In the sheer ignorance
only possible in the mind
of a nineteen year old,
upon learning of the suicide
of my stepfather
I incorrectly assumed
that repressing my emotions
was the height of spirituality.
Although my intentions were golden,
I set myself up for profound depression.
Three decades later,
when cancer took my mother,
my grief was informed
by the twenty-third chapter of the Tao Te Ching
where we read,
“…If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.”
I walked in profound vulnerability
to every wave and eddy
of emotion, memory and imagination:
weeping, and journaling, and meditating.
Thus I was able to weather the second loss
much more skillfully than I did the first.
like Yoda jumping over clankers
in the first episode of the Clone Wars.
Let us conclude
with a simple
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