A Difficult Time To Leave

For you, Julie, some solace

I know. This is a really difficult time to have to think about leaving this world.

You’ve been through so much and worked so hard to make a good life for yourself and your daughter — a life full of hikes into the hills, road trips, evenings in the backyard enjoying good food and wine with friends, lazy weekends with lovers, nights working events, and long, sunny days taking folks on bike tours. You’ve made beautiful things: your jewelry, your artwork, your home, your Maggie, your friendships. You’ve generously shared your time and deepest considered thoughts. You have always listened to people and made them feel good. You’ve given the world your all, girl. It is better because of you.

Now it’s time to be still and to ruminate on all those stories you’ve gathered up like a bouquet of dahlias — colorful and vibrant, each one with something important to express. Let the memories put a smile on your face, if but a gentle one. Let them merge with and strengthen the life energy flowing toward your healing, enabling you to put one foot in front of the other as you navigate this arduous path.

Take tiny bites of this world you love, and let each melt slowly in your mouth. As you sit outside your back door, safely within reach of everything you need to sustain yourself, let your mind put on the hiking boots and take you to that place you love. Remember the mornings you spent in the fresh air, surrounded by mountains and woods, taking in the sun and the smell of eucalyptus, your strong legs vigorously working their way up steep hills. For so many years, your body served you faithfully, allowing you to escape into nature even on the most difficult days. That was no small task.

I know well how hard it is just putting one foot in front of the other. I know this doesn’t feel like who you are. But it is. It is every bit you, as was the woman who was skiing last winter. This is your body’s time to rest and your mind’s time to let things go. Your body needs to be in charge. It needs to express how it feels, to remind you of all that it’s endured, how very hard it has worked, and it needs to be remembered for all the wonderful things it created, and the people it embraced and loved. It fought many battles for you — they were good and worthwhile fights that made life better for those you cherish.

For now, let those around you hold on to the hard memories. We will take care of them. We will not let them be forgotten. We will not lose track of their meaning. You’ve held on to these heavy stones long enough. Drop them and enjoy the lightness.

What a wonderful body you have. An elegant, strong, and confident body. Right now, it needs peace. Let it rest among beautiful things, so it can release your pain.

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WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE
by Mary Holman Tuteur

We sense the change, an apparent turning,
at the same time as we feel it — a knife
slamming down on the chopping block,
cleaving the known body from itself.
We discern the shift in how the earth holds us,
how we hold ourselves to the earth,
as the fine attention of our passion
revolves, all on its own, toward the roses.
Our tongues relish the details
of a rare bloom's growing habits,
the way they used to curl themselves around
the description of a lover's quirks.

We laugh in gusts, recalling to each other
our grandmothers, great-aunts, those old beloveds
whom we used to imagine belonged to another species,
down on their knees troweling, or bending warily,
their bones evolving into glass,
to harvest thosed clawed and petalled globes,
those roses they offered up to us.

Women of a certain age
teach each other to circle
within the strict confines of radiance
of afternoon arching backwards into dusk.
Turning, almost imperceptibly,
we hold out to you a light
that warms you less with its heat
than with a layered generosity, reflecting back to you
every angle it has moved through to get here. 

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