a day to be lived

Sometimes I have low moments. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Sometimes I get so far into my headspace I can’t figure out how to get back to here. Sometimes I get so anxious trying to figure life out that I become paralyzed from living it. Sometimes I look at the calendar and see the many dates ahead marked as anniversaries of death and get so caught up in attempting to create some sort of formula for how the day is passed that I threaten to lose the whole week, the whole month in anticipation and fret of some death anniversary something that I both fear and desire. Sometimes I try so hard to make my sadness into something that I lose sight of the organics of feeling, the organics of good arising. Sometimes I try so hard to honor those gone in the perfect way that my focus turns too much toward my high standards and critiques of myself than toward living the day in front of me as they would have lived it.

But then sometimes good and caring humans listen and are present to these sometimes low moments I have and knock me out of my headspace, saying: “…it’s high time you started to realize how more than adequate you are in so many regards you don’t give yourself credit for. These people would be honored at the weight of responsibility you feel towards remembering them, and that alone makes you completely adequate. Tomorrow, make sure you do things, and you do them with vitality and joy and gratefulness. Because that is how these people would want life to be celebrated.”

So then sometimes I realize that maybe that’s what a death anniversary could be: a day to be lived. A day to carry them with me, to hold their spirits near to my heart, a day to write names on wrists as necessary for a constant reminder, a day to be lived. And then sometimes I remember that that’s all I can do, really, to remember, to honor: see each day as a day to be lived, and intentionally so, with vitality and joy and gratefulness.

And so today I will cook with an aunt and a sister, I will take a walk, I will stare out at the ocean, I will read and I will write and maybe these aren’t big things, but maybe it depends on the mindfulness with which one does them. And already, I look out the window with a clearer vision and there, across the street, I see a man dancing with his child, a smile on his face, and I see in him their spirits and I see how I could do the same.