Gone
15 March 2006
[The other day my laptop along with a back up were stolen. Most of my writing was stored on those laptops. It is all gone…]
The journey into a life of awareness begins for most of us in a moment of helplessness. When our lives are going well, we do not feel any need to change them, or ourselves. We are content to go on as we are, coasting, serene as planets in their orbits, or caribou on seasonal migration. Our habits of mind are sufficient to sustain us through the days. We are unperturbed, and half asleep. John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark.
Today feels like the day after the day after a funeral. There is so little around me now to remind me of what I had lost. Yet, being around all that is familiar to me in this moment is in its own way a poignant reminder of what no longer is – what is now an isn’t.
Strange to think of all that writing as an isn’t, but that seems to be what it is now. I wonder at the use of the word “seems” here. Do I still hold on to the possibility that it will all turn up again soon?
I recall with remarkable clarity the day I went with Jill* to her father’s house after he died. We went into his empty bedroom. There were just three of us on this trip – me, Jill and her very young nephew, Trace, who would have been a great grandson on the family tree.
The empty bed was carefully made, the bedspread smooth and the pillows fluffed, as if someone would be retiring there soon.
Trace seemed confused. Where is he? he wanted to know. Gone, Jill said, adding, He died. The little boy obviously did not understand. He kept looking around the room with an inquisitive look – as if this were a game of hide and seek. Then he did something remarkable, even magical. He stood at the foot of the bed, and slowly raised the cover. I sensed that he was expecting to see the old man’s feet. Turning around toward us he shrugged his shoulders a bit, and said, Gone. As soon as he said that, he ran past us out of the room giving no more thought to the event – he flew off like geese over a still lake.
In that moment I was given a wonderful teaching from my little Buddha. Like many teachable moments I only now begin to grasp it. He is gone. I am not gone. Can I have a cookie? he seeemed to be saying.
So now in this moment I can say, My writing is gone. I am not gone. Perhaps I will have some tea.
After disasters have struck, like the firestorm in the Oakland Hills that time several years back, I have heard people talk about how devastating it was for them. Others spoke about how it simplified their lives. I noticed that some people worked incredibly hard to recreate their homes as close to the way they were before all the devastation. And still others took it all on as a way of creating a new beginning for their lives. And then still others left the area – too sad and traumatized to bear witness to the loss.
I noticed that for me I had no such responses. I did not lose a home. No one died as the result of my loss. I did lose my writing, a lot of writing, a whole lot of writing… Yet, my mind is no less cluttered, my life not simplified any more than it already was. I have no urge to try to recreate all that I wrote in the past – and for much of that muddled writing maybe a quiet death in the shadows of the criminal world is too romantic an end for such average scraps and scribbles. And a new beginning? Oh well, another one of those seems hardly new.
No, today is a grey Wednesday morning. I am not gone. This writing is not gone. I have a cup of tea waiting for me when I finish these last few lines.
This bit of writing right here on this page, these words, are the steps I am taking into the rest of my life.
Later these steps might include some errands, and likely a trip to the city. More steps that I can take today because, if a little boy had pulled up my covers this morning, he would have found my feet.
* Jill is a dear friend who lives in Colorado. Her father was a large animal veterinarian. Not sure why that detail is imprtant, but it must be since I included it here.