Aftermath

She left in August after the last rain of the season. Summer storms in the desert are violent things, and clean, they leave you feeling like you have cried. - Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal Dreams."

Day 196. I am feeling like I have cried. Because I have. But it doesn't feel clean. It feels murky and muddy and cloudy. Like those very brief showers in Oklahoma that simply stir up the red dust and leave a smear of brick colored muck on the surface of everything. Afterward the air is sticky, humid, and heavy; drawing a breath feels like sucking air through a sponge.

It rained for the first six hours of our drive home from Durango. As we tore across northern New Mexico, the desert sky was a thousand different shades of gray. Clouds were layered upon one another as though a pile of freshly washed blankets had been tossed up into the sky and got stuck there. Rain in the desert does feel clean. The air was fresh and crisp and sweet smelling. As the sun sunk in the west, peeping in and out of the rain clouds, a dozen different rainbow fragments appeared over the course of almost an hour. I've never seen anything like it. Bits and pieces of that perfect spectrum of colors kept appearing and fading all over the eastern sky. At one point there was half of a double rainbow towards the northeast. It looked like quotation marks opening a highly significant quote. But the words never appeared. The deep, shimmering violet of that double rainbow was so lovely it broke my heart.

I rode with my former bike club tonight, anticipating the Tuesday route we rode every single week back in 2005 and 2006. Times have changed. We rode a grueling 32-mile hill route at over 18 mph. I managed to hang on until the last mile and a half. The sun was going down; I didn't have my light with me; all I could think about was another cyclist killed on Oklahoma roads near Stillwater this weekend. Not the best way to end a ride. I was pretty demoralized; however, I managed to pedal through it. Surviving those last five minutes of zazen during the 35-minute stretches appears to have left me able to endure just about anything.

I hope that includes the aftermath of the trip to Durango. The past ten days or so have been such a roller coaster. I suppose it is not coincidental that shock and anger are often the first stages of grief. You need the numbness of shock and the energy generated by anger to get through that first week. There is so much to do. Planning and executing the trip to Durango, being there for Dana and Tim, trying to model "good" grief for my son. I am worn out.

I'm not sure what to think about the timing of Tom's death in relation to the life of the blog. Somehow the long haul of adjusting to him being gone seems to coincide with the midpoint of the year I've committed to. This is not the fun part of either. The novelty - of sitting, blogging AND grief - has faded. The "beginner's mind" that brings freshness and enthusiasm and energy to an endeavor has shifted to the mundane, maintenance phase of seeing something through and not jumping ship (although mutiny has crossed my mind a time or two).

For now, my life appears to be about sustaining, enduring, abiding. These traits do not come easily to a person with the attention span of a gnat. I am filled with gratitude that I have over six months of strong sitting behind me. I will need it to remain steadfast in this aftermath. I will endure. It is what Reality requires.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc