Second Yahrzeit

Honoring this loss and so many others

I have made a certain kind of peace with some aspects of loss during these past two years, but coming to terms with loss is definitely a life-long practice, and things shift so rapidly these days. On Monday, I listened to Thomas Hübl discuss the pace of data consumption, loss, and change that we are not able to adapt to very well, in his free talk: Resilient Presence: Cultivating Inner Strength & Connection In Challenging Times. I recommend it.

Monday was the second “Yarzheit” of my late husband, Dr. Bob Spivey. I’m very explicit about the “Dr.” piece since he worked hard to get that PhD in the last years of his life and I want to honor those efforts. He put off getting his PhD earlier due to our lack of financial resources, the environmental illness that plagued me in my late 30s and early 40s, and the birth of our son and his duties as a full-on co-parent, often doing more than his share of the labor. It’s not often that someone receives their PhD at age 72, doing their oral defense on Zoom (due to Covid). So despite his passing and because he had so little time to benefit from this achievement, I want to grant him this note of honor.

The term, Yarzheit, was not one that I grew up with, given the lack of religion in my parental home, but I feel very attached to this way of describing how mourning is an essential piece of our humanity. Bob’s physical presence, in the form of his composted body, continues to shift. His molecules are not only in the soil of our Tacoma garden but now grace the gardens of many local friends, sit on the banks of the river at Breitenbush Hot Springs (Oregon), in a memorial forest at Tamera (Portugal), surround a red oak tree at the Upaya Zen Center (Santa Fe), grace various shrines at the Topa Institute (Ojai, CA) and have gathered elsewhere thanks to friends on the move.

On an energetic level, I continue to feel Bob’s presence almost everyday. It is hard not to. I live in the same house that we bought together (despite the vulturous realtors who call almost every week offering to pay cash for the place). Out in the garden, there are trees that he planted, canoes that he helped to place as planters, and the shed that he skillfully built from a kit while he was going through a challenging second round of chemo. And there’s the mound of his soil that has been tenderly weeded and cared for these past two years. Below you can see our dear neighbor, Vivian Green (age 5.5), who helped us with the Tacoma Story Hive project. She was especially dear to Bob as he was to her. So it was a delight to share part of Monday’s rituals with her.

Rituals on Monday included pouring fresh made coffee (and the grounds) on Bob's composted body (this beautiful mound of soil now encircled by stones at back end of the row of seven columnar apple trees planted at his life celebration on June 24th, 2023), lighting candles on my ancestor altar, walking by the Salish Sea with an old friend who knew Bob well, drinking coffee at his favorite cafe that was also his office for writing his dissertation and manuscript, and playing his piano (badly) while savoring a glass of raspberry Lambic (and now I'm sniffling as a result of that rare encounter with alcohol). His death has taught me many things, including that I can be in grief and joy at the same time, that our work together gave me some of the tools I've needed for this time in the world, and that we will all become soil someday. His spirit lives on and makes me smile.

While the garden is a wonderful place to sit with my grief, I have many reminders of my life with Bob scattered inside the house are so many objects of daily use that Bob either bought for us or gave to me as a gift. There are wedding gifts like our piano (terribly out of tune now) but where Bob spent hours perfecting his own jazz compositions. In our Zendo, there’s the Nepalese Buddha statue and his favorite incense for meditation, both purchased by Bob, that sit on our altar. These memories can randomly pierce my heart like sharp thorns when I’m least expecting it, but the sting no longer lingers. If I’m listening to certain kinds of music, my eyes do water a bit, but a full on cry is not accessible at the moment.

Given what’s currently at stake in our world, the freedom to speak one’s truth, body sovereignty, an ability to freely move across borders without the threat of being disappeared, and so much more that threatens our well being, our ecosystems, and our communities, being able to cope with and rebound from loss seems a crucial practice. I will be attending my 3rd grief retreat in the tradition of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso in a few weeks to strengthen that muscle.

There’s lots of advice available on the internet right now about how to recalibrate your nervous system, so I’m not going to flood you right now with resources. But I do think that this conversation between the Brown sisters (adrienne maree and Autumn) and Dr. Sunita Sah about her book,  Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes, is worth a listen. Dr. Bob would have appreciated it and would have organized actions aligned with such thinking. I hope you can find your way to a May Day protest of some kind…you can check the list below for a form of activism that aligns with your capacity.

Two final mentions: This Saturday, I am co-facilitating a Beltane Ceremony in my backyard garden. We will be making seed bombs of medicinal and native plants, do meditations, visualizations, and set intentions, share some songs, do some movement, feast on plant-based snacks, burn what we need to release, and invite in more of the sensual pleasure of nature blossoming. We need more rituals to keep us grounded in this time. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beltane-seed-bomb-ceremony-tickets-1337361587509?aff=ebdsshios Space is limited, so sign up if you’re local.

And finally, I lost a set of keys (including my car fob) while walking with a friend by the waterfront in Tacoma yesterday. I went back to look for them, doubling my miles for the day, with no success. These keys decided to go for a walk as well. Keys have lots of symbolic meaning, especially keys to your transportation, to your home, and to your studio. Fortunately, I had copies of all of them, but it’s another reminder to slow down and see what needs unlocking.