“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds”
Robert Green Ingersoll
No kidding. Last week one of my friends wrote to say she was sorry my father was gone from this world. She said eight years later, she still wants to talk to her dad. I wrote back that my dad wasn’t much of a talker with me, although we really tried the last ten years after he was forced to slow down. And I told her how sad it will be that I can’t call him anymore. Then I wrote, “It’s like he was a mountain that was always there, and now there is a big hole in the landscape of our family.”
Only a shadow where a life was lived.
But one that’s so close, I only need to take a few illusive steps to find the path to wholeness.
Years ago, a friend went to visit her mother in India because there wasn’t much time left and they’d been on different continents for years. The first night they stayed up and talked; they remembered; they brought their past to life through language and stories. She said when she left her family home three weeks later for the last time, she backed out the door to fill her eyes with as much of her mother as she could. And when she walked away, my friend told me, she knew she was that much closer to the mountain of mortality.
No kidding again. Soon, dear readers, I promise to stop writing about mortality. But right now, I wouldn’t be paying attention if I wasn’t.
Wild Nature of New York 
Media Vita In Morte Sumus
In the midst of life we are in death. BCP
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It is indeed a strange thing to ponder the passing of our parents. Mine are still living but my father has always been so distant that I often wonder what it will be like when he is gone. I ponder if I will scale the mountain of mortality.
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We will all scale that mountain! But we don’t know what anything is like until we do it, including the experience of losing the last parent.
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These exquisite images are so eloquent – the words too – dematerialization of what seemed so solid…
Teaching me to look at something with fresh eyes… such power in that negative space too… what it is whispering to you as you stand on the shaking earth. And how you are transmitting the vibration of the after-shocks.
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They are from Scotland #1, Ireland #2, Scotland #3, and Ireland #4. Thank you for recognizing my attempts to describe the indescribable.
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no freakin’ kidding xox
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Please don’t stop these poems of grief until you are are finished with these thoughts. They are helping me so much, as I too lost my father recently. The words and images are tremendously healing.
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I think many people of a certain age can relate to these last posts…. It’s wonderful to know that as I make sense of the chaos I feel, it helps others too, especially you, Marissa!
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It is a sacred thing to first share words with someone during a time of transition for them. Your courage to share your process here is nothing less than breath taking and I wanted to say thank you and to honor you for doing this. How many you are helping with your honesty!
I have yet to experience the death of my father, but a friend who recently did has described it for her as the first time she felt what it was to be “the” adult on her time line. Also recently my father (at a family funeral) looked around the room and realized chronologically if all held out, he was the next in line for that adventure as with that passing, the generation just older than him in the family had finally all moved on. Funny thing that guarantee of our death one day… truly powerful thing to contemplate when we begin to realize it is coming sooner rather than later as the years go whizzing by.
It has been my experience that profound grief has within it’s core one of the greatest potentials for birthing transformation. It guts one to the core and all the superfluous layers seem to vanish with a bit more ease into moments touching clarity. I wish that for you… to touch clarity. Also I wish along with it some Balm of tender heart holding left for you right here for when it just starts to hurt that amount of much that is close to overwhelmingly too much: xx
Please know there is another out here reading your from the heart words and in return, is holding a space of appreciation for the questions you are asking and the open processing of feeling that you are going through.
-x.M(aren)
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…Just also felt inspired to share some thoughts on death that I have turned to recently to help when pain has attempted to capsize the little boat of mine past understanding into utter despair:
http://caimbeulsblog.com/2013/04/30/whisperings-echos-of-time/
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Just clicked on this link you sent me on echoes. So appropriate and appreciated. Thank you!
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Maren: I was so grateful to read your two comments. They’ew very thoughtful and generous. Alot of feedback is coming in thanking me for putting words and images to life and especially to death. People need signposts for the chaos of emotions, to know that we are all in this together and one by one, we face it with our loved ones. And as you so poignantly pointed out about your father, we will eventually be next in line. In spite of the depths throughout this process, I have never felt more alive and willing to keep delving into this mystery called life, one day, one blog at a time. SeeingM is a beautiful site and I will be listing you on blogs I follow. Stephanie
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Hmm it looks like your blog ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I’m
thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring
blog blogger but I’m still new to everything. Do you have any suggestions for first-time blog writers?
I’d certainly appreciate it.
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Thank you! I am by no means an expert on blogging. I blogged on what I was feeling, wanted to say, to share with others who might be feeling the same. At this point, I have not been blogging because I need to be quiet so I can hear the answer to the next phase of my life. And I have an advice column that takes a lot of head space. The only advice I would say is: do what you want, do it as well as you can, don’t post it if it doesn’t inspire you, and most importantly, don’t listen to criticism. It’s stifling. Just play, find your voice and enjoy the fact that there is a world in which you can try it out and actually have readers.
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