Women Who Write to Heal Archives

 

Loose Ends 

By Martha Ellen

 

1. In the Spring I could die of natural causes under the lilac bush with hummingbirds darting about.

 

2. My heart could stop when I linger a moment by Karl’s roses or near the Japanese Snowbells to inhale their fragrance.

 

3. If I get dementia, I could wander into the woods, slip on a mossy rock and die from exposure to the delight of thousands of beetles and worms.

 

4. I could die from shock or fright. [Highly likely.]

 

5. If I fall and hit my head tying shiny flags onto the fig tree to keep the Jays away, I could take my last breath lying there in the dirt wondering why the California poppy seeds never sprouted. 

 

6. If I am mortally wounded in a crash, before I closed my eyes for the last time, I could look at a print of Lamentation [The Mourning of Christ] by Giotto I keep folded in a pocket for just such an occasion.

 

7. Outside the front door to the Senior Center, Betty could accidentally back over me. [She almost did last week.]

 

8. I could get some incurable illness and fade away in silence or scream in agony strapped to a bed until the end [like Aunt Opal.]

 

9. Someone [not me] could shoot me through the heart.

 

10. My house could catch fire and I could die from smoke inhalation trying to save my dog. Toby would die in my arms. He would sneak me into heaven with him.

 

11. The brakes could fail going down Eighth Street hill. My car could careen into the river where I would drown in the cold dark water with fishes swimming merrily by as though nothing were amiss.

 

12. I could kick the bucket choking on a too big bite of cherry pie and no milk to wash it down.

 

13. When I stop in Hammond to take a picture of a bull elk [like some clueless tourista] he could gore me to death, a spike of his antler piercing my eye, smashing though my brain, causing me to flail wildly in death throes like a hooked fish. [Yikes!]

 

14. The expansive vista at Ecola could make me dizzy. I could fall off the cliff where Search and Rescue could not get to me.

 

15. I could have a fatal brain hemorrhage by the birdbath out front - the one with Sartre’s Being and Nothingness I put there a few years ago for the birds to read as a joke. 

 

16. I could die laughing while looking at The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca, the resurrected Christ rising in Glory while the Roman guards slept. “You snooze, you lose.” [LOL]

 

17. I could bring to mind fleeting moments - the sweetest Summer afternoon sitting between Cait and Liam on their front steps when time stopped and we felt the Universal pulse; or at hospice that grey Winter evening when I left Donna in her bed, smiling, her last words: “We’re two old kippers in a box.” I could expire longing for them. 

 

18. I could look up into the heavens one morning, see the face of Father Lance filled with compassion, hear his welcoming words “Come. Fear not” and surrender. [He’s been looking after my sister until I can get there.]

 

19. I could have died from sorrow when my dad’s heart failed, the beat slowed, his blood pressure dropped. I could have lain down next to him and begged to leave with him. Or I could have drifted away into nothing at the foot of the bed when Eric was on life support, or succumbed to grief when Robin screamed, “Get out of my house!”  Actually, I could have died from sadness over all the others who I loved but did not love me back. [Or maybe they did and, like Father Headly said, the Enduring Enigma is we hurt each other anyway.]

 

20. I could collapse from a massive stroke while gazing into the sky watching brave Jack the Crow fight off a huge raptor to protect the chicks in the nest. Olga can’t do it by herself.

 

21. Even decades after the first time failed in the LaBagh Woods that cold afternoon in late Autumn, another one of Henry’s plans to murder me could still succeed. [That’s why I covered the windows, changed the locks and made an escape plan. Take the North passage that leads from the dining room to the kitchen, grab the cash out of the Emergency Money Teapot, out the back door, down the steps, along the West side of the house, through the neighbor’s driveway to my car. I keep it gassed-up.]

 

22. There could be a supernova and I could be burnt to a crisp with all my stuff, and the rest of humanity, and all the animals and plants, and all the people I love and don’t love.

 

23. In my mind’s ear I could hear Eric’s perfect note that evening during a concert in Longview, or I could hear three-year-old Robin say, “Mama, I don’t want you to be throwed away” and just fall over dead, my maternal heart burst, love and joy spilling out. 

 

24. I could rot away from guilt and shame like that door in the Ivan Albright painting, Everything I Should Have Done I Did Not Do.

 

25. A crazy person hiding in the women’s bathroom at the rest area on highway 26 might slit my jugular. [It happened to someone else in some other rest area.]

 

26. I could freeze to death with Dale in his cabin in Alaska where he tries to hide from the combat nightmares. His suffering no embrace could heal, though I’d try. [I’d finally know the two angels who visited me when I was five were us!]

 

27. I could die from a broken heart like Vince said when I couldn’t stop sobbing after reading him one of my bonjour tristesse poems. [He wanted me to get it published, but I lost it.]

 

28. A man could kill me. They’ve tried before. Beat me to death, maybe, or rape me and strangle me so I won’t tell. [Fast-talk wouldn’t save me.]

 

29. The night I saw my soul hovering over me in a glowing dimensional ellipse, I thought I was dying but it was just one of those hallucinations I had during withdrawal, like the almost mouse scampering across the vestibule floor, the kind old Native woman with saucer eyes or the firefly that smiled. [There are no fireflies in Oregon, BTW.] 

 

30. The cougar spotted on Fourth Street could stalk me on the way to the mailbox, pounce and tear out my throat before I knew what hit me.

 

31. I could stumble over some junk on the floor and fall. Unable to get up I’d expire from dehydration and hypothermia before someone could find me. [like Aunt Jessie]

 

32. I could even pass away in my sleep enthralled while waltzing through a dreamy vision of the millions of the luminous threads connecting all living things.

 

33. I don’t want to croak in a small room with pale green walls, machines beeping and an IV delivering saline at the bend in my elbow. Though, if I do, the colors and the sounds will probably transcend the ordinary, ascend into the sublime and I’ll pass-on in a reverie certain my mom loved me. [And, if she didn’t, it won’t matter.]

A Thought Experiment in Death

 

 

Do not burn me when I die. 

Do not place me in an oven to cook for that predatory patriarch in crones clothing lurking inside a sickly sweet place. 

Do not let me die like I did in my past lives.

 

Do not make me smaller than I was in life. 

 

Lay me on a pyre if you must

An honored warrior 

Parts of me drifting in flickering light

One last time, raised in heat

Cooling to blanket the earth like a dream of snow on a soft night 

 

Lay me on the bed of a rainforest. 

Where nutrients are caught up in the trees.

And the seemingly plentiful are desperate for something new. 

Let them use every part. Dispersing me quickly into the bodies of their young, and what is left will soak into the soft bed beneath. 

 

But such things are not done.

We must be sneaky in our reclamation of death.

 

 

Let me feed a tree when the part of me that moves has gone on to somewhere new. 

 

 

And if you cannot....

If the pressures and rules and madness leaves you little choice. 

If you need me to fill another role in life...

 

My dear one. I love you. 

 

So spread my ashes in the soil around your home in the dark of night 

or under the cover of gardening. 

Place in the bulbs of flowers or brambles as you go. An ancestral moat.

 

And I will live on 

encircling you with my power.

 

If you move, just take me with you. A picked flower, a bulb, a pocket of soil. I am the multitudes now. Let me lighten your footsteps as you journey on.

 

 

 

Or place me in a simple box, spacious and solitudinous 

as though a fairy tale in the woods, 

waiting for the kiss of mycelium to make me live again. 

Place your handprints on the sides and

Lower me beneath the surface. 

Throw seed as well as flowers on the lid.

And there i will lay, content. While you revel in another life well lived. 

Dance upon my grave. 

Let the thundering beat of your life start the process of my decay.

Taunting the terrible, gentle arms of death with each feral act.

Hair flung wild in moonlight. 

rain dancing it's own beat as you raise your face to the sky, letting it grace your mouth as you howl defiance and rage and exhilaration.

 

The ocean and fire hissing around you as you lose yourself to euphoric grace.

Rebellious and incomplete

Each moment closer to the one 

when I join the mind 

creeping through the soil

The ultimate crone mother

The mediator

The messenger

The transporter

The giver of life and wisdom and resilience and time.

 

But that is not all. 

I will not go into the conveyer belt of death without one last trick.

 

Inside my box, leave another. This one small. 

Place it at my unclad toes.

 

Something precious and rebellious inside. 

Devious and innocent. 

Other heartbeats so I am not alone. 

With a hunger, 

not for flesh or knowledge, 

but for the boxes that hold us. 

 

Termites. 

 

Let them feast. 

Let them let the mushrooms in. 

 

Let them find their way. 

Let them commit a tiny destruction. 

 

 

Let them set me free.

1.

Change Your Mind?

I’ve walked this path 1000 times. 

A+B=C

A+B=C

A+B=C

Tried and true. 

Consistent.

Comfortable. 

It’s all I’ve ever known. 

The connection, flawless. 

Proven. 

Foot traffic has worn down the center. 

A+B=C

A+B=C

A+B=C

I think this is me. 

It is what it is. 

I am who I am. 

This is what makes me, me…

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. 

A+B=C

A+B=C

A+B=C

Or does it?

What if you change your mind about your mind? 

What if A+B actually equals X?

Or what if there is no solution? 

What? 

Impossible.

Our brains create stories. Some of them are born before we are. The neurons fire and form connections. The story is told over and over… so, we believe it. When someone comes along and tells us something that contradicts that story, we will refuse it. Nope. Closed circuit. These neurons fire together. This is the route they always take. You must be wrong… If A+B=X, then who am I? If the things I know to be true are challenged, then there’s no longer comfort in knowing. My mind is tidy, and safe because I keep everything filed in boxes, classified. A+B=C. Right? Wait.. Is that the way the world works? Are all things either black or white? Maybe it’s more complex than that…. 

 

But once one box tips over, one connection broken, I can no longer trust my own thoughts, my own knowingness. I begin to rummage through the other boxes, spilling thoughts, misplacing stories. I dump them out and examine their contents. A continues to connect to B. A and B try to equal C. But, the path is murky. The rut is there, but new trails appear. New… trails? Decisions to make. Work to do. I need to clean up. This is how I make sense of the world around me. This is how I know where I belong. There’s safety in believing. But not all things are meant to be tidy. Not all information is permanent. Not all stories are over when the credits roll. It’s time to throw away the boxes. Leave some loose ends. 

2.

Salt Water

Filleted from head to toe, a vulture’s delight. As the blood rushes out of your gaping wound, I offer you no stitch, no bandaid… only pressure and a call to attend more presently to the hole you’ve stuck your fingers into in the name of healing. Salt isn’t only used to induce a sting, but also to tenderize. The sea water rushing from your eyes marinates your fractured heart. Open wounds heal loudly. What a blessing it is to be witnessed in this raw state.

3.

**Some of these are pieces pulled from my book, The Real Love Story.**

 

And they all lived happily ever after…

When a story begins with ‘Once Upon a Time’ it’s nearly always cut short before reality actually unfolds. This story didn’t start with Once Upon a Time though; it started with ‘Welcome to the Book.’ 

 

2021: 

No matter what we did, I always felt like we were the only two people in the Universe. I had no concept of time, yet wanted to fully embrace every second and every breath that we shared. It was an all consuming, intense, fairytale kind of story. Let me share some examples:

It was the first full moon of the year. We drove out to a campsite in the desert. We sat across from one another in camping chairs and shared a blanket next to the fire. We wrote down things we wanted to release, both those that troubled us and those that sparked joy, and we read them aloud to one another before burning them one-by-one. I leaned forward to hold him as he allowed tears to stream down his face for the first time that he could remember. When we were finished with the releasing ritual, I leaned in and kissed him for the very first time. It was exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be. We flowed together effortlessly, pausing from time-to-time to breathe each other’s breath. 

Another night, we went back to the same campground. As soon as we got out of the car, I walked up to him and started kissing him. It was cold, but neither of us cared to start the fire or set up the chairs; we were lost in one another. We were fully consumed by a session of eye-gazing, breath sharing, body flowing, heart racing kissing. Each time we walked away from one another in an attempt to start the fire, eat dinner, or put on a jacket; we were instantly drawn back together. As he kissed on my neck and collar bone, I pulled my shirt to the side to expose my nipple. He drank from me, and kissed me, and held me in his perfect arms for hours. 

On another occasion, we went to dinner and then grocery shopping. It was such a seemingly simple thing, but it was the most out of our bubble we had been yet. However, we were still very much wrapped up in each other. I realized I enjoyed doing the everyday things with him just as much as I enjoyed being in the middle of nowhere, lost in each other. This made things more real and tangible for me. This was when I really started hoping for a future with him. 

Little moments from each time we were together are etched in my mind like the words to a country song that I feel so deeply. You know, the type of song that makes you want to love so hard that a single tear runs down your cheek, and you smile with just a little bit of hope that you may actually get to experience a love like that someday.

- The moment we stopped kissing to look up at the stars with humble amazement.

- That moment when our hands touched for the first time. 

- The car ride home after dinner at the drive-in movies when I sang every country love song on the radio while holding his hand as tightly as I could.

- The way he shook his head with a slight smile because he was in awe about what we shared.

- The moment there was nothing I could do to feel close enough to him. 

- When I pulled his mask down just to kiss him and then placed it back on his face.

- My fingers in his hair.

- The way he spun me and dipped me as we walked around the park in the dark. 

Each of these moments were so vivid, so intoxicating, and they were real; I was really getting to experience them after all I had been through. If this were a fairytale, this is when they’d display, “AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER” across the big screen. But, unfortunately, as I am sure you gathered by the way this chapter began, this isn’t a happily ever after kind of story for the two of us. 

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently 

Patiently

 

2023:

Being with you was the first time I got to experience what it must be like to be with me.

 

You might be the reason I’m alone forever… you set the bar so high that not even you can reach it.  

 

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently 

Patiently

 

2024: 

My hand between my thighs, my face soaked with tears; I cried out, “I’m still in love with him.” And then I woke up. What… the… fuck… I knew exactly who “he” was. But how had I suppressed that, ignored it, for so long? And how would I continue to do so now? 

Waiting…

Patiently

Impatiently 

Patiently

 

2025:

If you were mine, I would run out to greet you every time you arrived home

Dinner would not be ready, and I would be a mess, 

But with you by my side I would always feel blessed. 

Our connection, our vibe would be beyond what I can describe.

 

“I don’t know if I can see you,” I said. Because when I’m with you in person, you’re mine, and that’s not the reality… And I don’t know what to do with that. 

I’ll give you one day. Six hours. Let’s see how that goes. 

 

2026:

Oh. I have been telling people you’re my boyfriend. Is that cool?

Relationship Pact: If either of us wants to end the relationship, it must be done in person. Looking into each other’s eyes, skin-to-skin. 

I walked in the room after we’d oscillated between fucking and making love for the past two hours. You were asleep. The blanket haphazardly draped across your body. The dim light softly highlighted the thicker parts of your body. My body was relaxed from pleasure, but you looked so delicious, still marinating in our love. As I lowered my body onto the bed, you let out a subtle, inviting groan. 

Your car pulls into the driveway, I run out to greet you. We kiss in the open doorway. Then, we walk, together, into our home. 

 

To-do lists

ADHD

The ringlet tips of my daughter's pigtails.

Ribbon curls

Electrical wires

Fringe

Tassels

Frayed denim

Macrame tails

Dandelion fluff

Cliffhangers 

Kite streamers

Relaxed sunsets

Edges that breathe instead of bind

The pieces that blow wildly in the wind, that tickle softly against skin

You and me…..

Some ends aren't meant to be tied, or burned, or cut… Some are supposed to stay open. 

Maybe A+B really does have infinite possibilities…

 

Rhythms

If you really know me, you know I love to cry. Tears are a
testimony to the well inside me that swells simultaneously
with wonder and outrage, grief and gratitude. My tears are
both resistance and reconciliation. I cry often because I
love so hard.

If you really know me, you know I am loyal and fierce and
sometimes it might not be easy to be loved by me. Once I
see you, I won’t avert my gaze. Any self-denial you claim
will be naked to my knowing and the truth will gently
confront you every time you look into my eyes.

If you really know me, you know I experience the world in
images and song lyrics and that I am more at home
outside than in. I place my feet on a leaf-strewn forest path
or walk the timeless way of a creek bed and the brilliance
of being wildly alive inhabits my body with awe and relief
and gratitude. Birdsong chirps in the early morning
darkness as black night fills with diffused sunlight, tinting
the sky the blackest of blues and I feel the pulse in my
body; sky and earth and creature, and I know I am loved.

If you really know me, you know that my heart breaks all
the time, so I require great courage and resilience to tend
the faultlines with vigilance. I cannot remember a time
when my heart didn’t pulse with sorrow as well as wonder.
My child self knew sadness and joy in alarming extremes
and the fissures of being misunderstood and told to be
different than I was, whether in direct words or casual rejection or careless dismissal, reside in my heart’s
earliest cracks. I mended and stood vigil over those deep
crevices and protected myself, shielding against rejection.
I concealed my hurt and longing, crouched low in the dark
recesses of my own heart, hidden from those who couldn’t
really see me, didn’t understand me, wouldn’t love me.
But so far from the light, they atrophied and hardened and
my bullied heart parts rebelled in a solid, unyielding mass
of self-rejection, self-abandonment.

If you really know me, you know I’ve spent my life trying to
match my rhythm to those around me. I’ve been a
reluctantly reliable, if rebellious, foot soldier in the grand
scheme, stepping out of time to that soul-less beat of the
drum of conformity, mouthing the words to a false anthem.
There was no belonging, just an absence of me. I’ve
always known the price was too high, and I have warred
with myself in quiet revolution most of the time.
There have been moments of beautiful harmony-that
golden time when my children were small and our whole
world pulsed the natural rhythms of grace. Precious
friendships rooted in soul-deep recognition, our heartbeats
effortlessly syncopated; the sacred melody of my sisters
that pulses in our veins with a shared ancient song. I have
known truly aligned years when I was exactly where I was
meant to be and I have felt genuine purpose and peace and love. Come what may, I always love big and offer my
one true gift: my presence, my time, me.

But this human experience is a baptism of grief and
gratitude, and so often I gave in to fear. Fear that the voice
of my soul’s longing meant something was wrong with me,
that I was unlovable, that I was selfish. Fear that asserting
my individual voice would disrupt the song and then
everyone would see the heart of me. Fear that honoring
myself meant taking something from someone else.
Part of my journey now is accepting my own complicity in
the silent treason against my heartbeat in the name of
safety, belonging, and love. I did it. I acquiesced and
played so many parts. I believed the lies and even when I
really didn’t, I manipulated myself into believing them. It’s
a refrain common to women everywhere, scarred into our
memories by conditioning and ancestral trauma that
insists “Your value is in how you serve, what you
contribute; in how well your loved ones thrive, in how you
make others feel.” My natural rhythms fell into cadences
that were prescribed by others. I struggled to keep time,
discordant within. I imagine it is like a hummingbird
attempting to stand like the heron or soar like an eagle.
Exhausting.

Rage, hopelessness, sadness and exhaustion all braided
together in a chord tethering me even as it coiled
dangerously, threatening to tighten and cut me off at my breath. I felt forever misunderstood, utterly unknown and
lonely even in a crowded room. I became hypervigilant,
fiercely independent, and made sure I was above
reproach. I have always had one foot out the door, quick to
release relationships, walk away from conflict, carrying my
home inside myself, tied to no place, avoiding the
inevitable gaslighting, shaming, and other manipulations
that have been leveraged against me when I dared be true
to myself or set a boundary. I’d learned to anticipate the
energy that asked more of me than I had to give, needed
something from me that I was not, and I’d escape. And
always in the aftermath, I would blame myself for being
too much or not enough, golden veins of self-deception,
scars of shame mapping a lifetime of taking sides against
myself.

I am grateful for the resilience of the human heart, and
what I have found to be irrevocably true is that even when
our rhythm is absorbed into an ocean of noise, our once-
in-this-lifetime soul music is never lost. It echoes
endlessly and will always resurface, even when we
intentionally attempt to drown it. Constant as starshine
and ocean tide and the rotation of the planet, it is always
there, beneath the skin, returning to itself like waves
washing the shore and clouds loosing the rain.
Here, on the other side of 50 with three grown children, a
high schooler, a middle schooler, and a menopausal middle, I grab healing with both hands and submerge
myself in it. I’ve pried off the decades weighing down the
song of my soul. Now, I walk for hours through woods and
dunes, along rivers and through rolling hills smothered in
purple Lupines and golden Balsamroot. When I round the
familiar bend that leads to the majestic trees with their
outstretched hands, fingers rooted and cascading down
the path, a gentle stairway of mossy knuckles and limbs, I
just want to say thank you. They remind me that I can
stand strong, grow, receive, shelter and thrive, come what
may. I dance wildly on a stretch of beach, curious seabirds
my unwitting audience. I pause to watch the heron, still
and completely useless to the powers of oppression.
Solitary in her self-reliance, stalwart in her quiet waiting,
no energy wasted, acting with precision born of tireless
observation, confident to move when opportunity presents
itself like a frog emerging from the muck. She teaches me
that waiting is not inaction; waiting is wisdom. No rushing
in to calm the chaos or save anyone. These days, I can
sit and do nothing but watch the heron for hours, lakeside
as the golden sun slants low across the water. When I am
overcome with weariness of a world that is not as it should
be, a life less lovely than it could be, he reminds me that I
am connected to something far greater than the dailiness
of this life. I breathe; my heart beats. I breathe; I stay. I
breathe: I love myself.

This decision to stay with myself has necessitated a
willingness to fight. Resilience and courage and love
compel me to welcome the conflict, the discomfort, the
discordant clashing of honesty. With determination, I claim
out loud that compromise doesn’t mean I always give in.
With tears of triumph, I own the right to trust my knowing
more than prioritizing someone else’s comfort. With my
heart in my hands, I love myself enough to say “NO” and
risk losing perceived affection or validation. With a clear
and strong voice, I refuse to accept responsibility for that
which is not mine. Maybe the hardest fight of all is
admitting that I might be the villain in someone else’s
story. I accept that if being genuine and operating out of
my personal integrity unintentionally causes perceived
harm, I am accountable. I make repair as best I can. I
remember that it is okay to set boundaries and refuse to
cause myself harm in the name of serving others. This is
how I love myself.

Waves of life wash over me, sometimes crashing. But my
hands aren’t gripping into the sand desperately grasping
for some anchor, my arms aren’t flailing wildly to stay
above the surf. I am learning to allow, to surrender, to be
taken with the tide and returned, or not. This washing and
rinsing is a different baptism, of breath and truth and
sovereignty. Every love song is now an anthem to me, asking and granting absolution. This, too, is how I love
myself.

If you really know me-- when you really know me--you will
recognize my singular rhythm, and my everlasting echo of