Last Friday, on the 3rd anniversary of my brother’s death, I found myself alone in the woods, singing to a fallen tree.
I hadn’t intended to do this, or anything else to mark the day, even though I was keenly aware of it. But in the middle of our daily woods walk, my partner, Shel, turned around to hurry back to a meeting, and I continued on… to the rarely traveled old growth pine forest below the more popular trail that leads to the top of Mt. Holyoke, where three years ago, I’d sat by a large fallen tree and spent a few moments contemplating my brother’s life and death.
My brother, Danny, and I did not have an easy relationship, and he did not have an easy life. At 15 he had a schizophrenic breakdown and never fully recovered. The early years of his illness were rife with outbursts of often violent psychotic episodes at home, punctuated by short stays at locked institutions where they zombified him with thorazine. Later, as treatment for psychosis evolved, he became more functional, but never mastered the stress of holding a job or living on his own, even though he didn’t need 24-hour supervision and could travel alone to visit family. But these drugs took a toll on his physical health and by the time he died (from an imploded port whose repair surgery was delayed due to the COVID crisis) he was struggling with severe kidney disease.
One of the things we shared–from the time we were teenagers–was a love of singing. Danny didn’t have a particularly pleasant voice, or a strong ability to hold pitch, but if he knew that, he never let it bother him. And through the years, when the grandchildren were asked to perform on their musical instruments at family gatherings, Danny always wanted to sing a song.
So in memory of Danny, I sang a song to the same tree where I sat three years ago–Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend. Danny always liked the James Taylor version, and it’s been one of the songs I’ve been working on in my voice lessons, where I’ve discovered that while my higher range voice is still pretty weak and wispy (though slowly improving) my lower range is strong and getting even stronger.
In the cold and quiet January woods, I belted it out, even though through most of my life, I wouldn’t have considered Danny my friend–just an (often secret) albatross I had to deal with.
I’m forever grateful that a few years before he died, I decided that I needed to go through the process of forgiving him for several abusive incidents that had made me cringe with disgust and an underlying edge of fear every time I was around him. This process was not easy or quick. It involved exposing, through writing and talking to people, many details I preferred not to think about. But, in the last few years of his life I was able to feel more caring and compassion when I saw him.
Here’s a short poem I wrote about the process:
ABLUTION
“To love is to chew; to forgive is to swallow”
—Mark Nepo
Two days before new year, and I have forgiven you,
let the thick glop between us dissolve
like a face in fade-to-black. To forgive
is not to swallow, but to spit, let the saliva glide
on the foam of a cool wave. Forgiveness is faith
in salt, in the movement of water against rocks
as they wear down to a black shine,
so slick you can slip right off—
turning your legs into mermaid tail,
your breathing lungs into gills. I have surrendered,
filled my bones with ocean. This forgiveness is cake.
It is love and I chew. It is cream with chocolate curls,
and it is green and clean, like a crisp, sharp leaf.
(Originally published in Dash, June 2021)
A few days ago, after my rendez-vous with the tree I came across this quote from Jacoby Ballard, from a series of journal prompts I’ve subscribed to from Kripalu Yoga Center on the theme of Choosing Love.
Feeling the emotions of grief, disappointment, betrayal, sadness, and anger are all prerequisites for forgiveness. If these emotions are not fully felt before one turns toward forgiveness, it can erode the process and compromise its authenticity.
How true. It took a LONG time to confront the sadness and denial and face the grief head-on. But I’m glad I got through this before it was too late, thoroughly enough that I could now sing my heart out to a fallen tree.
Then, as in Jewish tradition, I found a rock to place in the spot where the tree had been uprooted and headed home.
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