You're going to have to let go

Someday something you love will slip away.

Nothing is forever.

You're going to have to let go.

 I mourn places I've lived,
connections and friends and an idea that life could be a certain way.

The world keeps going around,

and people and notions grow further away.

 I want to hold and contain them.

They are sand through my fingers
and closeness becomes subject to a
moment in time's ever fading memory.

But wanting and missing and craving and mourning

are too jealous for this world.

There's no room for such emotional immaturity.

The world marches forward, only forward

Maybe we march together,

or maybe our roads go in opposite directions, as most eventually do.

Hands don't stretch that far.

You're going to have to let go.

My daughter just turned 5

and I still let her sleep in our bed

and I still pick her up and carry her places like a baby.

Picking her up feels like we're hugging,

her sweet, fresh hair, buried into my neck. Stop.
I want to suspend this moment.

Her long dangly legs, heavier by the day

but still, she's my baby.
And my heart aches at the memories of my baby. My baby. She'll always be my baby.

You're going to have to let go.

My hospice patient can no longer walk on her own

and it pisses her off. "I was so independent" she tells me.

I see an old woman starting her journey to death

with a personality that is jamming her feet in the sand as she is pulled closer to death's door.

She was a dancer. A mother of 4. She was widowed for 20 years. She can take care of herself. She's got a can do attititude

Except now she can't

You're going to have to let go.

I've lived in this house for 6 years.

I've been married, suffered a miscarriage and bore the most

miraculous daughter.

No house of mine has ever contained such memories.

I sit here now, aware of how small this space is and how ready we are.

But that's where she learned to walk.

That's where we learned we lost the baby.

That's where we nearly got divorced but didn't,

That's where I said I love you and really really meant it.

It's all in here, it's energetic memory bouncing off the walls. Our walls.

We're going to have to let go.

The wind comes in and dies.

The ocean kisses the shore then leaves it.

The Earth doesn't stop moving.

But there is no mourning.

The Earth is the wise one. 

It has learned to let go. 

The observer.

Sometimes we don't let our brains stop and think.
Sometimes we let the world stop them from connecting back to the themselves, the brains to their owners, the heart to the soul. The observer gets lost in the business.

I do observe, and sometimes the things that I see need time to settle, or need to be reviewed. My brain functions in my own unique way, carrying it's own form of sadness, strength, solace, numbing abilities and renewal. But that is my brain.

My inner observer does nothing but observe. She watches the beautiful face of my nearly 5 year old whenever she can. She notices how enchanted I become. She notices that the swelling in my heart could never be put into words, that no love could ever be documented, only observed and felt. This love carries with it it's own kind of brain activity, and the observer in me notices how worried a human I can be. And she notices how terrible it feels to worry.

My inner observer sits on death beds. I realize this is a strange observation, but I sit at the bedside of the dying for 12 hour stretches. I observe my own empathy, my own occasional indifference. I observe that my empathy is strongest when the family is there, and the person dying becomes more than just a failing body. I observe a curiosity to know that the dying are really great life stars, going out into the ether, becoming untouchable to us. I observe that often, at the end of the long day of watching death come, my heart and brain want to numb themselves and not reflect.

The observer in me knows that I do not always want to observe. Sometimes I don't want to feel things, and sometimes I observe how adept at numbing my own brain I have become. I have to observe this, and not judge this. The observer is the ONLY aspect that does not judge. She only watches. Neither with love or self pity. She just looks on. Notices. And occasionally her noticing catches the attention of the brain, and the noticing and the brain can align, if only for a few moments.

My observer knows that there is an undertone of melancholy that exists in life, in my life. But I do not observe a resistance or an avoidance to the melancholy that creeps in. My observer knows this is a an important time for my brain and my observer to align. Sometimes there is sadness. Sometimes there is joy that is so rich that it makes me nearly sad. It's like tides in a moon cycle; I can observe how easily affected I am. How my brain finds such solace in music or how, when alone, I can allow myself the space to release through tears. My brain knows that without exercise the delicate balance of keeping it together becomes unraveled, and that through physical activity I can renew myself, again and again.

I find it all good, truly, the sad and the joy. The observing and the avoiding. Light can not know itself without dark. Life is full of so much. My observer watches it all and says it's all okay.

She is the wise one.