If you don’t know, I had a husband, and he left me for the afterlife. I couldn’t compete with that calling. It was a quick departure, five months after a stage four esophageal cancer diagnosis. A life was gone. Just. Like. That.
I don’t know about you, but the best (and worst) moments in my life have are viewed through saltwater. Moments of complete awe as I stand present to life and death. Moments like being in Africa in the Ngorongoro Crater. Standing at the top of a glacier in New Zealand with a sherpa from Everest, and hearing my husband’s last breath. Imprints on my soul forever.
Scientists now say being in awe helps us process trauma. Makes sense to me. I have traveled all over the world to feel awe. I never understood why. I had it in my blood from a very young age. The feeling inside where you are reduced to reverence and wonder. Moments where you realize just how small you are and how fortunate we are to live this life.
Since my husband died, I have spent a lot of time alone. I have trained myself to feel awe in those moments, too. The first time I ever traveled without him, I realized no one in the world knew where I was at that moment. I was all alone somewhere in Oregon, and I felt a panic: Oh god if something happens to me, no one knows where I am. Then I looked around and realized life was giving me a moment just for me, and I had everything I could take in. Now, I relish those moments. I seek them out. I need them.
The one on the left is the original photograph and the right is the painting.
My painting, Rusted Garden Pot, makes me feel this. The empty white container is a reflection of the self. Sometimes overflowing at a moment’s notice when the weather changes. The textured concrete wall aged with time. The purple petals on the staircase’s landing are a reminder of the beauty in life and the passing of time.
The container never cries out. Don’t fill me! The concrete wall never tells the seasons to stop it from changing. The petals never say, keep me on the flower. I don’t want to be alone! They go through their processes, and we find awe in their moments from the outside.
Rusted Garden Pot is one of my husband’s photographs. He was in our yard caring for the bamboo I now harvest for wall hangings seven years later. At that moment, he was alone in the process of dying, I was alone in the process of living, and we were there together. All at the same time.
Being present in life as life shows up for you is one of the things I value most in this world. Living in the moment, recognizing the fragility and fortitude it has to offer us. And the awe shows up in the smallest sacredness of a single tear. The power locked inside such a tiny object. The power in each of us to be a moment of awe for someone else.
UntilNext Time,
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