poustinia

Many of the things I post here were first posted on a personal blog that Steve kept.  This 'top secret' blog is full of entries, from 2009 on.  It brings me relief to reread them and then choose one for this blog, a storehouse of sorts.  Steve has a pile of journals kept from 2007 on that he left to Margaret in his will.  She has recently starting typing them all out.  She says there is lots more.  I am not ready to read them yet.

When we found out that Steve had cancer, I created a private blog for myself, entitled, "My Poustinia." I have been rereading my entries lately and am finding that the things i wrote then are informing my grief now.

Here was my first entry, on March 13, 2011:

"'Poustinia  is the Russian word for 'desert' and by extension hermitage.  Every Russian village, in the Czarist days, seemed to cherish a poustinia with its resident hermit.  Such a person was not a recluse, necessarily, and certainly not a holy person.  The 'staretz' (or feminine, steritza') was just someone whose life story had made him available to listen, to help get the hay in before it rained, to practice hospitality.'"

(from Mary Rose O'Reilly in The Garden at Night quoting from Poustinia:  Christian Spirituality of the East and Western Man by Catherine de  Hueck Doherty.)

I first read Catherine Doherty while still living in my nest across the street.  That was a season of severe withdrawal and cocooning.  I honored silence and rest and pulling in.

Now, with the arrival of Steve's cancer, our new guest, with things to teach us and transcendence and searing pain at every turn,  I am drawn to this blog to learn how to live for another in a true way.  By listening to Steve's every inward sigh and outward word maybe I will learn a new way to live.

Silence was the word from my divorce.  Numbered with the malefactors.  


Wait, quiet, refreshment in rest.

Now, listen.  Attune myself to another."

I think that is what we all did for the 82 days that Steve lived with his diagnosis.  We listened to each other.  Steve and I attuned ourselves to each other and the demands that cancer was making of him.  Sometimes when i relive our days in my imagination I cannot even believe they could be true, the way we lived so intensely.    Hearing an ambulance brings back memories of our two ambulance rides full of fear and apprehension.   A drive Downtown to  Urban Standard or the Library now holds memories of rides back and forth from Kirklin Clinic, or parking in that 4th Avenue Deck at 4th and 18th Street for the variety of procedures.

The first four months after Steve died seemed full of a sense of buoyancy.  But lately it feels like a levy has been removed and the idea of a future without Steve is washing over us.  My priest Glenda said that it seems that we all managed our anger really well while Steve was dying.  We didn't want to waste any moment with him on that.  We wanted to be present to each other, and I think we really were.

But now, it would make sense that anger become a part of the scenario of our grief.  The sense of feeling cheated.  Maybe even kicking a wall or two.  Maybe feeling like a rug has been  pulled out from under us.

Each of us in our little community has different words for where we are.  Brennan still has bad dreams about losing Steve,  Danean says 'everything is broken.'  Donna and Maggie wept after the Patty Griffin concert, remembering how much Steve loved her songs and lyrics.

I know enough to know that our future is not bleak.  I know enough to know to return to daily rhythms and to 'do the next true thing.'  I know enough to know that when I am in Highland Park, with children and people who knew Steve near I am much better off than in any other place. I am grateful for our seven children.  It all feels bearable when we are together.  I am grateful for words that give form to our hopes and dreams.  And i am grateful for silence, where i eventually remember what these hopes and dreams are and what it will take to live them out.