How do you return to sacred places tainted by sadness?
I've stood hundreds of times at the spot pictured above ~ but not in the last five years. I scattered some ashes into the lake a bit to the right (south?) some winters ago, but that was the last time. We've tried to wander through Chautauqua twice since then, and found ourselves making a speedy departure both times. "I just think of the three of us running all over the place every summer," said my surviving son after our first aborted attempt. "It's too hard."
This year, I find myself re-posting Chautauqua links on FB (where I found this photo), and longing to be there. I've listened to an entire week's worth of worship tapes from last summer; I wanted to hear Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon series, but that meant listening to the music and readings and prayers and announcements as well. It was like being there: I could feel the breeze through the Ampitheatre and hear the pileated woodpecker in the trees behind our seats; I could remember the summers I listened to sermons as I pushed a stroller along the back, and the summers we all sang "Holy, Holy, Holy," always the Sunday opening hymn, with our arms around each other; and I could recall myself telling the kids, "Someday you'll be back here with your own children, and you'll be grateful for this Sunday summer tradition."
Well, no, not as it turns out.
The other place which seems impossible to me is Chicago, where Josh went to college and began what looked to be such a promising grown-up life. I was headed there last fall, but the plans fell through. My daughter has promised to accompany me this year. I had imagined myself visiting grandchildren in Chicago someday, and looked forward to family vacations on Lake Michigan.
Well, no, not as it turns out.
These are places I have loved so very much. The spirituality of place is deeply ingrained in me ~ but I cannot figure our how to return to these most beloved of places and survive intact in any kind of way. On the other hand, I don't want to forgo forever the experience of these streets and paths and plazas and lakes, so haunted by memory and yet still so filled with exuberant joy.
It took me four years to return to our family's favorite Italian restaurant, which is only a short walk from our home. But in doing so I have walled off a portion of my heart.
Is there a way to go back without erecting barriers in a criss-cross pattern throughout my entire interior being?
I don't know the answer to this deep and important question. I only know that there are sacred places to which I can return, and some to which I cannot, and the the "can" and "cannot" move and change without logic or warning. It is a mystery, like so many things on this path.
ReplyDeleteI want you to know that you are not alone in feeling this way. It is not clear to me whether the presence of those who used to accompany me to these places is a help or not. Nothing about it is clear, except that it is a continually changing mystery. Or perhaps the continually changing mystery is our sense of ourselves.
Another thing people don't talk about much -- how hard it is to be in geography when we have been so changed.
DeleteI agree with Karen, but can also add that repeatedly visiting these places has a desensitizing effect. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing, it simply gets easier with practice.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm aware of that as well. I'm not sure that it works everywhere, but it's good that it works in some places, just so that we can get along in the world.
DeleteSeveral times a day, I walk past the spot just outside my office where I kissed Tom the last time. 26 years and I still think of him when I pass the spot, though now it is a wistful prayerful thread of memory.
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DeleteThere is a certain beach nearby where I spent hours upon hours with David & Katie. I used to enjoy it by myself, as well, but after Katie's death, I couldn't go by myself. I can go now with close friends or family, but still not alone.
ReplyDeleteThere are certain landscapes that become impossible.
DeleteI'm so moved by this post and the responses. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteRobin - have you ever traveled in England? All along the Cotswolds there are these old, centuries old, stone walls. They were erected as barriers and I'm sure they did a good job at that. Walls. Barriers.
ReplyDeleteBut today, these walls have eroded, softened. They no longer hold in livestock, nor do they hold out walkers. One can hike all across these gently rolling hills, climb (or clamber) over the walls, sit on them, and they are part of the landscape. I can't imagine it without them. They are part of the beauty. There is even new life in them - in the mosses, birds nests, and flowers that bloom in the summer.
I am not at all trying to beautify your pain. But I do believe there is a timelessness to this whole business of soul, love, consciousness, humanity. And in that timelessness what seems so hard and fast one moment, can be (as Karen so beautifully says above) a continually changing mystery. Linked by memory, yes. And smell, and touch, and sound.
When my family was falling apart, breaking apart, fragmenting due to drugs and alcohol, betrayal, infidelity and more... I was so terrified. But I remember the sense, coming up deep from the ground, and also from somewhere deep in my heart "don't be afraid of the break" and I was working with glass at the time. And the broken glass emerged into some beautiful, heartfelt mosaics.
Walls can also emerge into something else, like broken glass. They can become a part of the landscape and not necessarily something isolated and isolating. I don't know, and I don't pretend to make it easier for you.
But I do know that the sense of timelessness and peace I have felt in the Cotswolds was what came to mind in your question. So I share it here. With much love.
Yes, I've been there -- and thank you for the info that you sent.
ReplyDeleteYou reminded me of Robert Frost's poem, Mending Walls, which I just re-read. I'm not sure what I think of it now.
Sweet friend, what a good place to sit and talk...talking long. After reading this today, I talked to Rick about his journeying with the loss of his dear wife and how he has done with that. He talked about going to the places they grew up--met at 13 and 14, so many, many memories. I listened and have been along on some of the times it was a first for him. I see it in his eyes-the sorrow and mixture of memories. For me, with losing Sarah and going back to Italy--to the very place of her death was something compelling to me. I had to go there, yet didn't know how I could go there. The visions of the whole event overtake me, I can play it out in my mind-having no idea of the truth of it, but putting pictures to what Chris has shared...and the people who were there, shared. Can totally undo me. Then there is the side of all the people I know now, have me, have grown to become family with in the sharing of the loss with them. Just is wild.
ReplyDeleteThen there are the places not too easy-in the beginning, going to her house, and her art room...and then knowing in a few days from today they would have been married 9 years and probably have a family...and all the dreams and hopes...but that is almost like going there in my mind---and when I do actually go there to a location, in person, it seems to take away the way I play it out. It has taken away the unknown and fear of it. Many people think I am crazy to want to go back to the Cinque Terre and be where she died, yet now, it brings me comfort...I have grieved deeply there and somehow have healed some...I don't know why, but I have. I have become freer...my soul has rested some...not so torn up, not so twisted by my memories of what I play out in my mind--sometimes it still happens and then it takes time to come back. This is getting long, but it there is still more. There are all the places of Sarah and my history-of where I raised her...even this beach....I sit on it and see her running into the water as a small child...see her as a grown woman...see us talking and dreaming. Put in Bay and Kelley's Island are 2 places she and I went alot--in fact camped for a week at PinBay the month before she died--and talked and had such fun--talking that we would probably be coming next year with a baby...and these are 2 places I will go--not sure when, but I will go and grieve... In fact, we were in the water at P in Bay and I was facing the shore and she saw a wave coming that she knew would knock me over and she let it--I got taken under and when I came up--she was just laughing and laughing that I got soaked...and a month later, she died by a rogue wave... I need to go to the shops we would linger in and play all day riding our bikes. I don't want to give it up--I guess now I see it can rob you of living somehow. So, if any of this rambling makes any sense...I guess what those older mamas in La Spezia said to me when they came to visit---"coraggio...coraggio..." and put their sweet hand on my heart...and then held me and cried with me. I will bet there are some of us who will go and cry with you. I love you.
Oh, Chris, so MANY places, for the two of you. This is something I wish my father would talk about, what it is like to keep living in a place where three wives and a child have died, and to return to places they shared.
DeleteI can understand your going to the CT. I have only been to the spot where Josh died once, but I think I would like to go back when I am not as completely insane as I was that day.
It is a comfort to read this today. I felt compelled to go to the Cinque Terre before Chris and I had met in person, to pay tribute to Sarah, and to do it for Chris. It was a sacred act, as well as a gift to me.
DeleteGoing back to the hospital where Katie was treated has been both good and difficult (it is random, and depends upon the day).
Amazing that this morning, the word "courage" came to my mind - and I come here and see that you have written about it (coraggio) - a word whose root is "heart," isn't it? I think that is where we hurt, and where we heal.
It is the heart--and it takes our heart alive to walk it out....even on the days we feel it dying inside. I am also blessed by everyone who goes to my sacred places--like you did Karen, somehow it binds us. Robin, I have never been to Chicago, but when I get to go, I will go to your sacred place as well.
ReplyDeleteno answers, but hugs to you. And if you do come to Chicago, I'd be happy to be with you as you traverse the same-but-new landscape and perhaps make new memories to fit alongside the others.
ReplyDeleteOctober.
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