Recently

(stories of life lately)

Recently I visited my 98 year old Nana who lives in El Paso with her 96 year old sister. The quick trip was planned when she requested my Grandpa’s ashes so that they could be buried together once she passes away.

It turns out that in order to travel with human remains you have to store them in a special temporary urn from a funeral home. Which is why, the night before our flight to Texas, I found myself kneeling over an open urn on the hardwood floor of my kitchen, next to a flattened digiorno pizza box that I had fished from our recycling bin in a creative albeit slightly trashy effort to catch the ashes if any happened to spill. Because the act of tampering with human remains felt out of my element and sacred, I had Native American flutes playing softly from my phone in the background as a way to make the moment feel more ceremonial.

“Hi Grandpa” I whispered awkwardly as I unwrapped the bag inside of the urn, opening it wide and staring down into what looked like sand from a thick pebbly beach.

While I used the back of my wrist to wipe sweat from my brow, because it turns out that the weight of even human ashes is still quite heavy, I felt a familiar wave of anger run through me. My being here in this strange moment was solely because my Dad had put off doing this very thing. He had left the urn of his Dad hidden in a dusty box for twenty years instead of taking them to his Mother or scattering them in the ocean like Grandpa had wanted, and now it was just another thing that he left me to do instead.

I poured more ashes out, watched them cascade into their new bag, and felt indignant. I wasn’t looking forward to the trip at all. My Nana was and continues to be a deeply complicated woman. She really only acknowledges my older brother and I while pretty much disregarding our younger two siblings. She didn’t come to either of our weddings. She didn’t come to James’ funeral. She didn’t even come to my Dad’s funeral, her own son. She judges and complains and holds grudges and burns bridges and bounces from place to place because people offend her so easily. She is 98 years old and yet, she hasn’t evolved one bit in the entire time I’ve lived. I continue to have the same conversations with her even now, listening to her negative view of the world while knowing that breaking this toxic cycle was the best thing I could have done for my future generations.

While tears welled up in my angry eyes, I decided to focus on why I’m doing this and why it might matter more than me and more than the unfairness of what I had to do. This would be for my Grandpa, who I always loved to be around. A man who was kind and patient, who told the best bedtime stories, who had a superb belly laugh and always smelled of aftershave, who introduced us to the good old black & white versions of the three stooges and little rascals and always called me Meggie.

I would do this for him and I would think, for now, if just to get me through it, of the good. Before life burned its wounds into my skin like a branded cow. When I was young and free and unaware of the simplicity of it all. When we’d excitedly pack our suitcases to visit them lakeside in northern california, grocery shopping at the commissary, taking trips in their motorhome to lake tahoe, eating their coffee flavored ice cream and trying on her fancy jewelry. I was constantly in awe of the differences in their bible church from a mormon way of life I knew. I’m still reminded of those days when I smell coca cola and iced tea and hot cement in the summertime.

My hands shook all the way through customs while dragging a suitcase as heavy as a grown human and hoping they would let me bring him through. But in the end, not to be that toxic positive person that needs to have a lesson in everything, honestly in the end there was a small moment that made it all worth it. The night before we flew back home my Mom and I, alongside my Nana and her sister Alice, sat on old squeaky stools in their tiny kitchen and listened to them tell stories from their childhood. They told us all about growing up in Maine, the dances and the illnesses and the stories of how they got to where they were, stories I had never heard. Their faces lit up and their eyes sparkled while they laughed and remembered. They even still called their parents “Daddy and Mama”. And while I watched them come to life again, I realized that these were just two little kids trapped in the old feeble bodies of ninety-something-year-old women.

It was the moment I didn’t know my anger needed. It was throwing a bucket of ice into boiling water. It calmed me and granted me a slice of empathy, a new pair of glasses to see her through. Maybe it was a gift from Grandpa, maybe a recompense from Dad. Maybe just a lucky moment that reminded me there is more to life, always, and that like them, all I’ll really ever be is a little girl trapped in this aging body.

Recently it began hurting my heart to listen to Zach Bryan.

Jace went through a Zach Bryan phase for a couple of years. We listened to him constantly. One of my favorite memories with Jace last Fall was driving to and from baseball practices all week long when, in between stopping at the gas station for big league chew and gatorade and talking about life and school, we were singing to all of Zach Bryan’s songs. When Zach sang Jace and I didn’t have to talk but we still connected. The poetic words of the songs rang through us both and the wind blew from our rolled down windows and the sunset lit the sky ablaze as we drove. Jace chewed his gum and smelled of leather baseballs and for those moments, snippets in between hard days of a new teenager, life was so simple and pure.

Now Jace is 14 and his path shifted suddenly, where he decided he wants to focus on other things. He’s done with baseball now and he no longer listens to Zach Bryan. He got a promotion at work and a new group of friends he skateboards with and I have to fight him for weekends to camp with us. Just like that, in what felt like a snap, I lost those drives with him and all of the magic they held. Like every transitional moment in raising humans, I just didn’t know I was going to lose that so fast.

And so it hurts now to listen to Zach Bryan. The same way it hurts to watch Cars or Curious George, the same way it hurts to see the old playground they loved and the old fort they used to play in and the crayons and colored pencils that have gathered dust on the shelf. It stings. It pulls. It aches. I have lost so many versions of my kids and I’m watching them each take turns becoming new versions of themselves so often that it gets hard to breathe sometimes.

How am I constantly becoming a new version of myself while loving and holding other humans who are doing it too? How are we surviving these huge feelings and the newness we are all going through together?

Yet, I will let it hurt. I will still listen to Zach Bryan. And I will still smile at Cars and Curious George and I will never forget the memories they made with their little hands and feet. I will soak in the now that I will surely miss later and I will always hold onto the moments I had while I had them.

Parenting is the ultimate trip.

Recently Dan and I had dinner with some friends we love dearly who just turned 80 years old. We ate on fancy china plates adorning a bright fabric tablecloth. We sipped pre-dinner martinis and during-dinner red wine and post-dinner dessert peach and butterscotch liquor. We toured the basement filled with their old western books and memorabilia. We laughed until our sides ached. We listened to their stories, and they ours. They give us the gift of lessons and advice, and reminders. We give them the gift of youth and perspective, and reminders.

It got me thinking about how life shouldn’t be only sitting next to people our age. I think that being woven together with all different ages and types of people is maybe the answer to it all, the answer we’ve lost. We’re missing tribes and community and wisdom and youth, all together as one. Bringing us together would heal so many people. I wish we could normalize that.

Recently I bought a jeep, fulfilling a dream of mine. She is a limited edition grayish-blue color, she is tall and has leather seats and smells of strawberry shortcake and I have named her Bluebird. She was built in 2015 which comforts me because she was here while my brother James was still alive. Is that silly? I might only buy vehicles that were from the year 2015 or older from here on forward for the rest of my life because of that silly little truth. She was made when our world was still whole.

I’m at my highest vibration while I’m driving around in Bluebird now, feeling in my bones the kind of gratitude that can only be felt when you dream and work hard and trust that this dream is something that will finally find its way to you when it’s time. I’ve been carrying that dream-come-true vibration with me everywhere lately. The place I’m at with my career, working less and enjoying life more. Our beautiful land and all we have created here. The way that I breathe easier now than I did even just a few years ago.

I’ve been thinking about how good things are like a soup…a simmering recipe of time, patience, hope and pain. I think a lot about all of the good things I hold now that would never be mine were it not for walking through fire first. I think that’s the trick to peace and prosperity…it’s a creation built of not abandoning yourself, letting yourself feel the hurt, facing your pain and following your truth no matter what the world brings. It will always be cold and painful at first but the soup, the peace, that comes afterwards.

And somehow peace becomes an acceptance. An acceptance of the hurt that will consistently stay mingled in it all.

Right now I’m settling into peace and dreams and abundance and simplicity while I’m holding hands with the hurt, and I’m hoping that I’ll never forget all the work it took to get me here.