Every Lent a simple wreath hangs on our door. It’s a peace sign made from vines by a third world woman. Someone trying to better her life and therefore the lives of her family. Woven by fingers practicing hope.
This sign also hung on our door from the first morning of our grief. I took down our summer garland of blue and yellow flowers and hung this one instead. Attempting some way of marking us as a home in a different time now than everyone else’s. Dramatically, wanting to wrap the wreath in black ribbon but couldn’t find the energy for it. So the peace sign hung as is for months, actually until Thanksgiving or Advent, I don’t remember which. Longer however than I lasted in my all black widow’s wardrobe which began to hang heavy on my shoulders.
This morning fetching the newspaper once again at the end of the drive and in the wet, I looked at this wreath of peace and suddenly wanted to replace it being done with long dreary Iowa springs and grief and Lent. It’s color the same as the dead foliage falling against our home. Deciding to find our white flowered Eastertide wreath hanging downstairs in the storage room waiting for its turn on the door. It’s lightness signaling something good, something looked forward to and now here. Thinking its flowers bouncing off the budding daffodils along our front walk could create a cacophony of color celebrating the return of something we deem beautiful.
So days before Palm Sunday marks the beginning of what comes next in the Christians story, I took down our circlet of peace. Not because I have fully found peace, but maybe because I haven’t. Not yet. Not quite yet. But maybe I trust, because Tony taught me this and Aunt Linda keeps reminding me, that I can and will heal and will come to some sort of peace with what has happened. A one time trauma not comparable to perpetuated trauma, not as complicated, a clean break in trauma speak, no emotional pins or surgery escalating matters even more. Yet still dark, occasional panic attacks creeping in from out of no where except now I know how to appease this shadow.
Breath in for five. No hold. Breath out for five.Repeat.
Breath in for five. No hold. Breath out for five. Repeat.
Breath in for five. No hold. Breath out for five. Repeat.
On and on in a circle of breath, maybe five minutes or so, until the agitated sensations running throughout my body pass away returning me to my now normal. Aligning my vagus nerve (this large wrapping living rope like nervous system soul Tony loved so much) with my beating and hurting heart. Making a peace of sorts between me and my trauma and my ongoing grief. Aligning all in this mighty breath of life. Finding Easter in my breath. Life. Resurrected from grief’s darkness. Again and again. Breath after breath. Blooming even in my muck.
Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez 