Within hours of learning that we had lost our house in the Eaton Fire, a series of images began to float up in my mind, very regularly and very dependably. Images of my former possessions would gently present themselves to my conscious mind as if they were saying goodbye. There was the heirloom Tiffany watch I had inherited from my grandmother, that I only ever wore on Shabbat as a way to consciously beautify and elevate that day. There was Howard’s parents’ wedding china that we used every Friday night. There was the patchwork afghan that I took up as a knitting project years ago, thinking that by the time I finished it some elderly sick person would materialize whom I could generously give it to, and then my own cancers came along and I gave it to myself. On cold mornings I would wrap up in that beautiful blanket as I wrote in my journal. Today it was my black cowboy boots, some of the most comfortable footwear I have ever owned. And the elegant flowered bathrobe that Howard had given me as a gift.
As soon as this started happening, and it’s happening many times a day, I was given the image of “sips of grief.” There is actually a firehose of grief at my disposal, but everybody knows you can’t drink from a firehose. So when these images float up, I just take a little sip of grief, and mourn the loss, and feel grateful for the joy or beauty or utility that thing gave me in my life, and then I mentally kiss it goodbye.
This feels like a blessing, because instead of being drowned in grief, taking it one sip at a time allows me to metabolize and alchemize it into gratitude. Many of the things that reveal themselves are completely replaceable, and now I have the opportunity to decide if having had them was enough, or if I want them in my life again enough to go to the bother of replacing them. Some are irreplaceable, like the watch and the china and my journals, and all I can do is just let them go.
(A hilarious aside in the middle of this otherwise weighty post: one of the best quotes I have heard in the past few days is “I have been non-consensually Marie Kondo-ed!”)
When I lost my dad almost thirty years go, the first memories of him were so sharp and painful, because of the still-fresh images of his suffering in the last stages of terminal lung cancer — his eyes sunken into his head, his knobby knees looking so gigantic in his emaciated legs. As time went by those images softened, and took their place among the years and years of memories of my whole life as his daughter. Now my storehouse of memories of him is so sweet, especially when my siblings and I bring to mind yet another one of his oft-used jokes and expressions that were sometimes kind of annoying when he was alive. When we Jews speak of the dead, we always say “May his memory be for a blessing,” and my dad’s memory certainly is a blessing for me.
I don’t think I’m kidding myself that I am somehow going to sidestep deep grieving. I am waiting for the wracking sobs I’m sure are coming, and I know how both painful and cathartic they can be. But in the meantime there is this sweet, sad slideshow I view a little of every day. In just over a week these memories are already for a blessing. That actually feels like a small miracle.