My Mom always got a kick out of the fact that her birth date is a math equation, so I am supremely confident that she carefully chose the date she would leave this earth.
The phone call came just before midnight on February 22nd, 2022. The doctor was very kind to call herself to speak with me. Mom’s heart had given out twice that evening, and They needed to check with me about Mom’s order not to resuscitate. Born on 3-3-39, passed on 2-22-2022… and I was not as prepared as I thought I would be.
The next morning, in shock, stunned, I fumbled a bit, and built a fire to sit, think, cry, and gather myself. I was overwhelmed, feeling lost and frightened; the fire was comforting, and seemed appropriate as a vigil. The same felt true the next day, and as my son also came to help tend, we held the fire for a week. That week I felt such connection mourning both my parents, and such longing for comfort, a time-out, and peace, that I built another fire, and another. This became a very helpful daily practice. During the next month, I would be introduced to an ancient story called “The Lindworm,” as retold by Martin Shaw, which inspired a longing to celebrate and mourn for “a year and a day.” So I decided to continue this practice for a full cycle around the sun. To be in this contemplation under every moon, in every season, plus one day.
The first fires were simple. The process of splitting the wood was where my prayerful time started. I would think of celebrating my mother’s life, of things heavy in my heart, of joys in my life, of appreciation for people who are still here. Peace, grief, love, play, anger, confusion, tranquility, sadness, delight… I think there was every emotion that flowed into the prayers. I would pour all of those feelings into the wood, which would then become the fire. The feelings then transformed and were released with/in/by the flames.
To begin with, I was mostly focused on the releasing that was happening in the fire. Over the course of the year, I began paying much more attention and intention to the laying of the wood, along the lines of mandala. As Jenny Katz wrote in her beautiful song “Every Face in Firelight,” I believe it was the gentleness that made it art… and it was the art that made it meditation, and it was the meditation that made it prayer.
One day my wife Ellie came out to the fire and said, “That’s really beautiful; I hope you’re taking pictures.” That’s where the sharing practice started. I would share pictures with Ellie and the kids, and then with my brothers and sister, and then my heart began aching in a very young way: I need to share this, I need to feel connected. Yet I teetered back and forth between that part and a part that was very frightened to share something so intimate. Would people understand, would they get it? Was it even appropriate, what I was doing? Where was the church service? Slowly I began reaching out to my other dear loved ones, people currently walking my path with me or who had been super-connected to my earlier life and knew my mom. And as I stepped through the fear of rejection or ridicule or misunderstanding, what came back to me, every time, was love. Each person that I shared the fires with was just beautiful about it. Even if their response was, “What is this? I don’t understand it,” it opened a conversation. Over and over again, there was just love and beauty and encouragement.
And so there came a tipping point there where my next level of agreement with myself became: As I build the fire, if people come into my mind, my heart, my prayers, if I have a way to reach out to them then I’m going to.
And that became texting, emailing, Facebook messager-ing. I didn’t want to broadcast it out impersonally; I didn’t post the fires on Facebook or Instagram. It was about connecting and reconnecting with people I love. And somewhere in there, that longing to share and reconnect overwhelmed my sadness. And it was powerful to realize that, while the ache in my chest was I miss my mother, I miss my father, I had a chance to connect with others who were still here. It was clear to me that I’d better act on that.
I try to remind myself of what Brené Brown says: Don’t puff up, don’t shrink, stay on your sacred ground. It feels strange to share in a more public fashion. I’m preparing myself to get shit from people — “Oh, you were mourning your mom and now you’re exhibiting it.” I’m trying to balance that with the other voice I hear from friends and loved ones, that there’s beauty and value in the sharing. In my tradition, growing up, we didn’t talk about death very much. But whether it was someone who had already lost their parents or someone whose parents were still alive, people shared that they appreciated witnessing my walk, they appreciated the intimacy and the vulnerability. And that ignited me to keep sharing, and to spread it.
So much of art that moves us as human beings came from somebody else’s journey in the dark, from what brought them to their knees and how they got up. That’s what I hope comes through.