Tuesday - October 20, 2009
Shift and Change - October 2009
During October in New England, the colors of the world shift and change. Veils are worn and fall away. Truths are hidden, changed, and exposed. And then what seems real transforms in appearance again, and another layer emerges. Over and over, the world changes, and our relationship to it...our identity in the midst of these seasonal transitions...is altered.
Halfway around the world in Singapore, our family friend Dr. William Tan has lived through the early days of bone marrow transplant...his body's marrow reborn as his older sister's donated cells make their way into his bones. Infections, setbacks, side effects of both the chemo and the disease, as well as the toll the transplant takes, are challenging his survival...but he continues to wake up every day.
During October in New England, the colors of the world shift and change. Veils are worn and fall away. Truths are hidden, changed, and exposed. And then what seems real transforms in appearance again, and another layer emerges. Over and over, the world changes, and our relationship to it...our identity in the midst of these seasonal transitions...is altered.
Halfway around the world in Singapore, our family friend Dr. William Tan has lived through the early days of bone marrow transplant...his body's marrow reborn as his older sister's donated cells make their way into his bones. Infections, setbacks, side effects of both the chemo and the disease, as well as the toll the transplant takes, are challenging his survival...but he continues to wake up every day.
Being William (will-power personified), he makes plans to return to his life of research, medical practice, fund raising, and setting world records. He wants to come back for another Boston Marathon, racing as a wheelchair athlete in celebration of Jessie and to symbolize his own triumph...but that is many months, many miles and many healthy marrow cells away. He has overcome the limitations imposed by paralysis due to polio as well as cultural, economic and physical barriers, and taken hold of every opportunity that his intellect and his athletic prowess could achieve. Now he lives day by day. And we hold our breath, and lift his name to the light, and wait...we BELIEVE!
Back in New England, purple shadows stretch longer. Bright-hued days grow shorter. Verdant greens disappear from foliage, peeled away to reveal crowns of gold, amber and crimson. Then the colors spiral and fall, cladding the feet and knees of the trees, drifting into pathways and roads, making gilded trails.
Above us, etched against clear blue skies or stormy grey clouds, rise the black interlaced fingers of twigs and branches. Stretching stark and unadorned. It's almost a secret, the first seasonal glimpse of the dark-boned nakedness of exposed limbs and trunks. Startling, when these same towering trees have seemed so thick and full and padded in their greenery and then their fiery fall show.
Now we see another truth: their secret grace and strength laid bare. Uncovered, they stand wrinkled and mute. Knuckled. Dimpled. Moss-grown and knobby. Scarred from loss of past limbs. Bent and distorted by elemental forces that have twisted them out of natural patterns.
And yet, they are unembarrassed in their strength. Sure in their lines and their sweep, whether they rise straight and symmetrical, or tortured in their turnings. They don't apologize for their nakedness or their wayward bends and angles. They simply wear it: another layer of age and certainty that they have earned across time.
The only ones who might blush are the mortals, who dared to think them anything less than beautiful, in any season, under any sky, in any state of disrobing.
Like the trees, our colors are changing. We put away the thin fabrics and bold colors of summer. Choose comforting earthy tones. And black again. Wear layers of soft, inwardly-turned threads that add warmth to chilled flesh. Pull on socks and sweaters, long sleeves and extra coverings. Wools. Flannels. Fleeces. Knits.
In a longer turning, age threads silver through our hair. What do those grey hairs symbolize? Age? Wisdom? Accumulation of days and weeks and years? The sapping away of brighter hues as winter comes?
Hard-earned: those pale strands. Put there by care. Stress. Loss. Time. Too much of some things, not enough of others.
Sometimes we don't mind showing our age, our grey. But sometimes we go back to the hairdresser, and have them blended back into a youthful shade. Hah, but they come back, the true colors beneath the artificial ones. White, silver and grey woven into beards and sideburns, dark roots and overgrown locks. Ultimately, like the autumn trees, we cannot hide the passage of seasons.
In this month of October, we have visited the county fair, started to collect gourds and pumpkins, gone back to cooking hearty stews and steaming soups, and pulled out recipes for holiday pies.
We have also lived intimately with Jessie's loss, and made it part of the season.
Our family attended a camp called Comfort Zone Camp, for bereaved children, which is opening a new location in Massachusetts. Sarah attended the teen portion, while mom and dad participated in the parent sessions. It was exhausting. Necessary, perhaps, but grueling. Almost overwhelming. And yet, their model of working with bereaved kids is quite successful: a large dose of fun and a small swallow of grief. Enough for one meal, one weekend.
One week later, Sarah spoke on behalf of bereaved siblings at the memorial gathering hosted by Children's Hospital Boston and Dana Farber, called "A Gathering to Remember." She read one of Jessie's poems, and shared her memory about her little sister's passion for life, and the impact it had on Sarah. She talked about choosing a path of passion...of courage and hope and love. What she hoped for herself and for others like her, who had also lost a brother or sister.
And of course, this month is the two-year anniversary of Jessie's passage. It's a day we wish had never been added to our family's biography. And we wish we could ignore it...let it pass unnoticed. But it carries weight, and it cannot be stepped over or got around. It must be given its time and space.
We have paid attention, we hope, by participating in camps and memorial services. By staring grief and loss in the face. By acknowledging its child-shaped outlines.
The shape of loss: slim and small. So little to take away so much, and to give so much, too. Oh, Jessie. Who you are. Who you were. Who you might be today, two years later.
We can only focus on what is absent...gone...missing... in small increments. For a few hours at a time. Brief thoughts. Gulps and sobs. Lost days and private moans. Sleepless nights and temper tantrums. Quiet walks and broken words.
Then we have to take back all that we can hold onto. Magic tricks and practical jokes followed by giddy peals of laughter. A flirting skip in leotard and floating skirt across the bright slant of sunlight in a dance studio. A little girl, clad in black, hiding with her black lab in a dark corner, curled up on a hairy dog bed. A young lady in white tights, high heels and red glittering dress, promenading daintily down the stairs and extending a gloved hand for her daddy to bend over in a princely bow, ready for their father-daughter date. A squeal of sisterly outrage, followed by chuckles and murmurs, behind closed doors. A storybook read over and over. Screams. A stomped foot. A taste for spaghetti and sushi and black olives and mint chocolate chip ice cream. A life...measured in colors and tastes, in snippets and threads, in shapes that come and go.
And then, because too much focus on what is lost and missing will topple us, we step back into the humming rhythms of daily life, and immerse ourselves in the rituals of business and school, work and play, friends and family, church and volunteering, projects and escapes. Life. Getting on with it. Being part of it.
Autumn changes our colors. Makes them bright. Brief and blazing.
Pain and grief are threaded into our days. Part of our palette. But as Sarah would say, only one part of the palette. There is so much more...to ourselves, to our lives...than the colors of sorrow, anger, abandonment, and grief. So much more. But always, yes, those colors are part of the palette now.
The season wanes. Colors fail. Foliage falls.
Where the leaves once clung, we are exposed: twigs, branches, trunk and roots. Marked by life and time. Our lumps and scars unmasked. The turning season shows the damage that goes deep into the living heartwood.
There, see? We are wounded so that you might wonder if we can make it through another winter storm. Thick, burled chunks of bark hacked and chewed away. Whole parts of ourselves lopped off. Growth distorted. Pattern marred. Hurt so that our silhouettes are forever changed. Riven. Cleft. Altered.
During this transition between autumn and winter, our silhouettes stand revealed. Upright in our strengths, misshapen by our scars. Wounded. And yet...present.
Tonight, as we write, snow is falling. The world changes again.
The journey continues.