I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.

~William Shakespeare

So, yeah, I’m not doing very well.  I think I am officially going to take a blog hiatus and just allow myself to grieve and process and all that stuff.

Last week, just after the funeral, I was convinced that the best thing for me would be to dive right back into “normal” life and keep myself busy.  But I see now that’s just not going to work.  I need space, and stillness, time in the garden and time within the covers of my trusty notebook, time with F. and time with family and friends and, yes, time alone.  Solitude, especially in Nature, has always been essential to my optimum health.

So I’m going to take that time and make that space.  I’m sure y’all will understand.

I have managed to answer very few of the lovely comments since just before I got the call about Granddaddy being in the hospital.  As late as last night, I was feeling very guilty about that, and I did try to catch up, starting about four posts back.  Mostly because I’ve so appreciated your kind and supportive words, and I want to let you know, individually, how much.  But when I woke up this morning, I realized I could let you all know here how much it’s meant to me, how touched I am that you care.

Thank you, my virtual friends.

If you want to see me online, I may well be Twittering.  Although I am considering taking a hiatus there, too, for now this format seems more doable to me because it requires less effort and involvement on my part.  Even so, part of me is campaigning for a full release from online activity, and if I become convinced that this is the correct path for me, my Twitter feed may go dormant for a time, too.

Should you really need an Enchanted Earth fix, don’t forget to stroll through the archives and to enjoy some Soul Food in the sidebar.  (Of course, this won’t work for you old-timers who’ve been with me since the beginning.  You’ll just have to be patient, I guess.)

I also plan to stop by your blogs and enjoy your words and pictures.  It may be a more irregular thing than before, but I’ll still try to keep in touch.

Nonetheless, I am sure that I will miss you all, and I look forward to the day I can get back to my regularly scheduled life.  For now, this is my life, and I accept the full and awesome range of it, its beauty and sadness, confusion and splendor, grace and loss, laughter and wonder and pain.  I am grateful for each and every milestone in my path, whether joyful or sorrowful — or a complicated mix of both.

Namasté, y’all.

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One must learn a different… sense of time, one that depends more on small amounts than big ones.

~Sister Mary Paul

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~ John Muir

Somehow this bee seemed the right photo for this post.  I’ve been spending some time in a similar posture, feeling this grief deep in my gut, curled over upon myself.

Too, I feel like bowing in gratitude for the gift of my grandfather’s long life and his powerful, joyful, meaningful presence in my own.  I’m so grateful that I got to be there with him even at the end.  I like to think his peaceful passing was in part due to the room being filled up with his children, grandchildren, and friends.

So much love in one room.

Grief, too, of course.

What a strange water I navigate across now!  I almost wish our culture still mandated mourning clothes, still recognized a proscribed dress code, so that when I am a little odd, when my social mask goes missing, when I cannot do the polite public face at all, cannot pull it out of me for even two minutes’ interaction with a stranger, people would say to themselves, “Oh, well, it’s normal, she’s in mourning,” instead of maybe questioning what else might be wrong, whether I’m a cuckoo anti-social walking around their town, or whether they, themselves, have made a misstep.

So far, it’s peaks and valleys, like everything else.  My Uncle Michael nodded sagely and whispered that in my ear yesterday, when I tried to describe for him how I was “holding up” through the process.  I guess I’m not surprised.  The very structure of the universe seems to be these waves, and here I am experiencing them again.

Sometimes I even forget for a moment.  The night before the funeral, I cut my right thumb and palm, badly, on broken glass (yet another reason blog posts may be scarce for a bit).  I’ve avoided touching the wound as much as I possibly can — but then I’ll just forget, and do something to make myself cry out from the pain.  This morning I grabbed the broom to sweep the kitchen floor, a perfectly normal activity, and nearly bit through my own lip on the first stroke, as the deep cut reopened itself from the pressure.

I think it’s something like that.  It’s just normal to forget.  It seems Granddaddy must still be here because, well, my definition of “world” includes him in it, and so that is the default setting I revert to.

And then I remember.

I’ve been putting off writing this post partly because it makes it seem so real to put it here, in black and white — and partly because I really don’t know what to say yet.  Sometimes it feels like I’m floating, or in a dream, moments from awakening.  How could I possibly write a coherent post from within this strange, otherworldly place?  (I’m most likely not.  Oh, well.)

Yet surely I must share the news properly, not just as a small update within the last post.  That note doesn’t show up in RSS feeds or Google Reader, and I’ve gotten several e-mails now, wondering what happened, asking how I am.

Well, this is what happened:  Granddaddy passed away on Sunday night.  I think his death was as “stingless” as a human death may be.

As to how I am, just typing that last sentence makes me go all hollow inside.  (Maybe the stinger got lodged in my heart instead?)

Nature and the garden, as always, are solace.  The tough part is that the last communication my grandfather and I had together was about my garden, and so much of our time together over the years revolved around our mutual love of Nature, of growing things, revolved around our joy in helping to birth food from the Earth — and all the attendant trials of the process.  He used to say, with his characteristic, barely-there, mischievous wisp of a smile, that it was a relief at least one of his grandchildren was a farmer by nature.  I was so glad — and so fortunate — to be that one.

So my great solace also now contains a thousand references to my great sorrow.

The plants now hold flowers, fruit… and memories.

Namasté, y’all.

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~Korean proverb

Update 8/23/2010:

Granddaddy passed away last evening, surrounded by all his children and grandchildren, plus friends and other loved ones.

It was a peaceful death, and he knew that he was well-loved.

I already miss him.

~*~

Many of you will know, from following me on Twitter, that my grandfather has had surgery, and that I have gone to Atlanta to be with him and my family now.  Although I have several August Break posts waiting in the wings, I cannot see publishing them just now.  Further blog posts will be suspended until my return.

I want you all to know in advance that I appreciate your prayers and thoughts, healing energies, kind words, encouragement, and support.

What I want for Granddaddy now is whatever is best for him.  I trust that that is what will happen.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that what will happen now is what I want to happen.  Y’all know I’m a greedy woman, and I’d frankly like to have him with me for the duration.  But I also do not want him to suffer, any more than he already has.

My grandfather has struggled with the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s Disease for quite some time now.  For a long time I was very angry about this disease and what it has done to him.  Mostly I was angry about its cause, which is almost certainly exposure to chemical pesticides over the years.  Granddaddy was one of the GIs who returned from his service in World War II to a Green Revolution in full swing, and it drastically changed the way he farmed the family land.  This new wave of agricultural “progress” required chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and new equipment and machines, plus the debt to pay for it all.

All these years, we thought we knew what that debt cost us:  most of the family land.  As a result of that loss, I was motivated to personally research and understand what the industrial agricultural system has cost us all, economically, socially, and in terms of physical harm to the Earth, to our own bodies, and to the prospects of future generations.

But none of us realized until a few years ago the price that would be exacted on my grandfather’s own health.

Really, no one should have to pay that.

I am past the anger now.  It would be silly to hold a grudge over something that happened sixty minutes ago.  How much more so, sixty years?

Humanity simply did not know what it was doing.  Our science understood only one tiny facet of the whole picture, and we ran with it, and my grandfather was swept up in that wave of enthusiasm, sure he was part of the new miracle that would allow us to override resource constraints and mold the Earth herself to our will.  In our desire to escape uncertainty, we created new uncertainties for our world, for ourselves.

The terrible part of this story is that we are still running with it, even as the picture fills in with color and horrible detail, and even as we come to understand the awesome price we will have to pay — are already paying — for our choices.  Even now, this dangerous version of agriculture continues to spread to every corner of the globe.

It is not anger we need now, but awakening.  Chemical pesticides have consequences, for us all.  Industrial agriculture, especially as it is currently practiced on huge, consolidated, monoculture farms, is unhealthy for the planet — and for the humans.  Period.

In honor of my grandfather, I would urge you to consider the source of your food.  There are many more reasons for doing so than I can put into a short post before I get on the road.  But when I return I will be posting about why it is important to buy your food locally, from small family farms whenever you can.  Over the coming year I want to write about CSAs, the grow-your-own movement, what a successful organic farm looks like, and other topics in a similar vein.

As always at the Enchanted Earth, I will not be preaching.  My main focus here is sharing my love for this incredible, miraculous Earth and for all of us who are a part of it.  The way I figure it, if we love it, if we can feel our connection to it and to each other, if we know deep down that we are truly interdependent with all that is, then our actions will tend to reflect that.  The information about what and how to do the things that bring our lives into alignment with our values is out there now, and it is plentiful.  What we don’t see so much of lately is why we should care — unless it’s phrased in terms of scare tactics and fear-inducing, worst-case-scenario predictions.

Maybe some of us are mostly motivated by fear.  But fear tends to paralyze me, and it won’t keep me going over the long haul if I need to make a change that requires persistence and patience and pluck.  The only thing that has ever worked for me in those circumstances is love, a love strong enough to sustain my desire and intention to change.

What my family is going through now is just more proof that none of us lives disconnected from the whole.  What we do affects each other and our living support system, this beautiful, spinning blue ball.

For now, I dream of a day when all of our actions will be in alignment with that awareness.

Namasté, y’all.

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The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

As the proud possessor of precisely three silver hairs, I’m feeling in sympathy with dear August right now.

Almost every leaf looks a little nibbled, and yes, the freshness of spring has definitely worn off — and yet I would be lying if I told you I found her ripe, sultry, mature beauty anything but riveting.

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That is all.

(And we return to the August Break.)

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