Choices

I know a handful of people who chose not to breathe anymore. Today I honor them and the choice each on of us has to live or to die.

Suicide is seen in many circles as a death so horrible it can't even be spoken of. In each of my experiences whether family members, friends, or a friend's family member, the same comments and questions come up following a suicide:

• It can't be so.
• Who's to blame?
• Why?
• What could have I done different?
• Didn't he/she know how much we love her/him?

We don't get the answers and what I found for myself is that I was asking the wrong questions. How I've reconciled the intentional deaths of people I know is that they simply chose not to be here. Am I sad and is death sad? Yes. Absolutely. Did I morn and remember them? Yes. Did I berate or was I angry about their choice? No. Their work was finished and they were ready to move on. By their own hand, someone else's, or accident, the work was done and it was time to move on.

Waking up and breathing through the day is a choice. I can honor those choices without knowing the whys.

How do I recommend moving through someone else's personal death choice?

• Don't take it so personally. It's not about you
• Stop rubber-necking, it's not your party
• Raise awareness, not tragedy
• Respect choice--your choice and other people's choice
• Hugs, sharing remembrances, and lots of tears

How you choose breath over death when you wake up each day? How do you honor the folks in your circles that chose the time of their deaths?

Choices

I woke up breathing this morning
Breathing is a choice, you know
I could chose to stop--
Stop pushing air in and out of these lungs
By my hand, by my will, this breath could stop

I woke in the darkness to dripping coughs
in the next room that set my teeth snapping hard together
when the light breaks I could leave that child
by the road to the foxes and the deer of the dawn.
He knows better than to wander out in to the road
or to talk to strangers.

I could stop being a mother right now.
It's always a choice, you know.
For today I choose to move air. I make dinner, check homework,
listen intently, and step on the missed Lego of death.

As long as a still chest and this child of heart
hold the tingling pre-tears in my cheeks,
I wake
with grinning breath,
teeth on edge,
eyes dressed in last night's escaped tears
knowing my work here is not complete.

I'll can choose again tomorrow.

Awash in Possibility

If you don't have a week to be away, do you have a day, an hour or a minute? How do you reconnect and renew? A doodle, a deep breath, a short stroll on a path or sidewalk, a poem?

Allow yourself renewal time today to remember what is possible and what is precious.

Awash in Possibility

I held my breath
and listened to the waves
Some say breath pause is where
the sweetness
the focus
the possibility
the perfection
the life
happens

Even holding my breath,
the waves still meet the beach
with no regard to the sand
holding me fast in the water
as it's scooped up by the next wave
and the next
and the next
and the next
and the next
and the next

What happens here?
Do I anchor deeper in the sand and hold steady?
Do I fight the pulling and sucking of unconscious waves?
Do I dive in and let a riptide carry me away?
Do I walk to the sand and sit so far away the waves will never touch me?

Breathe in
Hold
Breathe out
Hold
Breathe In
Hold
Breathe Out
Hold

No move. No decision.
What doesn't happen here?
What hasn't happened here?

Am I as unconscious as a wave or
is the wave as conscious as I?

How to Fall

I've always been fascinated by the movement of the trees, especially being from a place that has so few. Living in a place of many trees has been an exploration of a new language. In Maryland there are so many different kinds of maples and oaks and trees who flower. As the fall comes on, I notice the change in the sounds the trees make. The sound of falling acorns. The sound of the leaves in the wind.

Today go outside and listen. Listen under the obvious sounds to what's happening underneath. What do you hear under the cars driving by? What do you hear under the cicadas? What do they say to you?

How to Fall
Acorns fall in a plunk
Black walnuts thump thump thump
The wind blows
A dry branch crashes through the lower canopy
A single leaf lands on the leaves left on the branches
scraping and rubbing against its brothers
until it finds it grace on the greening brown grasses

When you fall...

Do you plunk?
Do you thump?
Does a stiff wind move you to crash
and bounce against the soft ground?
Do you roll down slick, empty hills?
Do you buoy yourself up in the arms
of your sisters, your brothers, your friends, your lovers?
Do you put yourself at the mercy of the stream's eddies and swirls?
Do you fly and lilt in the lessons of the butterfly?
Do you fall far from home?
Do you fall in? Do you fall out?
Do you fall so hard you bring down the entire tree?
Do you give yourself to next year's growth ring?
Do you fall at all?

The trees know you fall where you may
And root like dandelions
when the plunks
thumps
crashes
scrapes
rubs
mercies
and
lilts
grow silent.

If you bring down the tree, that's okay too.
She's already forgiven you.

This Wild and Precious Life

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. Yes, I have many, many favorite poets. As the humidity and heat sets in to the day, it seems appropriate to bring Mary forward here.

This is one of my favorite one liner from her poem Summer Day:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Recently someone* asked me how I would answer that question. Now I ask you. What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

This Wild and Precious Life

Make messes and beauty

Feel 100 percent human

Begin again and again

End as many times or more 

Nestle in the belly of trees to listen for the water pouring down the rocks
Catch the acorns falling from the trees

Collect feathers
Pan the bay for sharks who lived millions of years ago
Hold those teeth in your hands
and swim across the oceans older than we could ever dream to be

Marvel at the heavy-headed sunflower until the rain breaks it stalk

Morn the loss of its beauty and

Leave the seeds for the ants and the worms

and watch how many seedlings appear in its place 

Celebrate the bees resting in the dew under the sunflower's umbrella 

Grow back into the babe 

who knew no difference between

breath, heart,

love, & death

*Thanks, Joe, for prompting me to contemplate what I am doing with this life.

Inside the Blackhole

I took this picture today.

At first glance, I was disappointed. The morning glory is too centered in the shot, the camera is more focused on the green in the background that the flower, the flower itself is blurry at the center and around the edges. The morning light is all wrong.

Then it grew on me. Look at the light coming out of the center. The light is ethereal. The five point star is perfect. The lighter lines divide the star in to perfect triangles. The edges of the flower are blurry making them almost 3-d.

Is this small flower what it's like to stand on the inside of a black hole and bask in glorious light? Is this how our angel and spirit guides see each one of us?

A poem is coming from this simple morning glory, and it is nothing like I intended.

This week take something you that you see as less than perfect and find its gifts. Where is its beauty? What does it look like on the inside? What does it look like on the outside? How is it messy? How is it clean?