G is for Gravity

There was a tiny black room I walked into, years ago. I felt the walls not far from where I comfortably sat. I imagined the door was painted gold. I began a meditation session that lasted roughly four hours. I heard a bell. I got up and walked to my teacher sitting in a well-lit hall. I told her that I felt a strange sensation in the left part of my head. She knew I had been meditating since I was a teen. Pro-meditators often tremble, get teary, feel pain or simply slip into a slumber all while sitting.
‘Something sparkly kept pulling me to the ground from the left ’ I said, trying to make sense to myself. ‘Did you lie down then’, she asked. I didn't give in, I said. ‘Why not ’ she asked. ‘I think I don't like gravity’ I told her furiously. She laughed. That’s all she did.

I fought gravity for a long time. And then I learned grief.

It felt like sliding into the ocean. No marked lines, in the belly of deep blue; both panic & peace washing you to the shore. Now gravity doesn't need my permission, does it?

Grief remains utterly private for the most part. It knows no shame because it flows across all time and hearts. It knows not all words because you drown fast enough not to say any. But grief is precious. Because you know not how to say it, it's yours. oh, how important was that thing! you think to yourself.

You feel. You fathom. You free up. All in due time.

Grief brings softness to you. Don't we all need it?

A dear friend once told me that if he had 1000 Saturdays left, he would want to spend them all with someone he loved but lost touch with. But you can’t! I didn't utter. I pictured the Scottish highlands, the yellow blooms, the unending green, and their whispers. How beautiful!
All his, in grief.

I marvel at how many books taught me how delicate and important grief is. What is that you have to do to feel so full of memories that are only yours?
Not fight gravity, of life.

My favorite snippet: When Circe asks Helios to turn a mortal into a god so that she can stay with him forever, he says ‘For not even I, the God of Sun, can change the laws of fates’. Helios jokes about his whims to tease the astrologers with his positions and how far they want to stick their eyes into the future that he can't determine or change. You cant be a step ahead of gravity, can you? You will tumble.

You never went in thinking about losing and you won't the next time either. Whatever it might be, the steel in your nerves knows to harden & soften to the tunes of courage and grief. And we will get it right, next or the final time.