Falling Down

This morning I woke up hurting, having foolishly taken only a half dose of my pain medication last night. Also, this morning, I find that some internal source of energy and strength that has been sustaining me these days seems to have flickered out. I am left with little will to do anything other than meet my basic needs. It appears that writing on this blog has become one of my basic needs, and even in this weakened state, I know that I need to do it. I know it helps fuel that spark of life in me, which isn't really gone right now, but just in hiding. I can feel, already, that it will return.

A circular series of thoughts often comes into my mind. There are four statements, beginning with: "I want him back. I want my baby." Then there is the realization, over and over, that "Nothing I do or say can make that happen." Then I reach a moment of despair, "I can't go on like this, without him." And then, always, I reach the thought, "I have no choice." The last statement sounds like resignation, and it begins that way, but as I turn it over in my mind, it changes. Rather than "I have no choice but to go on without him," it becomes, "I have no choice but to embrace life the best I can, to keep myself open and loving and strong." Any other choice would be an emotional death for me, and I won't do that to myself or to the people I love. And I won't give up on the hope that someday I will hold and nurse and love and marvel at the beauty of another son or daughter.

Here is part of a lovely Mary Oliver poem called
The Summer Day.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Reading those words, typing them in with the thought of all of you reading them, rejuvenates me. Even today, with my pain and my sadness, this wild and precious life is available to me. Maybe it is time for me to fall down in the grass and be idle and blessed, to uncover my own understanding of prayer.


Jess and Sage with friends from Prescott, Shellece and Rio