What does loss teach us about love?
Loss is a fluid that eases with time but never goes away, only shifts and eddys, pooling as memory. Its pokes and sharpnesses dull, but always is stored in a pocket of the heart, and balloons from time to time when triggered and bumped.
Hello, Hanoi
(Part 9 of Many)
I have not posted for a few days because sometimes this world cuts me like a stone, and I have to wander around half-dead until breathable air arrives.
Read more…
This Saturday is February 14th. For most people it is a day of romance (Hallmark or otherwise); but it is also my brother’s birthday.
I’m taking the weekend alone in Sapa to write, think, and honor my only and lost brother. Just for him, I booked the deluxe suite with double-balcony views. “You only live once!” I can hear him say.
…Enjoy the weekend
You might think Britney Spears on the iPod while crossing New Zealand’s majestic bays via ferry towards Waiheke Island some kind of sacrilege — but let me assure you, my friends, it is a beautiful (life affirming) combination, the sacred and the profane.
Christopher David DeJong
Feb. 14, 1976 – Nov. 20, 2007
It’s been a long year since you left us, yet the loss is still fresh. Slowly the pain lessens and is replaced with memory, but the “missing” will always be there.
Let us miss you without selfishness, without desperation, but only with love.
You will always be a bright spark in our hearts just as you were in our lives.
We know you are safe and at peace. Let us follow your example and have peace in our hearts…
We are taking good care of your dogs.
We love you, Chris–
Yesterday was the 5 year anniversary of the death of my best friend Jamie. My friend Jill, who grew up with Jamie and I, called me:
“Just wanted to talk to you to remember how, 5 years ago exactly, we experienced one of the worst days of our lives.”
Actually, she said “one of the top 3 worst days of my life.” I didn’t ask about the other two.
Oh, who am I kidding-
There is no Robot-Lego FlashDance going on — I don’t even own legos. Read more…
As a follow-up to my last post about Mother’s Day, I am posting this link to an article, The Dark Side of Mother’s Day, written by a woman I know, Cynthia Tuttelman.
I am not a mother, but I have one; and seeing what she’s had to go through after the death of her child, I know Hallmark couldn’t dream of writing a card that comes close to expressing to her my love and sorrows.
Mother’s Day was emotional but uplifting; energy around the household has been a little tense as Mom, Pop and I realize that grief comes in colors outside a hue of blue. There is also anger, fear, loneliness, and some other disorienting shade of grey that sort of lingers around your eyes when you first wake up.
But as we run the gamut of chaotic and disorienting emotions, we always seem to find a way to the other side.
Sunday was not only a painful reminder to my mother that she is mother to only one child now, but it also called forth the losses of her own mother, and her father, who died on Mother’s Day. I’ve been discussing with her the inevitable reality that I cannot — despite current contrary appearances — live at home for the rest of my life.
This fact is a little upsetting to all of us — the intimate little triangle of my mother, father and self has provided crucial infrastructure for all of us since the loss of my brother. But the possibility of her only remaining child moving to another country wouldn’t ease the anxiety in any mother’s heart.
It’s hard telling my mom I might move to Vietnam.
And so, with all of this as a background, my extended family came over. The absence of my brother was “palpable,” as my cousin put it. No one ignored the fact that this was a particularly hard day; however, no one let it cripple us, either.
There was enough good food and laughter to fill 15 wedding, 7 mardi gras, and 3 bar mitzvahs. It was encouraging to see my entire family relax and smile, certainly — but for me, the only thing of any importance was the smile on my mother’s face, radiant with joy.
I know we’re in the middle of a fashion experiment, but I have to interrupt the Project Muu-Muu and switch gears to a post for Unthinkable Loss — an account of my experience with the sudden loss of my brother.
Throughout this process I am perpetually amazed at the mercurial nature of emotion, and how much turbulence simmers just below our surfaces.
It has been 5 months since my brother passed away, and I have been feeling pretty solid — I’m making progress on my writing, keeping up with a good flow of freelance work, getting consistent sleep and exercise; I laugh, I socialize — heck, I wear muu-muus around town for the fun of it.
It’s not that I don’t think of my brother — I do, everyday. I put fresh flowers around his urn every few days and talk with my mom about him all the time. So it’s not like this loss is ever far from my mind. It is, however, increasingly far from my heart – that is, I conceive of his death but am less willing to feel it.
I can say the words “my brother is gone” but to feel this missing, and all that it implies, is such an exhausting feat I unconsciously choose not to acknowledge what this means.
For the first few months I was swimming underwater: my vision askew and every movement stung. The overwhelming Truth stared at me, nauseous-making, not only in the lonely pauses upon waking or before sleep, but even when I ate a banana smoothie (“Chris hated bananas”); took a walk with the doggies (“these damn dogs wouldn’t be here if Chris were still alive”); or read a magazine (“an article on how to plan for your parents getting older? I’ll be doing it alone.”)
But lately, life has returned to a kind of “normal,” and I’ve gotten rather used to feeling, well, good. I go to the beach with friends every weekend like a giddy teenager in a Pepsi commercial. I’ve forgotten (or tried to forget) being sad.
…except that I am. Coming back to this loss and acknowledging what’s still there is a continual, life-long process. And I keep forgetting that.
* * *
Last night I had a dream that unraveled in typical dream-fashion: time wasn’t linear and everything felt fluid, illogical. You know — where kittens are crawling on the ceiling… something like that.
The long and the short of it is that in my dream I could not function for anything. I was overrun with longing for my brother, and every action I tried to take was interrupted with tears.
I woke up in the middle of my crying, dream dissolving into reality, and laid in bed inhaling wet breaths, achingly missing my brother. Just missing.
He’s not coming back, is he? I said out loud.
I fell back asleep, and what followed was nothing but calm, uneventful sleep.
I woke up in the morning having forgotten the dream, the waking, the sentiment of sorrow.
And that’s what is so fascinating to me, still — all that can live inside us of which we are not even aware: I’d not remember anything, if it weren’t for the tissue still in my hand.
It’s been a little over 4 months since my brother’s passing. This is an interesting time, when the death is now very real but still freshly affects my life. I find myself mistaking my relative “okayness” with my “being done grieving” when, I’ll never be done grieving.
Life is in full swing now: Mom and Dad are regularly engaging in “normal” activities and a social life again; my extended family have “normal” get-togethers, such as Easter; and I am feeling back to my “normal” self — enthusiastic, inspired, motivated, making plans, writing projects, wearing strange dresses from The Goodwill. Although there are certainly moments or even hours where grief sharply insinuates itself into my awareness, rarely do I have to give up whole swaths of days to “The Grieving Process.”
But things are still not “normal.”
* * *
I’ve been making plans to move for months. I wake up some days, look around my room — the same room as when I was 16 years old — and I say out loud: “I am SO ready to blow this popsicle stand!”
My plans have been perpetually interrupted for over a year. Health concerns, Dengue Fever, my brother’s death — every step forward I take there are two backward to perform. On March 22nd, when I turned a ripe 27 years old, I could feel my organs shift in protest of my reverse momentum.
“You’re 27. What the hell are you doing with your life?” they whispered. I told them I wanted to “move on” too.
* * *
This morning, my parents left for a cruise to Mexico. I was looking forward to a quiet week alone writing and yoga-ing. Standing in the kitchen cleaning the last dirty dish, I suddenly had the shudder of a “day-mare” — the daytime version of
a fear-stricken nightmare that feels a lot like a 2-second panic-attack.
I have them occasionally in moments of calm un-focus when my mind can wander: driving, lathering my hair… or washing dishes. It is when my mind can invent stories or circle back and remember odd details like the socks I wore on Thanksgiving day, or how the light of the street-lamp outside my brother’s house looked particularly orange, or how soft and wet the grass was when I fell to it in grief as the police officer came toward me with that look of regret in his eyes.
Today, in micro-second flashes, my mind began to create multiple scenarios of how my parents were suddenly simultaneously meeting their end while I was home washing dirty dishes — plane crash, boat sink, food poisoning — and I would be left alone, family-less. The sudden shock of hypothetical grief overwhelmed the perverse absurdity of it, and I was consumed with a fit of tears that slowly spotted the kitchen sink.
I had to wash some of the dishes over again.
I tell myself lately that I am still living in Penngrove with my parents because my parents need me. Every so often I am humbled with the magnitude of how much I need my parents.
It is in these moments — still difficult after four months as it was the day immediately following Chris’ death — that I am reminded there is no rushing this process, and grief doesn’t care what “I” want.
I was taking the #72 Golden Gate Transit bus home from San Francisco, when my phone rang.
I typically shun people who pick up phone calls on long-distance public transit, but it was my sister-in-law; since my brother passed, I am keen to pick up calls from family, regardless of whom I piss off.
“Do you have a moment to chat?”
Wait. Actually, no. That’s not what she said. She said:
“Are you in the emotional state to capably talk?”
Yes, this is more like her (she’s a psych grad). I pinched my face together and attempted to raise my voice as high and as soft as I could, and whispered:
“I’m on the bus.”
These four words, I reasoned, were sufficient to convey worlds.
“Okay, but you are feeling all right to talk?” she clarified.
I said nothing, but telepathically sent to her: I’m currently available, and my emotional temperament just dandy, so yes — I am in an affirmed mental state to continue a discussion with you; however, I am on public transit, so out of courtesy to others, I would like to keep the conversation brief and my participation to as few words as possible.
“All right. You can talk?”
[pause. Scrunchy face and baby voice:]
“I can listen.”
“Oh,” she went on, “well, I just heard from the coroner.”
My heart started beating. We’ve been waiting to hear back from the coroner on the cause of my brother’s death for three months. It has been a major source of frustration — how could they keep a family waiting this long? Isn’t that disrespectful? Don’t people have a right to know as soon as possible the reason for their loved one’s death? — and I’ve been feeling both heavy and empty with so many unanswered questions weaving themselves through my days.
And now that I had the answer coming to me, I didn’t want to hear it.
* * *
There is a funny tendency we humans have, where we can’t quite bring ourselves to do something good for ourselves, even when we know we will be happier that we did it: drag ourselves to the gym, get out of bed on time, tell someone No, I don’t have time to baby-sit for your whiny toddler all weekend for no pay, ETC.
It’s as if the anticipation of that first initial highly uncomfortable moment outweighs all of our logic and reasoning that knows this is actually what we want.
I’m discovering the same goes for the grieving process. Doing things that I know will help me are the very things I find myself wanting to avoid: I don’t want to see friends, I don’t want to read spiritual texts on death and dying that give me some sort of omni-grounded perspective, and I certainly don’t want to witness myself going through any sort of “process of growth.”
…Even though it’s good.
…Because it feels uncomfortable.
I want to, on this 29th day of February, leap right over all this “middle stuff” and end up squarely on the polar end of grief– oblivious indifference.
People think the opposite of grief is joy. Au contraire, mon ami. I am plenty joyful, finding the dynamic complexity that is life, and appreciating it for all it’s beauty. Really. I am.
What I am not doing, and what I will never be able to do again, is swim in the lukewarm waters of ignorance.
And perhaps that’s why, when my sister-in-law called with the news that could begin to bring me closure, that could continue to move me along the path of understanding — I wanted nothing of it.
I didn’t want to come one step closer to acceptance. Acceptance, in my mind, was some perverse form of betrayal to my brother, a kind of resignation to what is; so long as my life is disrupted with the lack of his, his absence is not fact — his death is a strange cognitive dissonance that my brain still suspects of ir-reality.
Once I accept, once my life returns to “normal”, my brother Really, Is, Dead.
Closure? As someone once said “I prefer to leave the door open to interpretation, thank you.”
Yesterday was the three month anniversary of my brother’s death — well, actually the three month anniversary of the day I found him. The police said it was likely he was lying there for a day or two.
Let’s just take a minute with that.
There are so many emotions that come up at this point in the grieving process — the “deep grief” stage, as our Hospice worker explained — that I don’t know how to hold them all in my sorry little body.
I’m still in disbelief and numbness a lot of the time. My parents and I have begun to go back to most of our daily activities — my dad golfs, my mom is finishing her cooking school, I am working on a lot of naming projects in the city — I often find myself thinking my life hasn’t changed a bit since Thanksgiving, the day from which I had to start living my life as an only child.
Absentmindedly, I will start to call my brother to tell him about a friend that suggested we go paint-balling for my birthday — and can I borrow his gun? That’s when I have to remind myself that, Oh, right. My brother isn’t actually living.
It’s a very strange and recurring realization.
Then I find the anger. There is just so much rage inside my teeth and I don’t know where to bite: I’m angry at the dogs when they jump up on me; at my optometrist for not having my new glasses ready; at the IRS, my dentist, and Amazon.com; my shoulder pain; my stupid Perspective Fund and the god-damn money I have to give to some god-damn charity; at my boyfriend and how EFFing good he is; that I’m not that good; that it’s raining when it’s raining and it’s sunny when it’s sunny; that the coroner STILL hasn’t told us the cause of death (!) and the death certificates I ordered over a month ago haven’t arrived, making my poor sister-in-law still unable to do something as simple as sell my brother’s car; that I’ll be twenty-seven years old in one month and will still be living with my parents because I can’t seem to take a step forward because every time I start to stand up some big Frying Pan of Life whacks me upside the head, be it heartbreak, serious tropical diseases, or death!
This has been my year… Not that I’m complaining.
And then more loss: I am a bad girlfriend and lose my dear sweet Moo; my favorite, symbolic, tree is cut down; and my friend and roommate in Vietnam writes to tell me that her brother suddenly passed away.
There is confusion. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so clear, my plans muddy, my heart barricades from life. I begin to forget that living is joy, begin to think life is just a series of devastations. I start to believe life is sorrow.
What’s left, after it all, is an emptiness embedded under the dark bone of my body — a thick pain saddled to my heart that slides, drops deeper into the smokey cells of me, and will take a lifetime to excavate. At night I feel the weight of searching, spooning inside for my ribs. I am back to the ugliness, the messy hatred for life that is beyond depression; it is Aloneness. There is no pain like this pain.
And then something funny happens: I go to sleep. I wake up. The earliest morning light winks through my window. It is the three month anniversary of my brother’s death plus one.
I have made it through one more day.
And maybe I do it all over again. Or, maybe the next day my lungs are lighter, and the worst thing that happens is I drop my toothbrush in the toilet. Oh well. But I am here and I am alive and I am standing inside the sun of this day, and waiting for me at the end of this day is another, and — I hope — another after that, and another…
and if I can just make it through the night, there is always a dawn waiting to tell me that there is light.
I miss my brother.
…I thought I had more to write than that… But I guess I don’t.
See — life isn’t all doom and gloom: my cat Patches, at 16 years old, finally learned to use the litterbox! We celebrated this morning with an extra serving of Giblets & Gravy (for her) and freshly-brewed homemade Dong Quai tea (for me). Then I sat down to write.
It is precisely at this moment — when I find myself not only celebrating my elder cat’s ability to piss in a box but my writing about it — that I realize I am still the same goofy nerd as ever. No amount of loss or tragedy can squash my dorkism, thank God.
I am smiling.
A letter came in the mail. It indicated I had a package waiting for me at the post office. From the Trident Society. I knew what it was.
Carrying the box from the post office to the car, I noted how unbelievably heavy it was (my brother was a big guy). Do you know how much your ashes will weigh? More than you think.
I thumped the box into the passenger side. The seat bounced quietly. I noticed the price to ship: It cost $21.06. It was sent UPS ground.
It had my name on it, addressed to me as if it were an Amazon.com order, some late Christmas gift I had ordered but had come too late.
I came home to my mother pouring coffee in the kitchen. She looked at me, lumbering into the hall with a brown parcel and I could tell that she knew, too. I set the box down in the other room, making sure it was away from the kitchen, but not too far away to be disrespectful. It’s a very strange thing, finding the right spot for remains.
My mother went over to the box and attempted to lift it. She looked sad. I thought she might cry. She lifted her head and raised her eyebrows instead.
“It’s heavy!”
“How much to do you think it weighs?” I asked.
“10-15 lbs.” was her guess.
She left for an appointment. With the rest of the house empty, I took the opportunity to wander from room to room and yell at walls. I accused them of being motherfuckers, of their unfairness. They stared back at me, white, emotionless and unapologetic.
I sat on the bottom stair and sobbed. It was true, this death of my brother’s; he had not — as suggested by my mother, desperate for an alternate reality — moved to Alaska and orchestrated an elaborate hoax. No, no: he really had died.
And now he was sitting in a 12″ x 12″ x 24″ box on our living room table, underneath the china teacups.
I went upstairs and called Fidelity Investments. I opened up a 0% fee Rollover IRA and a Roth IRA and the nice man on the phone helped me rollover my Simple IRA and 401(k) into the Rollover IRA, and then plan for a Roth conversion because it’s better to pay the income taxes now since I’m in the lowest tax bracket this year and also I can avoid the monthly contributions and initial deposit if I rollover which is good and I was beginning to feel better until I had to fill out the online application which asked me to designate a beneficiary.
I no longer have any beneficiary.
My brother had always, always been my “primary designated beneficiary.” When I got my first job and set up a 401(k), we joked that if I ever kicked the bucket he would be in a prime position to inherit the mighty sum of $300.
But slowly I am coming to accept that the only thing I will ever give him are these words.
I have stories to tell from New Year’s, and Mendocino, and the general endings of 2007 and going-forth-ness of 2008 — but first I need to take a moment to reflect, once again, upon death and loss.
Since my brother died, every day is strange and different, difficult and sometimes joyful in the most unexpected ways. But the thing that I have continually come back to is the utter non-uniqueness of my experience.
So many people came/still come forward to express not only their sympathy, but their empathy to reminded me that I am not alone in this pain.
I am reminded again today of our good old Buddhist-Buddies and their motto that “Suffering is a Part of Life”:
Today I found out that my father’s very good friend was in a car accident with his two sons, fracturing ribs and jaw and nerves; his other friend — a kind, quiet man who we just saw at my brother’s memorial — committed suicide; and the mother of my friend and yoga teacher finally passed away after a 6 year battle with cancer.
“This has been a hard winter,” my mom said, her eyes losing their focus into the floor. Her shoulders dripped heavy.
“I’m beginning to think this ain’t an exceptional winter,” I said, catching her eyes, “I’m beginning to think this is just life.”
* * *
I came across an old thought I had jotted into the corner of some notebook. It read, Life, for the strong ones, is just a series of good-byes.
I know many of you Readers out there have had to say good-bye at some point in your life — whether it from death, the leaving of someone, a particular time in your life, a dream, some other letting go — and those of you who haven’t, will.
For your benefit, and certainly for mine, I’m posting a favorite story of life, and death, and inseparable nature of the two — and the strange peace that can be found because of it.
* * *
The story of Krishna Gotami
When Krishna Gotami’s first child was one year old, it fell ill and died. Grief stricken and clutching it’s little body, she roamed the streets begging anyone who could to give her medicine to restore her child’s life. Some ignored her, some laughed, and some thought she was mad. Finally she met a wise man who told her the Buddha was the only person who could perform such a miracle.
So she went to the Buddha and laid her child at his feet. The Buddha listened with infinite compassion. Then he said gently,
“There is only one way to heal your affliction. Go down to the city and bring me back a mustard seed from any house that has not lost a parent, grandparent, child, or friend. ”
Krishna Kotami felt elated and she ran out to the city to find a house that had never had a death. Each home she came to, the people took pity on her and offered her their mustard seed. But when she then asked if they had ever lost a parent, grandparent, child or friend? they answered “Alas, the living are few; but the dead many. Do not remind us of our deepest grief.” She went all around the city asking but there was no house but that some beloved had died in it.
She took the body of her child to bury and said goodbye to him for the last time and then returned to the Buddha.
“Did you bring the mustard seed,” he asked.
“No,” she said.” I’m beginning to understand the lesson you are trying to teach me. Grief made me blind and I thought that only I had suffered at the hands of death.”
* * *
I’ve been having the wish to just go and get away from my skin, my head, my life for the past couple of days — to get out with friends, and pretend like things are “normal.”
My wish was granted when a very dear friend and ex-roomie, “Foote”, now living in Brooklyn, said she was in town and would pick me up. She came bearing granola, and whisked me away to see an old friend: San Francisco.
Walking down Polk Street, I suddenly became aware of this second world out there — I stared at young, hip, urban kids passing me on the sidewalk, with a destination, purpose, busy making a life for themselves in the city — and I wasn’t one of them.
It was like talking to your ex and being reminded that in the past two years, he has moved on with his life, too. (Which is another thing I’ve done recently, much to the tweaking of my central nervous system.)
It felt strange and exciting to be in SF; she welcomed me back with bittersweet familiarity. She reminded me that I no longer fit there.
Foote had a room at the Westin for the week, and after dinner with friends in Berkeley we drove back across the bridge. We succumbed to paying $47.81 for valet parking (no joke), we schlepped ourselves up to the room to retire.
While she tucked herself into bed and read Steven Colbert, I ran the water for a shower.
I undressed, and sat on the toilet, naked and tired, while the water turned warm, and then warmer, and then hot. Steam jumped from the flow and crept up the mirror. I closed my eyes and felt the weight of my bones settle.
The night had been wonderfully spent with very close friends, laughing and drinking and “philosophizing.” (As the DD I drank mulled cider; as the linguist I winced at the word “philosophizing.”)
But it had also been a trying day. I felt like people kept looking at me askew, saying they were “worried about me,” that it was so incredible I was out having fun, “under the circumstances.” I kept feeling like people wanted me to be crying my eyes out. I was sorry to disappoint.
I suddenly wanted to be very, very alone. I slipped my foot over the lip of the tub and let the sting of the temperature run up my back. I tilted my hair into the stream from the shower-head, and exhaled until I thought I would turn myself inside-out. I imagined the water washing off memory and consciousness, the tub filling with the past couple of days, the past month, my childhood, down the drain. I rinsed and repeated three times.
After I showered and readied myself for bed, I slipped under the thick, floating white covers. Foote had fallen asleep already, so I clicked out the light.
Just as suddenly as I found myself alone, I wanted to be very, very not. The city pulsed on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window, sirens singing a familiar tune.
Ah, yes. I remember you.
My heart fluttered in my chest and my eyes found rest only on the bare white ceiling overhead. I could not sleep.
I tried imagining I was on an Island in Belize. The down blankets around me I imagined as sand, the creaking from the person in the hotel room above became the clacking of palm trees, the incessant bathroom fan that did not turn off — the sighing of the ocean.
No cigar. The city was too talkative. The swishing of cars and blinking of lights reminded me of everything I didn’t want to be reminded of.
The next morning, Foote drove me back to Sonoma County. The burden of reality was immediate, as if crossing county lines made my brother’s death real.
What I need, I thought, is to be away in some OTHER rural country town.
That night three friends emailed, telling me to pack my sleeping bag, because they were taking me to a Mendocino retreat Sunday. Could I be ready to leave early?
I wrote back that I would be ready at 6am.
Wrapped in grief is the gift of joy.
– Nell Tomassen Reboh
My sister-in-law, C., and her brother came over for Christmas brunch, and card games, and Dance Dance Revolution. We even opened a few presents. C.’s brother, who lives in Japan, gave to me a stacking bento box with glittery butterflies on it. I adore it.
It makes me feel orderly and thin and hygienic — as if I live in a tiny, tiny wood-floored apartment with metal and plastic furniture, and have canned goods organized alphabetically and by category in my spotless pantry.
I thanked him very much for the gift. He goes back to Tokyo Jan. 8th. I wanted him to take me back with him.
I think it was the sadness peeking from behind every corner. So far, I’ve been fairly good about accepting that loss is a process, and I have to let feelings come and go.
But today, I’m feeling like “I’m done” — I’m done with trying to smile through the holidays, I’m done with “staying strong” and “sitting in sadness,” I’m done with living with “integrity” and “facing my feelings”… I’m just plain done.
I need a vacation from myself.
Christmas was as perfect as it could have been: we laughed, we cried; we looked at old pictures, and thought about the future; we honored my brother’s memory and we embraced life la de dah dah.
And yet — as sentimental and “healing” as it all was, I can’t help but go to bed tonight with a kiss’s worth of bitterness in my heart.
— this whole honoring-honesty-openness thing? Is exhausting. And I feel weak, and tired, and small.
* * *
For Christmas dinner we were on our own. My mom — the master natural chef — cooked quinoa, peas, and kale. Then we let the dogs in. Then we watched “Elf.” Then I kissed forehead’s goodnight, and grabbed my cat.
And now I’m sitting at my desk, Christmas sinking away, trying to remember that I’m still unwrapping my gift.
Instead of doing more Christmas shopping, or wrapping presents, my friend Whit invited me on another beach hike to Bodega; so much better.
It was sunset on the lowest tide of the year — sun sunk west beyond naked seaweed beds; 5 minutes later a blossoming full moon peered over the Eastern cliffs.
We explored smooth rock faces otherwise inaccessible, covered in anemones, horse-neck barnacles, and orgies of starfish. So much Creature.
Saw exposed kelp gardens, with individual stalks standing erect, like miniature palm trees. Primordial. Walking on virgin sand, we are dinosaurs.
Climbed back up led only by the light of the moon, past Spirit Rock, where mammoths nestled rock thousands of years ago. I hug the cliff, wrap my arms around the largest piece of granite I can find.
Salt fog. Wet stones, mustard and crimson and black and jade. Muscle shells like shrapnel. Water breathing. So much ocean.
So much life.
