The week before my younger sister died her body turned a very specific shade of green-gray. My fourteen-year-old daughter is the same age as Ellen was and I just have no idea how anyone watches a child die.
We watched her die in her bedroom on May 24th, 2004. She got to die in her teenage-girl bedroom. The room felt gray. Our home was built around an atrium, a square house with a fertile square garden in the middle. Ellen’s room hugged up against the inside of the square, and when the window was open palm fronds would flop in to say hello.
I don’t remember if the window was open that day. I remember it felt gray though, marine layer laid on thick. I remember the scream I let out after checking her eyes just after the death rattle left her. “She’s gone!”
There are a few people in my life right now who are falling apart.
They’re looking a little gray, no green—they haven’t begun rotting from within. They decided to remove the lenses through which they saw themselves and the world and they’ve been struggling to make sense of the scene before them.
They’re so tired, because rewiring, rewriting, and reprograming our consciousness take a lot of energy.
They feel lost. As our stories shift, so does our DNA—so do we. In the mirror, our changing reflections begin to scare us at worst and confuse us at best. Who the fuck am I and why do I look gray?
They feel afraid. And who wouldn’t?
Still, they’ve continued on. I’m very proud of them.
I think gray is what happens when you’ve allowed Good and Hard to finally fuse. For a time, on our journeys inward, as the chromosomes learn their new, tangled dance, as we become a truer expression of our selves, we look and feel like we’re dying.
It’s like God takes our hands and leads us to the holiest of blenders in a kitchen with a killer sunset view. Soul Blender is the brand name stamped on the front just above the knob.
God smiles, a little teary.
“It’s time.”
“For me to get blended up?” You question.
Except, by the time you’ve been invited to the Soul Blender Event, your faith and psyche and self have proven sturdy enough to handle such a loud and blade-y affair. You remember RSVPing “yes” to the kitchen party invite months (or was it years?) ago. You remember wondering…
Is this it? Is this what I’m here for? I don’t hate it, it’s 8/10. But…
Maybe you realized it then, or maybe you didn’t, but it was a prayer—a focused hope on something more, something different, something truer.
The details don’t matter, but the mess—your mess— inside the cup is blended to oblivion, and for a moment, it grays. All your good and hard bits mashed together, all the good and hard bits of the world you carry with you mashed together. Everything is mashed together and now you can’t tell what’s good or hard, all you see is gray.
All you feel is tired.
Lost.
Afraid.
Everything I knew, everything I thought I knew, everything I was or thought I was supposed to be is gone.
Grayness settles.
But God, like the considerate asshole God is, is still smiling. A soft, knowing, playful smile.
This doesn’t upset you anymore, you’ve come to trust this Love more than makes sense. So you’re gray there next to God in some sort of teaching kitchen they use in some divine realm. God takes your hand, then takes you, “Let’s go watch the sunset.”
Your favorite chairs are on the porch waiting for you both, the constant whirl of the blades ever-present in the background. “How long will that take?” You motion back toward the kitchen through the open sliding door.
God smiles. “It’s gonna be okay.”
You believe this. You can feel your DNA pivot toward this truth the way a sunflower tunes toward the sun.
I’m gonna be okay. I am, in fact, okay. I am very afraid, very tired, and feel slightly less lost than I did an hour ago.
You smile, God’s fingers still wrapped around and in between your own.
Turquoise and orange light dances and tangles in the sky around you. Soft, knowing, playful pinks anchor the scene to the horizon.
The blades and the noise stop but you can’t recall when exactly or how many minutes have passed.
“Let’s go take a look.”
Back in the test kitchen your gray, messy mush alchemized into the most magical substance you’ve ever seen. Your soul, now integrated and upgraded, is the truest, clearest, most beautiful thing you can remember seeing.
The details don’t matter but you wake up and don’t dread the day as deeply. You’re thinking newer, more creative thoughts. You have the energy to manage a little better. Though the person looking back at you in the mirror is totally you, the eyes sparkle with more knowing, power, and play.
You’re the most beautiful thing you can remember seeing.
I made it. At least until the next invite.
Gray is the gift of a goodhardgood life on repeat. My sister’s death is still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed. Once we stop trying to separate things with “should” statements and expectations, we’re left with what actually is. Once we step out of the story we’re left with the truth.
I am good, I am safe, I am loved.
Good and Hard are two sides of the same coin. The coin is valuable, gold and heavy.
We’re all gonna make it, we already are. (I can’t fuck it up, neither can they.)
After she died I drove to my favorite public park and walked the mile or so to the bench at the top, overlooking a long trail toward the Pacific. It was early evening, around 5 pm, and the sun struggled to make any sort of impact in the presence of the fuzzy grayness.
For a moment a burst of orange escapes, and a bird flies straight into the gap created by the shifting breeze.
If it feels like you’re dying it’s because you are. If it feels like you’re living, it’s because you are! If it feels confusing and you’re tired but smiling, and sometimes you look grayer or puffier or more powerful than you remembered, it’s because you’re a Professional Human.
I still see life in your eyes!