The beginning of the end

Agitating the masses

Everyone says grief is not linear. The first year after loss is filled with so many highs and lows. I don’t have good answers for how to hold each other inside of these passages except with love.

We just got baby chicks. Again. This time entirely by choice. I learned that you can get sexed chickens, which greatly decreases the likelihood of winding up with roosters. Keith got us 16 unsexed rare breed chickens last summer, and then proceeded to begin his dying process, as we were realizing we had nine of those 16 babies, were roosters. It was like a cosmic joke.

This year we got six baby chicks. Not twenty-five or sixteen, as Keith had done. The company offered us one free mystery baby chick and we couldn’t say no. This one is for you Keith.

When you are on our third rodeo, you start to notice things you wouldn’t think to look for on your first rodeo. One of these babies is faster and markedly louder than all the rest. You might guess, that behavior certainly can be indicative of a rooster.

We lost two more of our chickens over the last few weeks. We think it’s that gorgeous fox we keep seeing. Every time we lose one, it opens Birch’s grief portal. It’s like Keith accidentally gave Birch these gifts to practice grief and loss, and to let that doorway open again and again. We have 5 girls left of the ones Keith gave us.

You just never know when the wave of grief will hit you. The first year after a loss has a lot of firsts. First Solstice and Christmas. The first birthdays. Birch’s first birthday without his dad. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day.

Suddenly, you’re at Cape Cod with beloved friends, having a good time and then you take a photo of your child who has been goaded to go into the ocean with all of his clothes on by someone who has become a father figure in his life.

I took this gorgeous photo of Birch in the ocean that evening.

And it hit me like an existential mac truck. I looked at the image. It was beautiful, his face and the sunset light dancing on the ocean. As a photographer, Keith would have loved the image, and not entirely because it’s his favorite subject. One minute I am having fun, the next, I am watching the ocean and feeling a wave of grief pummel me.

It is a funny thing, this life thing sometimes. Sometimes one grief can open the doorway to all the griefs. When I sit with my grief for my son‘s loss of his father, and my loss of my coparent, I feel the grief of all the children, missing parents and parents, losing children, and the people, losing land, and the land, losing people and the destruction of our lands and our waters.

Every summer, my partner, son and I go to Earthdance, to camp, practice a dance form called contact improvisation (CI) and be with friends for a week over the Fourth of July.

Last year, on July 4th, Keith had his stroke, while we were at Earthdance. This Fourth of July, we were again at Earthdance on the Fourth of July, for the one year anniversary of “the beginning of the end”.

Within contact improvisation, is a practice called, The Underscore, developed by Nancy Stark Smith. The Underscore is a contact improv framework that guides dancers through a score that includes the full range of phases that often naturally happen in a CI jam. In the Underscore, Nancy Stark Smith, created a vocabulary and order for these phases.

One phase was called agitating the masses. On the anniversary of his stroke, I was thinking of him during this phase. He could really agitate the masses, like no other. I spoke to that in the “harvest” at the end of the Underscore, when people have the opportunity to share poignant experiences or moments within our group practice. I heard many chuckles around the room, as many of the “masses” there had at one time or another been agitated by Keith.

Keith really stood for protection of disenfranchised people. He was also truly one of the most difficult people. Most of the time, I actually forget how impossible it could be to coparent with Keith. And yet somehow my soul doesn’t entirely remember what was hard, these days. I mostly just remember the ways he positively influenced my life, and the steadfast love and support he offered.

My prayer is that we all remember the love. Focus on the love. And the sunset dancing light on the ocean.