Saying yes to our shattering. Falling is flying.

GinsIt's three years since Blaise and I spent some weeks in the children's hospital, after I found the fist sized tumour in her belly. Three years since the beginning of my unmaking. Two and a half years since she flew away.
Time seems to be the obsession of my grief. How many months since we watched the full moon rise, how many days since she clapped her hands and cried 'clever mama', when I got the car to start. How many sleeps since we last danced down the street together, since I kissed her milk-soft cheek, since I watched her assemble her latest sartorial creation, since her ecstatic laugh brought me to tears. And now we are into years; time stretching and rolling away, like waves on the ocean, rippling out, taking me further away from her, deeper into my life without her, deeper into the expression of all that I have become because of her, because of her birth, her life, her leaving, and my grieving.

She has made me.

In losing her I was undone, and in grieving her I am remade, every day. There is so much space in me. There is so much light shining through the cracks in my soul. Great chips and boulders of darkness loosened and dislodged in the earthquake of her passing, to dissolve into their own inky liquid and flow out and away to balance the cosmic scales as I flood with light, and more of who I truly am shines forth.

I understand more and more how what breaks us, makes us. How if we say yes to our shattering, we grow into something so much more than who we ever thought we could be. That life is about letting go of everything we think we can hold. And that on the other side of that is the divine.

And more and more I see that we are connected by the spaces between, that space is a thing, alive and real, that kisses against my edges and permeates my centre and swirls through all creation. It connects me to her, to the spirit of my daughter, in whatever form she dances through the universe right now, whether as a memory in the heart of someone she touched, or the actions of someone whose life she changed, or in the fiery breath of her spirit as she whispers to me that we are always one, and cannot be anything but, because this is the secret truth of life.

This morning I perched high above a glassy ocean as seals glided and swallows swooped and whales turned joyful backflips below me. An otter floated on its back, blissfully turning and rolling while it snacked on an abalone. Far across the ocean, on the other side of the world, my husband still slept, and I felt through the space to where he dreams, and there he is, right beside me, slow-breathing; and there also are our brushy-tailed dingo and love-dog, twitching in puppy dreams. I danced a slow flowing dance with them all, becoming one with the liquid heartbeat of that ocean, with the high flutter of the swallows, the careless wisps of cloud, the slow sleep-sighs of my beautiful man, the otter turning and spinning through the water because it could, for the sheer pleasure of it.

And in all these things I danced with Blaise, with her joy, with her heartbeat, with her glorious laugh, with her tenderness. I danced with every part of her, except her body, and in a way I danced with that also, because are we not all made of matter and atoms, and in her body's return to Earth Mama she freed those atoms to dance with me as well.
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Thank you, little one, for freeing me. Thank you for showing me that falling is really flying. Thank you, always and forever, for this eternal dance.

Gina Chick

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