right here.
I think I wrote about this ages ago, when my dad died. BUT that was another lifetime ago, and I just tried to go look it up and find where it was, and reading that stuff was too hard, and too foreign. The lifetimes having slipped far away down that river.
when my dad died, I was wrecked. Not only was his heart attack in my backyard, and my now former husband was giving chest compressions that kept him alive long enough for all his kids to get there to see a living body… but the suddenness of the loss and the incontrovertible NO, HE WILL NOT MAKE IT. . . there it was, there it all was.
I found my mind racing and racing and racing, and I couldn’t get back to where I needed to be to function as myself and as the mother and householdrunner that I needed and wanted to be. it was memory, and memory and more memory world-shift and fear and grief welling and complete detachment from the people I was sharing a house with.
and oh, the racing. the fucking racing of my mind. pinging from wall to wall. a highspeed badnews montage, looped.
Quickly after the death, I drew a hand and wrote ‘RIGHT HERE’ and I don’t know if someone suggested it to me or if the HUBSJatthetime suggested it, but I hung it on the cabinet door next to the stove. I saw it multiple times a day. and I physically put my hand in front of my face multiple other times per day. I smelled my skin. I closed my eyes.
Here I am. Here is my skin. This is all that there is, RIGHT HERE.
the circles are small. the physical space I am is all that there is. when the quakers say ‘center down’, this is how I feel, all the energies bringing me back to the RIGHT HERE.
I kept it up there during the long and painful divorcing process. Really helped when I put out the wrong number of plates, or when all I could hear was his disapproval, even after he was gone.
Somehow the hand fell off the cabinet, or I replaced it with another missive. Its been quite a few years now.
And, this week, I noticed it moving from place to place in the kitchen, showing itself in my new time of need. In this new sadness that is so familiar.
so, i’m going to put it back up. because…
HERE I AM. HERE IS MY VERY OWN SKIN. BLESS WHAT IS RIGHT HERE.
