#56. As Familiar as Silence

The world tips on its axis and the only thing that can save it is birdsong.

Today marks three months since Pacquito transitioned to the beyond, and though I'd like to say that I am devastated, because that's what projections of grief call for, I am not. I have, though, been cracked wide open, heart and spirit.

All the time and everywhere I go, I hear the birds sing. In the backyard where Pacquito is buried, the sound has become almost the same as silence, as familiar and as comforting.

I asked J if he ever forgets that Pacquito's gone. Sometimes he does. And I do, too. For some reason, the question and our shared answer made me think about the vet tech from a year ago, when I thought Pacquito had hours to live (he had 10 more months). He came in to the waiting room and mentioned offhandedly that his own Chihuahua had just died some months prior at the age of eighteen. Through my own tears for Pacquito and my tears for what I imagined this stranger must have gone through, I blubbered out an "I'm so sorry," but he seemed almost chipper in his response.

"Oh, don't be sorry! He lived such a long, good life," he said. "I'm so lucky to have had the time with him that I did." 

I remember thinking that this guy had to be out of his fucking mind. I was certain I'd never be able to feel so...fine. I had long believed that when Pacquito went, someone would need to keep constant watch over me, peel me off the floor, force antidepressants down my gullet and all that, so incapacitated by grief would I be.

And yet. Here I am. Feeling almost exactly how that tech seemed to feel. Maybe even more, but who's to say? I don't just feel okay; I feel connected to Pacquito in ways I couldn't have anticipated, ways that are quieter, and wider, and easier than I'd have expected to be able to express, crazy labels be damned. What I am reminded of in my body, from medicine journeys and from the medicine journey that was his passing, is that death is not the end. And this may be the most important thing I'll never fully know until I'm there myself. Connection never ceases. It actually expands and deepens and becomes diaphanously porous and fills all the spaces between breath and heartbeat, and more.

Which, I've noticed, is also what happens when I live more honestly.

Since he left his little body, his spirit folded into mine, something has opened up. My oracle deck is gaining momentum. More aligned therapy clients are finding me. Work that feels like play is showing up. I let go of my groups. (I know, I thought I loved them, too. Well, I did, until I didn't, and by the end, they were making me the worst version of myself. I guess it's true that everything has a season and a shelf life.) I'm in the midst of a cleanse that's been serendipitously extended, a time of fasting and prayer, for burning away the residue of the last year: the grief, the illness, the identities I outgrew, to make room for whoever is standing on the other side of all that shedding.

This past weekend alone: a celebration of one life ended, of another about to begin, a milestone birthday. Three different celebrations in two days. I wonder why we need milestones at all. Life is happening in every single moment. Every moment is a threshold if you're paying attention. Then again, maybe that's exactly why we need them.

I think I've always known that my forties were when I'd finally get to be the most me that I'd ever been. I knew it as a kid, somehow. Whether that was prescience or a self-fulfilling prophecy or some cosmic negotiation I don't fully remember making, I can't say for sure. What I can say is that the more honest I am about who I am and what I want to do and receive, the more life seems to arrange itself accordingly. There's some effort required, but it's energizing rather than absolutely soul-crushing. It feels like inhabiting something rather than performing it.

I recently learned the name of my favorite tree: Bauhinia variegata. I've loved this tree for years without knowing what to call it. Whenever I see it on a sidewalk, I pause and take a picture because I'm of that generation, and then I talk to it for just short enough that the owner doesn't get concerned and chase me off. The tree's leaves are shaped like butterfly wings, or a camel's hoof (that's another nature's Rorschach test for another time), and in some traditions, they're called the "clever leaf," a symbol of wisdom. In Hinduism, the tree is known as Kovidara, and is associated with purity and spiritual unfolding. And then this! — a sign from Pacquito, as so many things are now, or from the Universe (tomato, tomahto): it flowers after shedding its leaves. It loses everything first, and then it blooms.

What I've been learning in all of the moments of the last three months—what Pacquito's death cracked open and what keeps spilling out—is that grief and joy are not opposites. Death is not an ending so much as a redistribution of love. And the more I let myself be exactly who I am, the more I meet my life and feel at rest and at home in it (rather than look at it and wonder, what the fuck?).

I'm learning that birdsong, on a morning when the world feels unsteady, is not a small thing.

It is, perhaps, the whole thing.

As always, with love and thanks,

BROOKIE