doesn’t mean stop dreaming.

Allow yourself to dream. And you will find possibility.

Show yourself compassion, and you will have tasted mercy.

There is beauty in all suffering.

You are beautiful beyond what you may have ever known.

You are loved so much more than you ever allowed yourself to believe.

I got to love you. And now that you are gone what does this mean for me? If part of me dies alongside you, does part of my suffering die too?

Sometimes I feel alone.

Sometimes I feel empty.

How do I fill this space inside of me where your suffering once laid?

I am not afraid anymore. I know she will find me.