Resurrection

Annecy Báez

We are driving towards Germantown on New York State route 9G. It is a cloudy, chilly Thursday morning. A holy Thursday. Spring blooms are soggy. Gray. My daughter and grandson drove me to get my Covid vaccine, and now they are driving me to my chiropractor.

While she drives in the mist, my daughter speaks about a series related to multiple dimensions. She wants me to hear the episode in which two siblings want to connect with their deceased mother. Excited, my seven-year-old grandson chimes in: “Suddenly, there is a glitch, and you are in the other dimension—you’ll literally love it, Grammy.” They are visiting me, along with my oldest sister, and their presence rejuvenates me.

We are always visiting another dimension—in dreams, coincidences, or in signs of other realities.  A left or right turn taken can change your life. Our choices, reflected in what happens next, because life is all about choices.  I know my late husband is in another dimension: Heaven. Now, my daughter is speaking of him. Coincidentally.

She says, “I wish he was home, waiting for us, like the old times.” 

“I know,” I say.

My daughter’s longing for her stepfather opens an old wound. Raw, I am tender. She wants him to be at home, laughing with my fiancé and with my sister. The old days.  I tell her I understand her longing, and I say, “But he’s with us now,” and she sadly nods. “He’s in the mist,” I say.

I have been isolated with my fiancé and my two dogs. We’ve had no visitors for a year.  Today, my sister is in my house, cooking pastelitos for lunch. Tomorrow, Good Friday, we will shut off technology, fast during the day, pray and have coconut fish for dinner. On Saturday, we will drive to Little Pickles for toys, and to the old church in Kingston to hang prayer tags on its ancient iron gates. We’ve  had our share of losses this year: an aunt, an uncle, my stepmother, and my bio father and my bio mother, the elders in my family, the roots, the tree trunks.      

Every loss, a reminder to wake up.

My fiancé left for Puerto Rico to be with his ill mother, a spunky, smart, and vivacious ninety-year-old. On her summer visits, she’d get on the tractor trailer to mow the grass. Her ninety-eight-year-old husband would watch in amazement. We reveled in her joy for the freedom to ride wild. Now bedbound, she is cared for by her children.  My fiancé’s leaving was like a little death, a reminder of my other losses. The following morning--today--I awoke with pain in my left shoulder. My resistance to my grief has turned to physical pain, a reminder to attend to my grief.

We arrive at the chiropractor. He is a handsome man with grayish hair, fit like a runner, like my late husband. The Zen-like office is decorated with Buddhist tapestry. And like my late husband, the chiropractor emanates an energy of peace and compassion. He gently cracks me open.

I grieve for the memories I do not have with loved ones I barely know. I grieve for the distance in my family, each member in their own world, with their own tribe.  I grieve for the child I lost and about whom I can never speak. I grieve for the losses of others, for non-death-related losses like my connection to old friends or unfulfilled dreams.     

Another crack.      

I breathe in.

The grief, it passes through me, cold as fear. 

I take a breath.     

Let it flow. 

My chest opens.     

Crack!     

The grief flows.

There is space for its movement, and I settle into this moment. Soften to it. Allowing it, letting it be as it is. Letting awareness shed its light into all my losses, spoken and unspoken. The shape of my grief changing, settling into me like my blood, flowing.

I am a shattered vase, slowly resurrected by joining these jagged edges with gold glue.

I breathe.

I am reborn.

Reawakened.

When I am leaving, my chiropractor lovingly hugs me.  For a moment, I want to cry, but I simply thank him.

As I walk out, the sun has begun to peek through the clouds. The air is clear. I can breathe.

Later, as we drive by old country houses to the left and right of us, my daughter says, “Wow, Mom, look...”

An old red barn with a sign bearing the word “HOPE.”

My grandson says, “That’s literally beautiful.”

And I literally love it.   

Annecy Báez is an educator, and psychotherapist, author of My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories, and winner of the 2007 Marmol Prize in fiction. Her stories and poetry have appeared in various anthologies and periodicals, such as Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers and Callaloo. @annecybaez