This week I’ve been shepherded along by grace. A swath of this grief has been creativity. I feel run by it, like its the motor inside steering my bones. Like colors, lines, shapes, ink, and paint can heal me. After three weeks of deep emotional hibernation, I’m cracking open stored up energy, need, inspiration. Loss alchemized. Transmuted. More than the sum of its parts. The bridge between pain and healing, The best way I know how to honor and synthesize death is through acts of creation.
Two years ago my Dad told me he dreamed I was flying a rocket ship full of people over Mount Everest. He dreamed I came from Atlantis when I was four. He saw a comet shoot through space and hit the earth as I shot through the hole between my mother’s legs.
At a poetry reading when I was seventeen, my mother stood at the podium and said, “All I did was open my legs twice and I got this.” I was wild and rebellious. A holy terror. Drinking every chance I got. Sneaking out. Lying. Having reckless, defiant sex. I had a mouth. I was a back talker. A yeller, a screamer. At least when it came to my mother. She was the only person in the world who saw all of me and tried to reign me back in.
My father and I had an unspoken don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I made honor roll at school. But my mother and I were a war with a thousand battles. Neither and both of us won. I travelled as far as I could down my path of self-destruction. Until I came back home and began to pray, recover, dream, heal, create. At last I feel a deep peace with my mother. Our greatest battles are finally done. I picture my Dad feasting in the Great Hall with the Gods, shining down on me, guiding my pen.