
The wheels are turning as I read a text I received from an old and very dear friend. “That over time certain constants like the love between mother and son serves as anchors in the Center, providing strength where vertigo might otherwise prevail, 16 years… shaping loss. An enormous weight. Never really diminished but time spent becoming an expert sherpa in how to carry it.” For some context, I had sent, The Center, that Molly, had gifted me with on the sixteenth year of the loss of my son, Douglas, to my friend to read. (If you have not read it yet, please do by scrolling to July 13th. It is magnificent.)
Many Sherpas are highly regarded as elite mountaineers and experts in their local area. They were valuable to early explorers of the Himalayan region, serving as guides at the extreme altitudes of the peaks and passes in the region, particularly for expeditions to climb Mount Everest. (Copied from Wikipedia.)
Sherpas carry heavy loads often forty-four to sixty-six pounds of gear and have undergone extensive training in climbing and all the skills that go with that, from the placement of ropes to being able to set up a camp. I believe my friend is onto something that this is what we each become in our own way as we learn to carry the unimaginable.
The climb presents its peaks, valleys and even a view from the majestic summit every now and again. Yet, one cannot remain long there, and the descent downward begins once again. Traversing the descent with an awareness that these glimpses can be ours once again and it doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten our beloveds. Somehow the rearrangement of the containers of loss, each a bucket carrying something quite precious, finds itself merging within the other bundles. I often imagine a knapsack filled with items selected from a scavenge hunt. Pulling out what is needed, setting down what is no longer. thus creating a little space for whatever may desire to come along for the ride.
When I see photos of sherpas there is a part of me that feels very uncomfortable observing them carrying such huge, cumbersome and massive loads. I have no doubt I might have looked like this to my family/friends most especially in the early days of my loss and perhaps I still do. Expert sherpas we are becoming, each of us learning how to carry what we must. I have met so many of you traversing the mountains. May we take a moment for a deep bow first to ourselves and then to one another. Namaste dear ones.
Heavy ~ Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
I remember seeing Sherpas when I walked in the Nepali Himalayas. We are all Sherpas now figuratively xx