On January 3, 2008, my only son, a 4 1/2 year old died of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. This blog is a place for me to write about what life is like now. I have called it Sweet Impossible Blossom based on a line from a poem by Li-Young Lee. It has become the signature poem for our son and the experience of losing him. It captures the beauty and the extravagance even of ordinary life, and reminds us how closely connected birth can be to death.
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy to
joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Li-Young Lee
It has been a year and six months since I held my son’s limp body to my chest and I am more able than ever to see the sweetness of life even as I know the terror of that which we cannot hold.
Losing my son has thrust me to the outer fringes of human experience and catapulted me into a whole new way of being. I am a lone mountaineer now, scaling my inner landscape searching for answers about who I am and what I am doing here. This blog will be about loss, grief and suffering, but it is also about gratitude, acceptance and what has been given. May it also be a story of hope.
I have been very influenced by the life and writing of Henri Nouwen, and more recently by Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chodron, John O’Donohue, John Main and Laurence Freeman, Thich Nhat Hanh, Caroline Myss and gratefulness.org. With them as guides, I have come to see my life as a purpose-filled walk through time and space to have the chance for my spirit to experience being fully human.
Karen Blixen wrote that “All sorrows can be borne if you can tell a story about them”. This is my story.
Gracias!
Heart wrenching…..know that you are not alone in your grief, sadness and celebrations….the universe is full of loving hearts who march along side…thank you for sharing your heart. Namaste.