Month: March 2011

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Saturday Morning

It’s been a sad week — on top of the suicide of a young man in our community, and the sadness in David’s family of the failed relationship, a mentally ill man was shot to death by the police in Concord.  It’s not clear what happened, but with the changes happening in the public mental health system because of state budget cuts, there very well may be more events like this.  I can’t get used to how little people with no voice count, how easily they’re pushed aside in debates about funding and revenue and the trashing of budgets to take away the social safety net.  “It’s not a safety net,” a member of NH’s House Finance Committee said to our Commissioner of Health and Human Services at a recent meeting.  “It’s a hammock.  These people are swinging in hammocks and they need to get up and get to work.”  Sad.

Then David got the cold I had this week and was too sick and infectious to come with me to visit Adrienne and Matt and Emilio.  So I spent a bit of time being pouty and upset that here is yet another weekend David and I spend apart.  And then I got real.  We are both alive, we are healthy (except for our colds), we have smart, strong, healthy and highly functional children, and in three months we are going to have oceans of time spreading out around us in all directions (knock wood).  We’ll go kayaking.

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Barrell Mill Pond Dam

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In the 1700’s, in York, Maine, a dam was built where a tidal creek flows into the York River.  This created Barrell Mill Pond, which was managed to run a saw and flour mill. New England is full of these old mills, often just crumbling walls in the woods where a brook falls down a few feet.  Barrell Mill Pond Dam is still a strong rock wall, 50 feet out across the opening of the creek to a 10 foot water spill under a small suspension bridge.  The bridge leads to an island which is now a preserve.  I walked there yesterday morning.

I watched the force of the tide running in under the bridge, through the spillway.  When you narrow the space for energy to flow, it gets concentrated and stronger.  As it is now in my life.  I have about 70 days left in my job, and I can feel energy accelerating around me. The water is lifting up into ridged ripples and small waves, I’m in the middle of the spillway and being carried along.  But I can swim, and I can keep my head above water, and once I’m in the pond, the water will quiet and I can float again.

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Tidal Haiku

Tide goes in and out
In and out and in and out
In and out and in.

I called David tonight when I got back to my room.  I’m away at a retreat for work, staying in a lovely spot on the ocean.  He had sad news — the 20 year old son of a man we both know killed himself, on the train tracks in Durham.  So once again, loss washes in.  For David it washes in over memories of suicides in his own family and the recent shattering in his family of a new, young relationship that was full of hope and celebration just months ago.  For me, it washes in deep sympathy for the family of the young man, knowing what those mind numbing, disorienting and terribly painful early months of grief feel like.  With heavy hearts, we go to sleep.  I’ll wake to the ocean.  David will wake to fields of snow.  The sun will be up, the day will move on, sadness will be a wake rippling behind us.