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. 

Rave on

From the complications of loving you

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a play ground, this is

earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence

to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.

And I say to my heart: rave on.

– Mary Oliver, Thirst

That was the only way to love Kreed. Fully. With no end or return. And it was our heaven while he was here. We gave our everything for his life, so that he could experience a life, a good life, not just any ole life but one he felt with all his heart. We said to his heart to rave on despite having autism and less communication and a difficult medical journey and he took that and ran with it and loved his life and asked to experience everything. 

As a result we sit here in this grief, missing our boy and the emptiness left behind. How do you keep going on when everything you knew, and everything you gave and everything you had is just gone. In an instant. And no one can understand why we say live for a moment, live for today because you don’t know what the next moment will bring- because it’s so inconceivable that a life can be lost. Until you’re the one holding onto a human life as their heart beats their last beat. And you know in that instant that all you have is moments. 

I will never regret the moments we had with Kreed and all that we gave to him to have the life he had. It wasn’t easy ever, but it was worth it. And the love was worth it even though now we lay in such ruin because we loved and lost. You will never ever regret loving someone too much and giving all of yourself. At the end of this life you’ll never say, “well damn, I just loved people and this life too much.” 

The consequence of great love is great grief. I have come to accept this, although all of my being rails against it. Accepting loss and that we will live the remainder of our days without him is unacceptable at its core. But the reality is that acceptance. 

And so we miss him. With every fiber of our being. Sometimes I walk past his photo and want to break down and cry because the ache becomes all too much in that moment. And that is our reality that I have come to accept. 

This is our grief life now. And this is our hearts continuing to try and rave on in true Kreed style.

Loving the World

I have not written a lot in the last year. Sometimes words are painful. Or rather putting down what I think and feel onto paper made it too real. But I realized this is necessary. Otherwise they stay inside my mind and eventually I suffocate from the weight of them all. But when I write them down, it frees them and my weight is lifted. So today starts anew and hoping I can continue to put my thoughts down. And as always, along with Mary Oliver who has given words to Kreed’s life and our grief. 

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

          equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

          keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

          astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

          and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

          to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

          that we live forever.

-The Messenger, Mary Oliver

This was Kreed. His work was loving the world. As a young boy he yearned to explore and be free in this world and as he learned how to be in this world, he loved it more and more with each new experience. Kreed didn’t want much- at home he wanted as little clothes as was acceptable, his favorite foods and love. In the community he just wanted to shop for good smelling stuff, freedom to hop through stores, find books or movies, sample as many everything free French fries as possible and experience as many things as possible. He just wanted to be. He just wanted to experience everything. And to love. Love us. Love his life. Love his adventure. Love nature. Loving just being in this world. 

Which is what makes his death so damn hard. He LOVED, truly loved. And if you were around him you couldn’t help but love too. His death has left a gaping hole. The first year it was a deep dark pit that we all fell in. This year we are at least standing in it and looking over the sides and learning how to love on our own. Learning from him still. But it’s hard. And still feels so empty without him. 

I miss seeing the way he saw the world. I miss the dimpled smiles for the simple things in life that no one else would notice. And the world keeps piling things up in this world as we deal with so many stressors. Even if we had these stressors before, when he was here, we were surrounded by his light and joy and that made all the difference. 

So now...now we are learning the work of loving this world. I don’t know that we will ever be as successful as Kreed was in this, but for him, we will always try. 

Always.

Among the Trees

When I am among the trees, 

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

- Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees

It has been so long since I have been among the trees. Who knows why? Depression? Lack of energy. Lack of will. Not wanting to face myself or the world. 

These holidays have been killers and my memories have been coming and hitting me left and right without end. Even in my dreams. So I have been silent, lost in the pain of all of it. 

You never come to terms with the loss. Of that boy. That joy. That happiness. My buddy. This pain will always exist, that I know. That I have realized and begun to accept. But that doesn’t make it easier. It doesn’t make it any easier to wake up each day and once again realize he’s not here and we must go through another day without his presence. 

I still haven’t figured out how to have any kind of happiness, except that with Carie, without our boy. Everything is hard. Everything is different. I often feel lost. 

Hopeless. 

Joyless. 

Searching. 

What is my place in this world now? I don’t know. But I always feel a calling that it should be more. I should be more. I need to do more. I need to make his life count. I need to make our life count. 

But this world. It’s go go go. We never get time to breathe. We never get time to find ourselves. This was one of Kreed’s greatest gifts to me- realizing that life was meant to be slowed down, and to walk among these trees and truly take them in. The smell. The wind gently rolling across our shoulders. The rustle of the leaves and animals. The air we breathe. All of it. He was able to do that and it renewed him often. These trees were his favorite place to be (besides Five Guys of course). And I loved how we stayed in those moments without a single other care in this world. 

Since he’s been gone the world has not stopped. It has kept on spinning, tumbling and turning me every which way until some days I can no longer find which way is up. 

And I yearn for him. To hear him. To play with him. Hike with him. Be with him. And no one- and I mean no one- except those who have lost their sweet child- know this kind of unending pain that we will never again have time with our child. And the excruciating pain it is to wake up each and every single day without them. 

But these trees. When I finally come again, peace comes even if for a moment. My tears fall- or really I sob. Because it hurts so damn much. And these trees are where it’s safe to feel. And I search for him and for meaning. 

I search for those moments I used to love with him. And allow the pain to come and consume and just be. No matter how much we try to stuff it down and pretend it’s not there, it is. It always is. We just choose to decide when to let it come or other times it choose when it needs to come. 

So I come to these trees to allow it to come. Acknowledge it. And grieve. And grieve. And grieve. And try to remember to continue to do this. To remember him, honor him and grieve him.

Where are you

Moon rose 

full and without 

compromise through the good 

garden of leaves, 

here and there 

stars rode in flickering 

slicks of water 

and for certain 

the burly trees 

hunched toward each other, 

their dark mantles 

like the fur of animals 

touching. It was 

summer on earth 

so the prayer 

I whispered was to no god 

but another creature like me. 

Where are you? 

The wind stood still. 

Lightning flung 

its intermittent flares; 

in the orchard 

something wandered 

among the windfalls, 

licking the skins, 

nuzzling the tunnels, 

the pockets of seeds. 

Where are you? I called 

and hurried out 

over the silky sea 

of the night, across 

the good garden of branches, 

leaves, water, down 

into the garden 

of fire. 

This skin you wear so neatly, 

in which you settle 

so brightly on the summer grass, how 

shall I know it? 

You gleam as you lie back 

breathing like something 

taken from water, 

a sea creature, except 

for your two human legs 

which tremble 

and open 

into the dark country 

I keep dreaming of. How 

shall I touch you 

unless it is 

everywhere? 

I begin 

here and there, 

finding you, 

the heart within you, 

and the animal, 

and the voice. 

I ask 

over and over 

for your whereabouts, 

trekking wherever you take me, 

the boughs of your body 

leading deeper into the trees, 

over the white fields, 

the rivers of bone, 

the shouting, 

the answering, the rousing 

great run toward the interior, 

the unseen, the unknowable 

center. 

- Mary Oliver, The Gardens

Where are you dear boy? This I have wondered for weeks and days. It does not matter where you are in your grief journey- there will be days, weeks, months and years that your soul suddenly aches for the missing with a new hunger for their touch, their voice, their smell, the feel of their beating heart. You search endlessly for them in the depth of your heart and must again accept that you will not find what you are searching for and you will not feel what you are missing. 

I go to nature continually to find him. Feeling. My heart. Soul. Sometimes I go alone, sometimes I go with my love and we find ourselves together and miss him together. And we hold ourselves together, both feeling the gut wrenching pain, but healing together in love. 

But some days, some weeks I just ache. And ache. And ache. Sometimes I’m distracted enough that it doesn’t feel like it will kill me. But other days it feels like it could take me away again. 

Then some days we find slivers of happiness, like our new pup Apollo 13 we rescued on the 13th. Somehow this little animal has brought some laughter as we watch him discover a free and wild world. But even in those moments I remember how Kreed discovered the free and wild world. And the ache comes again and again. 

Where are you? I never find Kreed at his resting place. First- that boy never rested a day in his life, always wanting more- more love, experiences, nature, French fries, joy and happiness. I find him in the wind whipping through my body, the suns warmth and in this free and wild world. 

Grief will always come in waves. Whoever said that way back when was correct. It doesn’t matter the time that passes or the way life changes. The pain is there. It’s there to stay. We just learn how to coexist with moments of happiness. We learn to laugh at the puppy and other animals, we learn to enjoy our moments together, but we always, always remember our boy in all of those moments. 

Where are you? Everywhere. 

Everywhere.

Carrying this grief

That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surely God

had His hands in this,

as well as friends.

Still, I was bent

and my laughter,

as the poet said, 

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel

(brave even among lions),

“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -

books, bricks, grief -

it’s all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot and would not,

put it down.”

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

the laughter

that comes, now and again,

out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -

roses in the wind,

the sea geese on the steep waves,

a love

to which there is no reply? 

- Mary Oliver, Heavy

We carry this grief. I can’t always say which way we carry it. Some days we are in a dark valley. There is no sun, no light, nothing to shine on our darkness. Surrounded by peaks, we traverse this dark valley, letting sadness come, memories come, and in some ways consume us. He was our world. The sun which we all spun around, and happily. His joy was infectious. He was the meaning of our life. Then gone. Taking all the light. 

Then some days, we climb up from that place. Together. She and I. Our hearts together, and our love pushing us to get out of that darkness. And we try. We try to stand in the light. We try to smile. We try to laugh. We try to find some measure of happiness. I know for me, it’s her. I love my wife and that’s what gets me up every day of my life. For that love, for our life. Even when I think I have lost who I am, I know I’m still someone, and I’m still loved for whoever I happen to be. 

I still miss him with everything I have and more. I miss the moments of just being. Existing. Without a clock. Without a list. Without a to-do. Just existing in those moments, doing whatever was needed at the time whether it was a trip out into the world and lessons to be learned, or a trip to decide who had the best French Fries. Or a journey into the wilderness to just exist with nothing but our own beating hearts. 

I haven’t hiked in some time. And it shows. But it’s so damn hard to face yourself with just yourself so often. To really look at yourself with nothing and just exist and ask yourself the tough questions. And to visit him, in his element and feel the things he felt. But I did it today and then here I am pouring my heart out, letting the tears fall. Instinct is to run. To run from yourself, your heart, your soul. Because this grief, this all encompassing, heart ripped out of chest feeling is not pleasant and for some, and at times, it’s so much easier to hide from it and not feel it. But here I am today, laying it all bare. 

And I will pick myself up. Do what’s necessary and then go home. To love. To light. And know that things will be okay and sink into a long embrace and just be. Exist. And learn this life together without our sun.