When you cannot choose
Crestone, CO. March 17, 2016.
I will soon be celebrating my first piece of published writing, in an anthology of “stories that heal”. I wrote about the experience of losing my home, all of my possession and two pets to a wildfire in Boulder, Colorado.
Coincidental in timing to the publishing of my story, my husband and I stumbled upon the house-tidying method called KonMari. We both saw references to it online. I mentioned it to him and he had already put the book in his Amazon cart! We purchased it on Kindle (so as not to accumulate any more clutter in the process of learning about tidying, of course) and began the project almost immediately. It is a simple and satisfying process, though challenging to carry through to completion as you work your way past clothes and books and into the murky waters of “komono”, or “miscellaneous”. I digress…
One thing I wrote about in the story of losing my house is the memory of sitting beside my husband during those first few days of homelessness. Aside from his truck, which we had been camping in during the fire, he was all that remained. Something I will always feel bolstered by and grateful for is the fact that I looked at him and was filled with the joy that he brought me. He was enough, and I believe I was enough for him…and we had the opportunity to know that in our heart of hearts, due to the circumstances around us.
In doing the KonMari method, Schuyler and I feel reminded of the freedom of losing all one’s possessions to a disaster. However, there is a crucial and perhaps obvious difference between now and then. While removing an incredible amount of possessions that have outlived their purpose in our lives, there is much that remains. And we have chosen all of it. That’s the point, and beauty, of KonMari! You are surrounded by what you love.
With the fire, we did not choose. I would have kept my cats, my car, my favorite clothes, my favorite pictures, and many other things. It was enough for me to keep my husband, but I wouldn’t have chosen to let those other things go if they weren’t taken from me. Sometimes we do not choose.
Today I read an article from The New Yorker, Can Trauma Help You Grow?, and there is a line from a father who lost his son. “I cannot choose”. As life unfolds, we lose people and things through forces beyond our control, and we find that we have not chosen what went away, and what remains. There is really no other meditation than breathing in and out, life’s loss and what remains.
Since submitting my piece about the fire, my mother lost her life quite unexpectedly to cancer. Now that the book is coming out, it feels strange to revisit this “old” tragedy which seems to pale in the face of her absence. I still mull over the circumstances of her death and, in the shock of her passing, have been confused about what I did and didn’t have control over. But now she is gone and, “I cannot choose”. Sometimes the shock of this still hits me like a board. I miss her terribly.
My task at the book release party, coming up in April, is to offer a meditation somehow connected to my story. I imagine we will be breathing life’s loss, and what remains — and opening to the possibility of joy. The element of fire can guide us there, burning away our methodical placement of this and that in life. It reminds me of an Alan Watts talk where he described us having the power to create the ideal life, every night as we sleep. Eventually, after innumerable variations on whatever themes we find important, we would dream the life we actually have. Whatever is most fundamental, and truly connects us as beings, is here in the ashes of our own situation. And we need that.
Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com on March 17, 2016.
