It’s incredible that such a little thing can dysregulate you so very hard. When I write here or in my journal and the world somehow just aligns for me. My nervous system calms down and it all begins to flow in a way I do not experience anywhere else.
Today I went searching for a pen. Not just any pen mind you. Being left handed means that I have spent a lifetime getting the right pen and paper to work together so that I can enjoy how I write. I found these incredible journals that I love. Pens though, there is something in stationary that reminds me of fall and that is my favorite time of year. Crips air that starts the day but warms up still to 20 degrees or so. (I’m Canadian so everything is in celsius) In having the right pen when I write I can channel that energy that state of being for that time of year and it holds me through somehow helping me align all that I am.
But…the pen I have used and loved for years is now as elusive as an endangered species. And so in the quest to find the pen with ink color I so enjoy I reached out to the company. I can pay an incredible amount and have it shipped to my door or ship it to a friend below the 49th parallel and have them ship or bring it up to me for almost the same cost. Neither of these seems the right action.
I sit in this whirlwind of time and overwhelm and try to not cry over what seems so insignificant as a pen and a colour…
While I know that this bothers me and my nuro-spicy is showing, the reality is, it’s not the pen. In part it’s that things are so very out of order. What I want isn’t there…
What I want is to call my Gran, tell her about the kids and our day. To go see her. She passed last month. She was 91 and ready to go. We (all that could gather) took time to come and see her. She was an incredible woman who in her prime and in my memory will always love to cook and to bake and to sit and have tea. She loved puzzles and laughed at how I hated them and took time to help her anyway because it didn’t matter that putting two weird shaped pieces together to form a picture isn’t my thing, it let us spend time together just talking. I would take trips to her when I was in university. And when the kids were small and in preschool I would often stop by even for five minutes to say hi.
There are no more stops to make just the memories that are left behind. Me, being me, understands that she is out there among the stars and that connecting isn’t actually all that hard. I simply need to reach out with my mind and soul and the connection is there. But…I can’t hug her, or hear her voice on the phone so today my heart is hurting, yearning for those things.
Grief is never so simple. It is gone for a time and we think we have moved on and then something sparks a thought or a memory and it is back in our field to be seen and witnessed again. I have lost many, in my life so far. Staggering actually if I were to count the number. The reality is you never stop missing them. The grief becomes less as you recognize year after year that you can no longer reach out and that is the new normal. The triggers become further apart and the memories become more seen and loved and warm. The process takes time and can not be rushed.
Even as I sit here taking solace in my keyboard, in my ability to pick the color I type in for the first draft. In the memory of not just my Gran but others too. Releasing my plans for the rest of the day so i can just be in this space, I know it will be ok. I breathe through the release. I let the images flow through my mind…
Homework, spelling lists, vega links (veggie hot dogs) because “you must feed the mind when you work it so hard”….
Long talks sitting beside baskets of fruit, what we wanted in the now and what we were looking forward to in the future…
Picking up starfish and walking on the beach…
The smell of lemon markers and the crackle of the fireplace…
The simplest of rain showers so close to my birthday…
Each memory no longer brings me to tears or to that place of why and not understanding but rather taking the time to enjoy the memory. What it means is like a calm balm for the heart.
When we slow down as mom’s, as starseeds as nuro-spicy humans (any and all of them) we get the chance to see that the straw or the pen that broke us on any given day is not really the thing at all. The repressed emotions. Putting off the release for another day because we can not deal at this moment. We have too many things, responsibilities and all of it to deal with. The reality is this doesn’t serve us long term all it does is create a mountain of release waiting to unleash itself on the most unsuspecting of places. Do the work, let it go, write it, scream it, cry it out.
Because in the end it’s never about the pen…
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