Love what you love

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

- Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

I think about this poem a lot. And Kreed. And the love he had for this world. The way in which he lived in this world. And I think of other kids with autism, other disabilities and the way they clash with what this world wants them to be. All we ever wanted for Kreed was to be happy. To enjoy his life. His existence. To live in this world in a way that worked for him. And for the world. I never saw the two as mutually exclusive. If he wanted to hop through a store, he hopped through a store because who was I to dictate how he wanted to walk through a store. Or in his case hop. And express his joy. 

Now, running away and knocking over everything in his path, that wasn’t happy, joyful or conducive to this life. So we showed him another way. Where he could both be himself and be in this world. And I would never have changed that for one single second. 

And I think about being “good” and what does that even mean? Kreed was good. In so many ways most people are not. He was kind in ways people could not imagine. He lived in ways most people could never even dream of. And he raged in ways most people will never even comprehend. It was a clash of a boy knowing his body wasn’t working right and desperately just wanting to be happy and to feel the good in this world again. 

He just wanted to live in this world and experience everything good this world had to offer. To experience the opening of a flower, the feel of leaves as they rush by your hand. And a taste too. To sit and feel the wind as it gently whips around your body. To feel the sunlight kiss the skin. If this world would stop for a second and see these things, I think we would all be in a better place. To just be. Even for a moment. Without the rush of the world, deadlines and people wanting things from you. To just be. Amongst the stars. The moon. The deer. The rabbit. The dandelions. The sun flowers. The pine. The aspen. With the whispers of the river. The roar of the waterfall. To just be. To just love. To exist. To live. 

This was our boy. And the way in which he existed. And the lessons he always taught me. And the way I want to continue to honor our boy through everything I do. And to write about his life and what it meant. And our grief and how we experience it. And love and how we feel it. 

Grief Changes Everything

For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

that the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.

So come to the pond,

or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live

your life.

• Mary Oliver, Mornings at Blackwater

Live your life. Seems like such a simple notion. Until death knocks at your door and then blows you down so far you don’t know which way is up. And you feel like you can’t breathe, gasping for air. Gasping for an air you know your child will never breathe again. 

Time moves on, slowly, and suddenly you find yourself into a third year without your sweet boy. Have we lived these three years? Have we only just survived? Are we broken? Are we together in this? Are we hearts of stone? Where is our heart? 

Grief makes you wonder so many things. It makes you question everything. Your existence. A higher power. Your life. Your love. Your everything. And when you lose someone like Kreed who loved everything and wanted this life, your left broken in ways that can never be understood. And you question life in ways no one would think to. 

“That the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be...”

Our present exists while at the same time knowing our boys does not. He now only exists in the past. He exists only in memory. We don’t have one more day, one more second, one more moment. We used them all up until they are gone. We had to say goodbye knowing it was the last goodbye we would ever give him. And we spend our life with regrets for things we will never get to say or do. And no one can understand those regrets like we do or could possibly understand why we have regrets. When you give someone a final goodbye there are still a thousand things you wished. Wished to say. Wished to do. Wished to be. Wished. 

The finality if death can kill you if you let it. That’s the reality of grief. The guilt. The regret. It can eat you up and spit you out and then do it all over again. Time does not matter. The death seems like yesterday. It never doesn’t feel like yesterday. Time does nothing for this pain. 

But live our life. That is what we must do. We have to take it moment by excruciating moment. And somehow, someway come to an agreement with yourself that you will live with the duality. Of such pain and loss, but still life. 

Death forces you to examine your life. Who you were, who you are, who you will become. None of those are the same person. But you need to come to an acceptance of all three. And can you love again? Can you breathe again? Can you feel again? Each breath is painful, each one exists without our boy. But we breathe anyway. 

And ultimately it’s up to us. To decide to breathe and keep on breathing and live and keep on living. To love and keep on loving. And be present and more than just a memory, no matter how painful. 

Grief. Changes everything. Everything you thought you were and everything you thought you would be. And those that grief live a life others cannot possibly understand. And we live with a pain that will never be shown, yet permeates our entire being in everything we do. 

But we do it. We are here. We are broken in ways that can’t be mended. 

But we are here. 

Breathing. 

Loving. 

Living.