Hello,
This is Jacob Watson.
I am sharing from my book,
Gifts of Grief,
Chapter 8,
Natural Stone Couch.
This was a place that Christine and I went on the ocean in Cape Elizabeth,
Just past the famous Lobster Shack.
We would stop at Standard Bakery on the way and get chocolate croissant and coffee.
And Christine,
Of course,
Would bring her Earl Grey tea in a cup.
We drove past the tourist trap parking place to the end of the road where there was a small dirt parking place and walked out a narrow trail that led to the natural stone couch that we had found years ago.
I brought a foam mat that made it comfortable and we settled in.
It was extraordinary because the whole ocean was in front of us,
All the way around to the right of Cape Elizabeth and all the way around to the left,
The entrance to Portland Harbor.
And ahead of us lay the east.
We could see the halfway rock lighthouse marking Casco Bay.
And there in the distance,
Just barely,
Was stately Seguin at the mouth of the Kennebec River.
And we knew that over the horizon lay Monhegan,
The massive and storied island approach to Vinalhaven and Penobscot Bay.
Once we settled in to our natural stone couch,
It was easy to recall the sailing trips that we had made along the coast.
Going back by myself,
It was a relief to find the natural stone couch still there,
Still facing east and still a place full of Christine.
It was a gift to realize that I could stop on my way out to Cape Elizabeth at Standard Bakery as we used to do and get a chocolate croissant and some coffee and drive out to our favorite place,
The natural stone couch.
Sitting there one day,
Having finished my chocolate croissant and my coffee,
I was so relaxed that I dozed off.
I was awoken by a young man who was leaning over me.
He said,
Sir,
Are you all right?
And I realized I was in a safe place,
That the universe indeed was taking care of me.
I reassured him that I was fine and I sat up.
I was more than fine because I had just had a powerful experience that the universe was taking care of me.
Experiencing the young man stopping to make sure I was OK made me see that my whole life was now a ritual,
Even stopping at Standard Bakery to get the chocolate croissant and coffee.
And Christine understood this about me.
She came back to me in my dreams to reassure me that everything I did in my life was now a ritual and had spiritual significance.
If I forgot,
Christine would show up in my dreams to remind me.
I could count on it.
This helped me see my life with new eyes and to understand that I'm doing the best that I can and everyone is doing the best that they can.
It was a way in which everything that I'd been teaching my whole life suddenly came to bear for me.
It was available for me.
In this way,
My life was forever changed and I have Christine to thank for that.
The most important part of this is the understanding that I am never alone.
Christine is always with me.
Just as I can go back to the natural stone couch,
I can remember Christine is always with me.
What a gift.
When I can remember this,
That Christine is always with me,
It's because I can see my life as a ritual.
And as Maladoma Sommet reminds us,
That means it transcends space and time.
I've discovered that having these rituals in my life and including other people gives them more power.
Power to transcend space and time.
My daughter and I took Christine's ashes up to Bradbury Mountain,
A favorite family hike not too far from where we lived in Portland.
And after climbing the mountain,
We found a little spot with a birch tree growing out of the cracks in the granite.
And there we planted a few of Christine's ashes.
We could look out over the treetops all the way to South Freeport.
Understanding ritual in this new way gave my life more choice.
I could choose how I spent my time.
This new understanding was a gift from Christine.
Suddenly,
Choice or not,
Valentine's Day,
The day of love,
Arrived.
All of a sudden,
I had no choice.
There it was,
On my front door,
The red valentines,
The community ritual of spreading red valentine hearts around the whole town.
Opening the door,
I cried,
And I rejoiced at the same time,
Knowing that love abounds.
Seeing the red valentine on the front door reminded me again,
I am not alone.
Another way I could remember this was to bring more of Christine into my spaces,
So I hung a favorite etching of a rabbit by Albrecht Dürer.
It was a family favorite and had hung on the staircase when Christine was a little girl.
Every time she went up and down stairs,
She would pass that rabbit,
And now it reminded me of Christine right there in my office.
Every time I go in that space,
There's the rabbit staring at me,
And I understand in a whole new way that everything can change.
Christine was here,
And now she's not here.
Living through this experience has shown me that I can survive anything.
That is a gift.
And that,
Coupled with growing older,
Reminds me that everything leads to the divine.
Christine's death propelled me into my loneliness and,
Therefore,
Into my divinity.
For it is only the divine that knows me every second of my life.
Because that is where she lives now,
I am closer to her.
Every time I make even the smallest parts of my life into a ritual,
I am closer to her.
For,
As I've said,
Ritual transcends space and time and,
Therefore,
Is itself divine.
Here is some quiet meditation time for you.
Please allow yourself to breathe deeply.
Let go of any thoughts of doing this right,
And just enjoy the silence.
It is for you.
It's time to come out of the meditation period.
Please do so slowly and mindfully.
And be aware that the silence is just waiting for you.
Any time you have the impulse or you're too busy or too bored,
The silence is just waiting for you.
For me,
I find that a great relief that the silence is just waiting for me.
It's not so much doing nothing,
It's meditating.
It's allowing the silence to be part of my life.
I said this earlier,
But I want to emphasize it,
So I want to say it again.
The natural feelings of grief will take care of themselves.
A great lesson for me was that I can trust the grief.
It will show up when it needs to.
I don't have to manage it.
I don't even have to be aware of it,
Where I am in the process,
According to someone else.
No,
This is my grief.
It will have its way with me.
I found this to be a great relief.
Because I'm human,
I will have these feelings and they will have me.
They want only two things,
Acknowledgement and expression.
Acknowledgement and expression.
An important factor here is time.
Experiences that didn't seem like gifts,
Over time,
Became gifts.
With the perspective of months,
Months and months,
Gifts appeared.
When Christine and I were together,
It felt like a gift to consider our retirement.
And our retirement became something to look forward to,
To plan.
And as we let go of the responsibility for having clients,
We shared the prospect of retiring together at the same time.
But our mutual retirement did not turn out the way we planned.
Because Christine died.
With my experience of grieving,
I knew that I had to let it run its course.
And so it did.
Eventually,
I came to trust my grief.
Really,
That meant trusting myself.
I realized that I needed and wanted to go back to work,
To see clients again.
Slowly at first,
Using Zoom and then seeing clients in person,
I went back to spiritual companionship,
Offering guidance and resources for clients who were looking to enlarge and improve their spiritual lives.
I did this,
Of course,
With a new perspective.
A new perspective about being human and about being divine.
