Soul Cords

I was three years old when we left the United States. There is not a thing I would change about my childhood. My experiences abroad forever shifted and continue to define who I am as a woman here on this earth. Living in these exotic, untamed worlds left me with a love for the unfiltered and the raw in life. Those are the places and the people with whom I resonate – where I find beauty. However, if there is one thing I wish I could have added to my life, it is the connection to my family.

Every three to five years is not enough, to learn a group. Yes, I had a bond with my beloved grandparents but, it wasn’t until 1997 when in a nine month span my paternal grandfather, grandmother and my father died that I really stepped into the extended group of relations. They were, and they are a beautiful tapestry of personalities. Still, the majority of them are in the New England region and I am here, in love with the west. It is a different relationship than doing the daily or weekly or even monthly time together. Most of the time, reconnection happens at weddings or funerals. I am sure this is the case for many of us.

Last night my cousin died. I shared space with her only a handful of times and we were friends on Facebook. Her mother is my maternal grandfather’s sister. There are two left in that huge clan. My grandfather died in 2011 at the age of 93 – that should tell you something and he was a young one. Truth is he left earlier than he should have because he lost his daughter, my mom, seven months earlier. The loss of a child is often too big to bear. So, my heart aches for my cousin and for her mom. I know there are more deaths coming. They tend to run together – they take each other with them – with their love and their longing.

Earlier this week, I had at session with a beautiful, young woman who lost her precious 13-year-old boy tragically. There are no words that can stitch back together that kind of breaking. The heart has to seal itself. The entire time I spent with her I stayed in prayer for her, for her family and for Creator to gift to me healing words. It is our responsibility as humans BEING to sit in the presence of sorrow especially when it makes us uncomfortable. Most of the time, our words are not necessary. I learned a long time ago that there is a gift in witnessing the heart break.

Our hearts break in life for two reasons: Love and Attachment. Our hearts break for all kinds of deaths: physical, emotional, spiritual, and literal deaths. I shared a story with that young woman that I feel is always relevant to loss. In 2002, someone I love dearly was a victim of a horrific crime. When the police left the scene, my feigned strength was peeled away from me and I was the bark less tree stripped by the sudden storm. I fell to the ground howling. There is a cry I have heard on far too many crime scenes – it is a sound that is so primal and raw I can only say it is like a trapped animal. I call it a soul cry. I felt as though my body was falling into a dark abyss. Moments later I saw myself rise out of my body and I remember looking down at my brokenness, hearing that howl – that soul cry. I heard a voice and he said to me “This is a gift. This pain is a gift. You would not hurt so if you did not love so deeply and there are many who never know this kind of love.” I was slammed back into my body, heart bruised, soul aching, covered in tears I thought would never end but, I also had this bizarre peace. I knew He was right. I hurt because I loved, and love is always a gift.

There are some stories we carry forever. I probably have more than most given my work history. In 1999, a few weeks before Columbine happened. I was a victim advocate with a local law enforcement agency. I was called out to a DOA (dead on arrival). Before I arrived at the small house with a detached garage in Park Hill. I was briefed by the detective. The deceased was a married father of five children. He would often go into the garage and tinker with his car, listen to music and drink a beer. It was his quiet place. That chilly day, his wife sent their nine-year-old child out to get dad for dinner. When the child went to the garage, the car was running, and dad was unresponsive. The child called 911 and before his mom knew what was happening, that baby was instructed to perform CPR on his dead father. He didn’t mean to kill himself. It was a stupid, cold day, not thinking moment. It was a horrible, tragic accident. When I arrived, there must have been 30 people on scene. Howling, crying, weeping, silent, shocked – every stage of grief was there. The coroner came, and I explained to the wife that they would take her husband away and if she wanted to say good bye then this was the time. One by one, their children came, looked at their father, kissed their father, touched their father and then she did. She kissed his face and whispered in his ear. I am sure he heard her.

Then she showed me grace. She showed all of us what faith looks like. She became the embodiment of gratitude and love. This woman who had just lost her husband of twenty-one years . . . This woman who was standing an hour before as a married mother of five beautiful children, suddenly was a widow, a single mom – alone. She got her knees and folded her hands and she prayed with the loudest, strongest voice I have ever heard. It’s been almost 20 years since and I still cannot tell this story without crying. She thanked God. She thanked him for their 21 years and for their five beautiful children and for his love. It was so pure, so genuine, so holy that as she prayed we all bowed our heads and wept. The detectives, the coroner, the police officers, the neighbors, the friends, the family – we all wept in reverence. I know she doesn’t know this but, she changed the course of my life. She became my idol for love, grief and grace.

Love doesn’t make it easier but, it makes it beautiful. I don’t know one person over the age of 20 who has escaped heart break of some kind. One of my favorite quotes in the world is by Khalil Gibran. I return to it time and time again. He said, “the deeper sorrow carves into our being the more joy we can contain.” I find comfort in imagining Creator taking his or her hands and carving out this hollowness in me, so I can hold more joy. There are wounds we all carry that won’t go away. They will always hurt but, they will always hurt because that is how much we loved. Loved our children or our family. Loved ourselves or our sense of security. Loved our marriages or our health. Loved our jobs or our friends. We lose things. EVERY thing is temporary: joy or pain. Our struggle is almost always learning how to relinquish control and the illusion of more than this moment.

Loss really is our crowning moment. We get to pull our whole hearts out. Touch our bleeding wounds and decide what the scar is going to look like and who we are going to show it to or if we are going to show it at all. We get to unveil ourselves. We get to decide; do we honor the experience with gratitude or do we choke out our own fire and faith because it rained? Do we evolve and become better or do we become stagnant and bitter? I believe all of it – every single second of this life is sacred. I believe that life is always perfect even when it is tearing off our heart skin.

We must cry. We must experience the temporary insanity grief offers and know love starts with the same seed. We must fall away and fall together. We must scream, whisper, and know silence before the song. We must love, and we must lose. We must learn how to breathe again when the pain of living seemingly steals our breath. We must learn to honor our grief with gratitude and we must fall to our knees and thank Love for breaking us open. We must find the divinity in now. We must be who we were born to be . . . holy humans BEING love.