Transient

Today I am grateful for the warm glow from our Christmas tree and other holiday decorations. It is one of my favorite things about this time of the year. I am grateful for some family time yesterday afternoon; with Darcy, Sam, and I spending time together decorating.

We like to enjoy our tree and the other holiday ambience for a few weeks, so it was time to put things up. Not unexpected, that endeavor as well as some other sorting and cleaning I have done in recent days brought up some fresh grief. I thought about my sister Mary Jo as I came across the last birthday card she sent me, in the summer of 2018.  I looked at pictures gathered over the last couple of years, and listened to songs that remind me of her, of family, of earlier times. 

I thought about her husband Clay and their family as we decorated yesterday, an intact family. What will these holidays be like for them? What will be the most difficult? How will they honor their wife, mother, grandmother this Christmas, the first without her? 

There is a heaviness to all of this, and also an embracing of Mary Jo's spirit. She is free of pain and she knows a peace we can only imagine. It takes some of the edge off the loss when framed that way.

Grief and loss and the emotional work necessary to move through them and be transformed by them are a common theme in my recent writings. My sister's death from metastatic breast cancer is only one life experience presented to me in recent times as opportunities to learn about loss and move forward forever changed by it.

I delve deep and the writing leads me to the emotions that will then guide me if I trust them. Vulnerable and raw, that's often where the most profound moments emerge. Side by side with ongoing gratitude practice, which is really just keeping an open heart and mind, healing and growth happen. 

Which makes this quote especially fitting: 

"Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing to the 

beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace." 

(Patricia Campbell Carlson) 

Transient. Mary Jo's life has come and gone. Yesterday came and went. Regrets and mistakes pass. Forgiveness shows itself. Transient. Some moments are gripping in their intense suffering. Others are magnificent in the delight that is revealed. 

This is the stuff of life and I will shirk neither. The grief and gratitude work continue and the grace is revealed. The transitory nature of life is a mystery, but it still unfolds moment by moment.