Resurgens

On rising, on grief

Ironically, the motto of Atlanta, the city where I lived for 20 years, is “Resurgens,” which means “rising again.” The emblem is a phoenix. I have left the city of rising again, in order to rise again. Life is often a paradox of contradictions.

My mom died the day after I moved back to Richmond. I was with her. My dog (the goodest boy) guarded her until transport came to take her to the funeral home.

My soon-to-be-ex and I signed our divorce papers the morning of her memorial service. I delayed the start date of my new job by a week.

After her burial, I attended my 30th high school reunion where the kindest people said the kindest things about my mom.

And then I started my first week of work. It’s the sort of work environment I’ve been dreaming of.

She’s been gone almost three weeks. In another week and a half, I close on my new townhouse.

For past two and half years, I’ve driven to Richmond to help take care of my mom. And now she’s gone. And I can’t call her. I can’t tell her about her service, or all the people who came, or the lovely things people said about her. I can’t tell her about meeting her cousins for lunch after her burial. Or my new job. I took pictures of her funeral flowers and started to send them to her.

Grief has cracked my heart completely open and everything is raw and hot and sore. I am a wound when I walk my dog and I am a wound when I drink my coffee and I am a wound when I brush my teeth. It never stops.

Everything I touch is through grief. Everything that touches me is through grief.

Grief is how we make friends with Death. Because we are all impermanent. And change, like moving, or divorce, or new jobs, are all little types of dying. We can’t avoid transition. The only way to live is to die, again and again. Like I said. Life is a paradox of contradictions.

In grief, everything is brighter. The sun is brighter. The cold is colder. The sunset is redder and the nights are darker and the grass is so searingly green I can barely stand to look at it. It’s autumn, and the leaves are kaleidoscopes of yellow and orange and red, and this, too, is a dying. And it’s so goddamn beautiful it breaks my heart every time I go outside.

I’m going to be okay.

Sometimes, I know this. Sometimes, I find stillness, and I can see my reflection in the universe, and the universe’s reflection in me.

Sometimes, nothing is still and the darkness is too dark and the sadness is too big and I have no idea what I’m doing here or how I’ll ever find the way through.

And I breathe. And I breathe. And I breathe.

And she’s still gone, and I’m still here, and the mornings are still getting colder.

Little things paper cut my heart every day. Throwing away her hairbrushes. Finding photos she took of me on her phone. Finding the last text she tried to send me, but couldn’t push the button.

These things make me bigger. Expanded. The wound of grief is also an opening, a stretching of the ventricles and heart chambers, in order to contain all the multitudes of the world. I contain her laughter. I contain her photographs. I contain memories and histories of everything.

Grief is an incredible gift. Grief is the shape that love left behind. Grief is listening to the world to hear the ways the dead speak to us. Through sunrises. Through grass. Through wind.

After my mom died, a cardinal, a female, flew into her garage after I parked, and flew around in circles.

I found a 1937 Chinese yuan note by the side of the road.

Little things. Little hellos.

And now I walk my dog through the liminal mornings in that space just before dawn, getting ready for work, starting each day through the moment of transition, where everything is lighter, but the sun isn’t quite up.

On the kitchen table and coffee table and mantlepiece, the funeral flowers that I took pictures of are wilting and starting to die.

Life is a paradox of contradictions.

I left the city of rising, to grieve, and rise again.