Journaling Context

I recently attended a one-day writing retreat here on Salt Spring Island, BC, where I live. I was supposed to be at a Celebration of Life that day, for a friend who died of a heart attack suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 56 years old, only one year older than me. He was a loving husband to his wife and a proud father to their 3 grown children, all of whom he adored and devoted his life too.

Instead of attending Clay’s Celebration of Life, I went to a writing retreat. I choose to write, think, and remember him in my own way, in the way I needed to on that particular day.

All journaling and personal writing happens within the context of our daily lives. The above context informed the following writing that is shared from the pages of my journal…

From the Pages of My Journal

I ate lunch with the dead, sitting on a stone bench on the edge of a small community cemetery behind the Star of the Sea gathering place, the little church across from the Fulford Hall, where our writing retreat was being held.

I ate lunch with a yellow wildflower touching my socks and with the whispers of ghosts in the garden. A blue glass ball sat at the edge of an elaborate gravesite with sand and trinkets and small pieces of art. I imagined this blue glass ball was a crystal ball and asked it about my future. A voice from within said…

“The future is lived well by being fully present in the now.”

I then asked: “What do I need now?”

“You know what you need,” the wise voice said.

“You need a long season, maybe summer, a long season of deep rest. The deepest rest you’ve ever known. You need to eat food, plant-based, from your box program and from the farm stands you drive by each day. You need to eat strawberries and snow peas like you had for lunch. You need to drink lots of water and stay hydrated. You need to feel the pleasure of your body met and touched. You need to take moments where the worries of the world, the worries in you, can be released into the sky like hot air balloons… carried up, up, up and away. You need to feel what you feel, dance in open fields with colourful wildflowers popping up in the long grass, you need to open the barn gate wide. You need to let your mother go and pray that she is taken soon, pray for the only mercy possible in the deep end of advanced Alzheimer’s disease. You have to let your sons go too, boys to men. It’s time. All these past years of caring, parenting, caregiving, keeping safe, holding on, all to arrive to a present and a future that is all about letting go.”

“You need to write your adoptee memoir, it is the next great creation of your life. It too will be held and released, like all labours of love must be.”

“Hold the rose quartz crystal in your hand, next to your heart. Come back here anytime you want to eat lunch with the dead. The whispers of ghosts will tell you everything you need to know about this life you are living.”

I want to pick up the blue glass ball, this predictor of now and next and take it home with me and put it on my altar. It belongs to the altar of the person buried in this place. I hope Clay has a blue glass ball on the altar of his life, a crystal ball that his wife and children can touch and talk too, to have him near them always.

Glass balls crack, they weather in outdoor graves, the future is predicted for no one, beyond the inevitable truth that it is short lived.. so we must live it all.

I ate lunch with the dead and gave thanks that I am alive… breathing, here, now.  Writing more words in this circle of women, who are also going to the page with their after lunch musings and stories. They, too, ate lunch with the dead, but they might not have noticed, because they didn’t come outside. They stayed together around the table in the tiny church kitchen. I wandered alone outside to be surrounded by those who can’t write anymore, their stories ended already.

I walked by Susan Yardley’s gravesite. I thought of her daughter, Emma, who lives just across the harbour, less than 2 kms from the burial place of both of her parents. I wonder if she has ever asked the blue glass ball to tell her about her future and what she needs now.

Author: Lynda Monk is leader of the International Association for Journal Writing, a global community where journal writers belong. You can join us here and let writing lead the way to your own inner truth >>