Today I read a story about two men who lost loved ones in the tsunami in Japan a few years ago. The two women, who worked at the same bank, were swept away in the huge wave and left behind a husband and a father. After the devastating event, the men decided to learn to scuba dive.
This wasn’t an easy task. Both were in their fifties and while that’s not a deterrent, they both reported it was difficult learning to dive; however, their desire to dive pushed them to complete the training.
It wasn’t a recreational pastime they sought but a way to search for the women they loved. Now they regularly dive in the cold waters off the coast of Japan looking for anything they can find of their loved ones….a shoe, a purse, a dress….their physical remains.
I was reminded, while reading the story, how we search for those we love. They may no longer be with us in the physical sense yet can continue to be very present emotionally, spiritually and mentally. We hold their love, their shiny brilliance and the good they brought to us, like priceless treasures. And like the divers from Japan, we are willing to explore dark, cold waters of the subconscious mind to gather in the remnants of memory that keep us connected to them.
The loss of someone close–through separation, divorce, death–is profound, deep and difficult to move beyond, especially when the love was strong. It’s been over three years for me and the love is strong and deep and the memories of our first few years together sparkle like sunbeams in my heart. Even though it was a choice we both made, the pain is no less real, the loss is no less great, than death. And it was a death…of us as partners.
It’s okay to dive deep within looking for those beautiful moments and memories…not to stay stuck in the past but to celebrate something that was really good and beautiful once upon a time.
The mind is a powerful tool. Many times we forget how our thoughts, especially thoughts charged with emotion, can affect our lives and the lives of others. If we pause and simply monitor our thoughts we might be surprised at how much negativity we put out into the world.
Usually it’s subtle. It’s not the angry rants that lie just beneath the surface, sending out energy that is harmful. Those are relatively easy to see. It’s those very subtle thoughts that lie in the shadows, avoiding conscious attention yet almost imperceivably going out into the world to cause harm.
During the Gulf Oil Spill I discovered that I had very serious hatred of BP and Halliburton. As I walked the miles of oil-coated beaches, my eyes and nose burning from crude oil chemicals and dispersant, I seethed in anger and rage. Finally, I stopped and realized how harmful this was to my own well-being and realized the energy I was putting out into the world was incredibly harmful and offered no solution to the problem.
So one day in meditation, I imagined a huge table. Executives from BP and Halliburton were seated around it and I saw myself there with them. I looked each person in the eye and said, “You are my brother” or “You are my sister.” I saw that they were human, capable of mistakes. It brought much-needed peace to me.
As I monitor my thoughts, I seek those subtle, sneaky bits of messages that tend to repeat in my mind and especially look for those charged with emotion. It’s amazing what can be found lurking in the shadows of our minds. Oddly enough, we might discover that our emotionally-charged, negative thoughts about others help to create the situation in which we feel wounded.
Given this realization, what can we do?
The great hurdle is realizing our own role in creating the situation. One way to promote healing is to offer the simple practice of seeing light in others.
For example, as I worked out on the elliptical trainer today I listened to meditative music and imagined myself telling someone from my past what I admired about them. I reflected to them their beauty. Thirty minutes was spent directing positive energy toward this person. It felt as if a window was being washed, so the person could be seen clearly.
Hours later, asI sat to do my daily mediation, I had in my hand a fossilized whale ear bone this person had given me. As I went to stand up I put pressure on the stone and it broke. How can I fossilized bone that turned to stone break? It felt like a significant and great mystery was being shown. Perhaps things we think are hardened like stone need to break open so the wounds can heal.
Seeing the light in others is not always easy. In the relentless assaults on Mother Earth and all Her creatures it is especially difficult to find light in the perpetrators. Yet if we can’t imagine there is light in the darkest heart, how can we ever have hope?
To those whom we love the most, we must forgive ourselves when we project negative opinions to them and be a mirror that shines the bright light of their highest self to them. And we must have the courage to see the light within ourselves, which is perhaps the most difficult task of all.
Whistling wings of a cormorant flying over distracted me from watching the osprey perched on the sailboat mast. The quiet of the evening, the still water filled with reflections of clouds, boats, buildings, birds….all of this brought me to a place of deep reflection. There was no separation between me and life around me.
Manatees always touch my life profoundly when they choose to interact. Today I had babies playing around me, whistling after their mamas, trying to find something to entertain them while their mothers slept. Some are shy, some are playful and all represent a very gentle, docile species.
More than once I had larger manatees swim up to me, stop and snuggle against my side and then stay there. Having an animal much larger than me…by about 1000 pounds…. snuggle and whisper through their whiskers sweet manatee sonnets is quite profound. I don’t initiate anything and simply lay still at the surface. They come to me. I observe passively and sometimes one decides I’m worth knowing. If they approach I don’t move, if they snuggle I don’t move….but I do giggle sometimes.
I cannot help it. Laying here, tired yet unwilling to let the experience fade without writing about it, tears of joy flow.
It’s not just that they are cute and cuddly. I see deep scars from propellers on almost every adult. I think of the over 800 that died last year due mostly to red tide created from human septic systems emptying into Indian Lagoon…harassing humans, mean humans…so many reasons they shouldn’t trust us and yet, in this protected place, they find a human now and then to befriend. And I never take their trust for granted.
Studies have shown that their behavior toward humans is different here than in other, non-protected places. Perhaps we provide entertainment for those that wish to learn more about this gangly, clumsy species that enters their watery home. Always, always I want to be a good ambassador, a friend and a protector. And yes, even a snuggle buddy if they need that.
About to head out on my SUP board to look for our manatee friend
Gusts were bringing in the cold front and chilly temperatures as I stood barefoot on my SUP board. What am I doing out here? They can’t find a facility to take the animal so why paddle out? Why look? Immediately my heart poured forth a chorus of reasons: We need to document locations; I want this creature to know humans care; I don’t want it to suffer alone; it doesn’t matter that the rehab facility doesn’t want to receive a sick animal today….
A very large manatee at Homosassa Springs State Park.
On and on I slowly paddled, scanning the river from one side to the other….looking for a small nose at the surface, the shadow of a manatee, the tail-print of a swimming manatee…so in hope of finding this small one alive still, surviving in a 58 degree river, a river far too cold to dwell if you are a manatee that should be in the Florida springs.
As I moved silently through the water I contemplated the inner push to be here with heavy clouds hanging close and a 52 degree air temperature with 22 mph gusts of wind. Why does my heart call me so?
I took this image yesterday afternoon after jumping into a river neighbor’s canoe and drifting near the manateeAnother image of our lost manatee friend…
They’re precious…they’re endangered….they are innocents….they are gentle….they are my brothers and sisters.
Self-portrait of my leg and fin as a young manatee plays with my drysuit in a Florida spring
Human-generated interference has caused this gentle species to become endangered. Maybe 5000 are left on the planet….over 800 lost last year alone. One fifth of the population wiped out by red-tide, an overgrowth of algae caused by human-generated pollution. Boat strikes…local fishermen in Crystal River calling them speed bumps, a cruel name assigned to them because the boaters don’t want to use idle speed in King’s Bay, a haven for wintering manatees….and the tears flowed.
I cannot change the fact that humans have created a real mess on the planet, especially in regards to water pollution, over-fishing, creating environments no longer capable of supporting healthy marine life. The past is done and there’s not magic wand to undo it.
Portrait of a friend and a human friend.
But we can care now.
I stopped at a dock and chatted with a river elder who had seen the small manatee yesterday. I gave him the hotline number and asked him to call if he or his wife spotted our friend. Maybe a Christmas miracle will happen and the stars will align and rescue can be made before pneumonia kills this friend…this little brother or sister.
Mother and large calf….
A few hours later…….
The faces of love….
I sit in my car in front of the Piggly Wiggly, tears streaming down my face, watching cars head south toward the beach. Gray clouds hang close, the wind picks up flags of yellow, red, blue and green and makes them tug against tethers. The flags remind me of the tugging of my heart to stay open…to care. I reflect back to the cashier who yelled, ‘Merry Christmas!’…the alcohol-hazed man wandering in the aisles…the helpful clerk who directed me to the pesto…the child cashing in pennies….the grandfather who bragged on his cute granddaughter…the classmates I haven’t seen in over 30 years…the smartly dressed…the ragged….the lost and sick manatee….the pelican fishing upriver…the red fish…the great blue heron…we all come from cosmic Source…we are Love…we are Light. We are One.
A friend once told me that there is a price that comes with having an open heart: We feel.
A manatee kissing a human…
To all my brothers and sisters….creatures great and small….may this time of light and love open our hearts to each other so that we may know connection….to you, to Source, to our own hearts.
The sun slowly set across the bay. From my perch on the end of the hurricane-damaged pier I sat alone—utterly alone— yet surrounded by endless memories. As I closed my eyes and listened, I could almost hear the laughter of my brother and cousins when we were children. I could hear our mom’s calling out, “Don’t run! Don’t run on the pier!”
A mullet splashed and brought me back to the present. My thoughts turned to my grandfather. If only he could be in the swing sitting with me on the pier telling stories of hauling watermelons to New Orleans. Or maybe he would tell the story of getting married to my grandmother, of having seven dollars and the Pensacola judge asking ten dollars to perform their marriage. It left them no money for lunch. He perhaps would remind me they did not tell anyone they were married for two weeks and they only knew they loved each other. That was all that mattered.
Granddad with the great-grand kids
As I sat on the pier and watched the sunset, I thought back to days when our entire family was together—Dad and Mom, Mammaw and Granddad, Babe and Preston, Patti, Paula, Mike, Johnny, my brother and me, Aunt Bert, Aunt Carrie, Aunt Teet–all of us together enjoying fish fries, water skiing, sailing, crabbing, fishing, swimming, and nights spent on the pier staring up into star-filled heavens. Summer days were filled with the essence of family, fun, seafood, salt water, sunshine, and the ingredient that made it all magic—love.
Granddad and my daughter Emily…1986
It was not that it had all been easy. There had been difficulties, heartaches, mistakes, deaths and sadness, but that is only part of being human. It is part of life. The thread that had kept us all together was love—love anchored by Granddad and Mammaw for sixty-three years and then by Granddad for the past several years. In my reverie on the pier, I realized that with his passing our anchor would be gone. Each family, now including great grand children, some of whom were adults, would drift farther away from the nucleus that Granddad had anchored. Our lives would change. The thread would unravel a little more.
I remembered how things changed when Mammaw passed on years earlier. We began using disposable plates at Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of her favorite china. Granddad missed her greatly but went on the best he could, honoring and loving her with a deep, true love. Granddad made an effort to step in and do things with my brother and me when our dad was unable. We rode horses together, sometimes with my brother Lance following along on his bicycle. I never realized until recently how he helped father us when our own father was sick.
Granddad and me in a Foley Christmas parade…circa 1975 or so
Why is it that only when we face losing someone we love do we realize just how deep love’s grooves are worn into our hearts?
An empty bottle floated past the pier. It bobbed slowly past as the current carried it out to sea. Our lives are so much like that bottle—floating along on the currents of time, steered by an unseen force from the day we are born until we die. Is it chance that steers the current of our lives together or is it some greater force that brings us into each other’s presence? Maybe it is a little of both, but regardless, it is love that keeps us close, that brings us to a place of understanding and tolerance, of patience and peace.
I turned and looked back over my shoulder, up the pier to the moss-draped live oak trees and the large white house that my grandparents called home for so many years. I swear I could see Granddad walking down to the pier in his khaki work pants and shirt wearing his boots and straw hat to sit with me and tell me once more about…..memories flooded my mind and my heart listened wide open, as my grandfather shared his life story just one more time.
*******
I wrote this after visiting my grandfather on the way back to North Carolina…just after his surgery and before Hurricane Katrina. A few days later I shared it at his funeral and later still, it ended up in a chapter of my first book, Sharks On My Fin Tips. (Published by Grateful Steps Publishing House, 2008).
Today I read a story about two men who lost loved ones in the tsunami in Japan a few years ago. The two women, who worked at the same bank, were swept away in the huge wave and left behind a husband and a father. After the devastating event, the men decided to learn to scuba dive.
It wasn’t a recreational pastime they sought but a way to search for the women they loved. Now they regularly dive in the cold waters off the coast of Japan looking for anything they can find of their loved ones….a shoe, a purse, a dress….their physical remains.
The loss of someone close–through separation, divorce, death–is profound, deep and difficult to move beyond, especially when the love was strong. It’s been over three years for me and the love is strong and deep and the memories of our first few years together sparkle like sunbeams in my heart. Even though it was a choice we both made, the pain is no less real, the loss is no less great, than death. And it was a death…of us as partners.
