Noticing deep & lasting beauty while your world is crumbling

We have it in us to notice deep and lasting beauty everywhere, every day, even as our whole world crumbles. And to create deep and lasting beauty, too. Here are three examples from our life here, followed by a brief conclusion during which I spend 30 seconds getting decidedly uppity about billionaire fascists. That's all they get. During these times that feel difficult for almost everyone now, at least here in the U.S., I'd love to hear your story about our ability to notice and create deep and lasting beauty no matter what else is happening in our worlds. Whenever you have the time to share that, I'm here friends.

1. Losing our Grady

We stayed with our dear, sweet clown of a dog, Grady "G-Bone," as he passed from this world to the next. He'd lived 12 healthy and silly, love-filled years. And then one Thanksgiving weekend, he just stopped eating. We fed him wet dog food and people food, by hand, for a few weeks and then we learned that he had an inoperable tumor that had overtaken his adrenal gland among other things. There was nothing to be done. Almost overnight, our G dog couldn't use the steep steps in our old house to go upstairs to sleep at night. So, we moved our mattress downstairs. We wanted to spend his last weeks with us together, as often as possible, and as happily and cozily as possible for him too. Getting to sleep on the mattress with us, downstairs, brought an unshakeable smile to his face and almost unending wags to his Australian Shepherd wiggle butt.

I worked from home at the time, but D was still going into an office back then. He began leaving work a little early each day, so he could spend more time with his best buddy. And each day when D got home from work, Grady would stand, pick up a stuffed toy, walk to the door, and give it to him as he walked in. This was new behavior for Grady. He knew, too, that his time on this earth with his best buddies was drawing to an end. He knew how to give and receive love and comfort simultaneously. It was so beautiful. Our friends and housemates at the time also spent more time with Grady, and with us. We hugged more. Cried more. Smiled more. Snuggled more together on the "world's best dog bed" as our queen-sized mattress in the family room came to be known.

By early January, Grady had grown so weak, and he flat out refused to eat, so we knew he was ready and that it was time to let him go. We drove to the cancer clinic where all the doctors and staff loved him (and had helped us) so much. One young aide loved him so much that she was inconsolable as we walked in. I love people strong enough to weep without apology– anywhere. She honored Grady, and us, with her tears. We sat on the floor in a lovely quiet, modern room with big windows looking out at the grass and trees, on a soft blanket, and we talked about all the great times we'd had together, and about our other cats and dog who would be waiting for him over the rainbow bridge. And we whispered, "Thank you." and "We love you." over and over, so those would be the last words beautiful always-crooked ears heard. As he passed, I watched the sky above us crack open. The clouds parted. The sun shone through (remarkable for January in Seattle back then). He left his body, and we made peace with his passing, although the whole world immediately felt emptier and colder. The space in my chest that apparently holds all the love also felt empty, hollow, cold.

We cried and told each other funny Grady stories as we drove our now emptier and more hollow car back to our house– a house, too, that felt empty, hollow, cold.

I walked upstairs, turned into my office, sat down at my desk, wiped my tears, and opened my laptop. With Grady's spirit around me and my own imagination still feeling his fur beneath my cold feet, I became a poet. I was 42. I hadn't written poetry since I was in high school. But I was a poet again that day. And I will always be a poet now, thanks to Grady.

2. Moving Mom into memory care

My parents moved to live near us in April of 2016. We had so much fun that first year here together. And, Dad had been caregiving and Mom had been living with Alzheimer's disease almost 15 years by then. Mom was going downhill that whole time, too. By the summer of 2017, Mom was often not recognizing Dad when she woke up in the morning– which made bathing her on a regular schedule difficult and helping her with daily toileting tasks extremely difficult too. She was also getting up to use the restroom every 20 to 30 minutes all night long, interrupting her sleep and Dad's sleep terribly. Some nights, she could no longer tell the difference between using the kitchen and using the bathroom. Dad's 24-hour-a-day caregiving work began to feel like 40+ hours a day. This was no longer a 1-person or even a 2-person job. Not even if those people loved you and wanted to keep doing the work so you could all stay together.

In early September, Dad finally admitted to us that it was time for Mom to move into the memory care home in their retirement community. This was something we'd been mentioning to him for many months as we saw the toll the round-the-clock caregiving work was taking on him, and on her, even with our help. So, this was something I thought I was ready for. After all, we'd all lived with Alzheimer's for 15 years by then. But when Dad admitted that he was ready to move her into memory care, and he said it out loud, the reality of what that truly meant hit me. It felt like taking a baseball bat to the face.

My Mom– who has been a loving guide and constant presence and dear friend across the entirety of my life and who at that point was struggling with remembering anyone or anything at all new– was going to be moving into a new home, by herself, without any of us. Part of me was overjoyed for Dad. Happy that he would be able to sleep again and have friends and a life again and still be able to visit her daily, since it would be just a 1-block walk down the hill from his place to her new one. And part of me was happy for Mom, too. She couldn't speak much at all by then, but I knew she was often lonely now that she couldn't read, or cook, or do puzzles, or follow the news or TV shows, or follow most of the too-fast conversations that happened around her. Memory care would mean a team of caregivers and nurses, plus activities directors helping her enjoy her waking hours, and weekly live music and scheduled visits from local children and animals, and having peers and friends again who she didn't need to feel embarrassed with when she couldn't communicate with words.

But in that moment, none of that potential good mattered. I was deeply worried about her. About the move. About her disorientation. About her being lonely and scared and lost and alone– things she had made damn sure I would rarely need to feel in this lifetime. I worried about everything that could possibly go wrong when she was on her own.

I sobbed the entire 45-minute drive home that day.

We secured her a memory care room the following week and then spent the next few weeks making it lovely and cozy and warm, getting it ready for her, behind her back– a loving move and also a knife in this daughter's heart. We don't do things behind each other's backs in our family. Well, we didn't. And now, we did. We filled the room with photos from across her life and ours and silk flowers and seashells and a cozy recliner and TV and beautiful bedding and cheery flower window decals. Put lovely towels and hand soap and lotion and toiletries in her bathroom. Got to know the people who worked there. Figured out all the spots she'd love, like the music room and the living room with a large cozy fireplace and a movie hour each afternoon and the gardens outside and the arts and crafts room.

I knew this needed to happen. For her sake and for Dad's sake. Mid- and late-stage Alzheimer's disease truly does take a whole large village to manage. And I still felt like a complete snake that entire month. A flower-arranging, room-decorating, pillow-fluffing snake in the grass. Because Mom didn't know that the move was coming. The memory care home experts recommended that we all come together with her in the morning and spend an hour or two with her in her new room and exploring her new home before lunch, which sounded great. And then, that we leave while she was distracted by lunch and new friends and then stay away for an entire week so that she could settle into her new routines and get to know her new family. Which sounded horrible, and wrong, and evil, and terrible, and like pure fracking hell being spouted by total idiots (sorry guys) to my broken heart.

So, we kind of did that. Sort of. And it did feel like pure hell during those first days.

Dad managed to stay away just two days. He'd sneak in and check on her without her seeing him, just to make sure she was ok. I managed to stay away four days, since I was working weekdays, and it was a 45-minute drive to get there, and visiting her in the evenings wasn't really an option given the nature of the disease and early bedtimes. Those were the longest four days of my life. I cried all four days. I didn't eat much. I didn't sleep much. By that point I had many friends who'd been through this too, and all the possible horror stories played non-stop in my mind. The friend whose Mom had hated memory care so much that she physically attacked and fought and cursed at anyone who came near her. The friend whose wife had fallen and broken her leg the first week she was in memory care and who then had to be moved to a hospital and then rehab, further disorienting and depressing her. I had imagined mostly the worst for a month before she moved in. After the move, during those days worrying alone, I also worried that she would be angry with Dad, or with me, for deceiving her and moving her there. Those four days worrying to myself, about Mom being alone and scared, broke me. I was a blubbering mess. It felt like my world was crumbling as I imagined her world crumbling.

Only, here's the thing.

Her world wasn't crumbling at all. That was all in my head. Her world was expanding, as was mine.

Mom was happy as a clam in memory care that week.

She loved her room. Loved being surrounded by caregivers and nurses and kitchen and laundry staff– mostly women– who loved her and who loved to help her. Four days in, by the time I came to see her because I couldn't stay away the whole week like they'd asked us to, she already had two new besties: June and Julie. They'd lock arms and walk laps around the rectangular building and through the center and back gardens. They'd have drinks and cookies together and chat nonsense and commiserate using all the ways their bodies still knew how to connect– deeply and lovingly– with other women their age. They'd wander into rooms together and go "shopping," aka, moving interesting things from one room to the next– things staff and families would later have to find and put back. All part of the happy routine in a memory care home where, when you lose things, many, many well-rested hands and hearts always help you find what you need.

Mom lit up when she saw me, took my arm, and led me around to show me all the people and things she loved, including her new bedspread and cozy chair and TV, new view of the garden, new large photos of her grandbaby, the library corner, and roaring stone fireplace. I was stunned she even recognized me without our dog Eva by my side. We sat down together in front of the fireplace and the caregivers brought us hot cocoa and lemon bread on a tray. They'd already figured out Mom's favorites! Mom smiled at me, snuggled closer, patted my arm, and said one word that I will never forget: "Starbucks!" She'd found a home where the coffee shop wasn't a long, cold, car ride away anymore. It was right across the hall from her room. She was happy, and she was surrounded by kind humans who never got impatient with her and who brought her cocoa and lemon bread. She was home. And so was I.

Her world hadn't crumbled after all. And neither had Dad's, nor mine. Most of that worry and anticipation pain had been in my head.

Sometimes, what feels like your world crumbling or shattering is just an expansion of self and family and community that you can't fully feel or see on your own. Remember, above all, in these difficult times: lemon bread really does help.😄

Sadly, just two weeks after that...

3. Losing Jim

My powerful, 6' 4" tall sweetie left his photography studio and opened our front door pale, stunned, eyes red, phone in hand, visibly shaking, unstable on his feet. He got just three, halting, shocked, words out, before he stumbled in the door toward me: "My brother died." He dropped the phone.

The entire world stopped. Shifted. Shattered. In that one moment. I felt every tree around our house bow in our direction. In that blink of an eye, we were changed. Forever.

Worried that D was about to fall or pass out, the only thing I could think to do was to take both of his arms and ask him to sit down on the couch with me, which he did. And from there, we slid down to the floor onto the soft, thick living room rug, beside Eva dog who was already ready to help. And we wept, and wept, and wept. Literally nothing else in the world mattered to us then. Not our work, our schedules, our plans, nothing. D's little brother was just 41, and he had died completely unexpectedly, and we would never see him or talk to him again.

By the time we got down to Texas to be with the family and say goodbye, we were a wreck, and D's parents were as well. They couldn't sleep and were barely eating. Everything felt unreal. Time felt like quicksand. It was as if we all forgot how to human for a while. Like space aliens had possessed us: beings who didn't quite know what to do with these bodies, these lungs, these hands, these feet. We were all still in shock– this can't be real– days after the horrible reality that changed all our worlds. And, also.

Our differences didn't matter. Our beliefs and political leanings didn't matter. Our ways of being– which could be somewhat strange to each other– didn't matter. The Texas sunshine herself felt like a constant best friend that early November. We learned so much that week. In my case, I grew closer to that side of the family. We all learned that having an quiet, introvert, empath writer gal in the family meant that the family had someone who could help craft an obituary and help write eulogies for people who could barely fathom speaking out loud to others right now, let alone speaking to a crowd, without some brave words coaxed gently outward from within (an empath's specialty), and prepared, and practiced. I didn't know I could do that– certainly not with conservative Texas folks. But I did it.

Jim's sweet, orphaned lab and I became instant best friends who would walk and play ball and help each other grieve outside, taking rests from the huge crowd of family now in Jim's house. That side of the family is massive– more than 120 people and normally spread all across the US. We were now all smushed into Jim's small home to grieve and mourn and heal and cook and clean. I learned who the other introverts and the closet introverts were in this remarkably extroverted family (relative to my own) as we took refuge outside on the deck and in wandering alone on the lawn and down the block, nodding and smiling to each other across the lovely embrace of still quiet nature.

I also witnessed one miracle that week that took my breath away. One of D's mom's sisters made us leave the house and come with her to have supper elsewhere one evening, though we didn't want to eat or leave home. At that meal, in the restaurant, she made D's mom laugh out loud– the same week that she could barely breathe and couldn't think and was drowning in grief and certain that she'd never sleep again or smile again, let alone ever want to laugh again.

You are here. You are loved. And you will be ok again one day, someday, even if you're drowning now, and even if it will take years to recover, and even though you will never be exactly the same ever again. We've got you. Your people, our people, I– have got you.

That is the power and pure bad-ass magic that close siblings bring, even if these words are never spoken out loud. Close sisters are miracles. Living, breathing miracles who know you as well as whichever God or gods or stars or forests and rivers any of you happen to pray to. Raised Christian and hurt by angry, rigid Christians at a young age, I'm not much of a religious or praying person myself. I prefer my work and service to others and my own nature (always insisting that we humans have/make time to notice what's remarkable and life-giving) to be my prayers. But that week I was thanking God almost around the clock that I was lucky enough in this lifetime to have a close sister too. I was fully aware and resting in the reality that I, too, have another woman on this earth who knows me so well that she could– and someday likely will– help me laugh out loud again, no matter who or what else I lose.

My husband lost that. He lost his only sibling to an aortic aneurism. We're so lucky that so many friends, and my family too, over the years, have stepped forward to help him slowly fill that massive, massive hole in his heart.

Ten days later, we came home from Texas exhausted by sorrow and loss and re-filled by time with generous family. We were also gifted a few of Jim's things to remember him by. We received some of his essential oils and a diffuser that this conservative Texas man– who also practiced yoga and had a wonderful caring, generous, playful, curious, and giving spirit– had used to help him relax after the long days of driving that his work required of him. We also chose several of his high-end All Clad pots and pans. We chose them because we knew they'd last forever and that's how long we want to remember Jim and to have him and his passion for cooking (far exceeding our own) with us in our kitchen.

Less than two months after that – while using one of Jim's pans in combination with his essential oils– I got the idea to return to my own roots and become an herbalist like my grandmother before me. I studied for several years and then opened my own herbal-products-based practice, Ritual Mischief. I used Jim's pan plus one grandmother's cutting board and my other grandmother's measuring cups and funnels to make every product I ever created across the more than 6 years I loved and ran Ritual Mischief. We lost Jim when we were 47. We turn 55 this year. We feel as close to Jim as ever today, because we're aware of his presence here with us now, beside my grandmothers. Always.

I want you to remember this. No matter who you are.

We humans have it in us to notice deep and lasting beauty everywhere, every day, and even as our whole world crumbles.

We have it in us to notice and create deep and lasting beauty together.

Nothing will change that, friends. Nothing. I don't know much, but I know that much.

I say this not because I know what's coming next. I don't. At the moment, the entire U.S. federal government is being dismantled, destroyed, and remade by fascist billionaires intent on making it nothing more than a tool to further enrich themselves and to protect only them.

Still, I can say this about us because I know my people, and I know my country, and I know my planet, and I know my own heart. Our hearts are connected to the heart field of this whole weird and wonderful place we call Earth. We can hold what's happening now. We can hold these fears and pains of real growth and expansion on top of the chaos and violence in the hearts of these still sad and lonely billionaires coming for the rest of us.

We are NOT fascists here. Those echos of the past are dying fast now. Evaporating. Smoke and mirrors and lying and cheating and bullying and buying elections and swiping our private data and lashing out for sport are all they have left now, and that's not much. It's pathetic.

Nobody on earth can make us into them. Cause us to be so fearful, violent, terrifying, and sad that we turn on our own neighbors. On people we love and respect. Not anymore. Not on this beautiful blue planet. Not with so many amazing beings, these earthlings, by our side.

Our neighbors are everywhere now. Our leaders are everyone now.

We've got this, friends.