Maybe my Anger is the 'Medicine'.
A bit more on death and beauty.
I gotta confess: after releasing my last essay on Mina’s memorial, I was hit with a wave of writer’s remorse and even guilt.
I ‘forgot’ to include how beautiful the altar was. I didn’t share how thoughtful it was that they who had set up the event had included a table with some of her clothes on it so people could take home a ‘piece’ of her. I, myself, took home a floor length green jacket that was clearly bought for me because it would have dragged on the ground on her. I also grabbed a onesie with monkeys on it for my daughter. They who set up the memorial had put out little vials which contained her ashes; something I have only seen done for pets, but it was symbolically and magically so appropriate for her essence.
It feels important to speak of these things, too. It feels so important to say that for a few hours I felt like I had written the wrong essay, but under that feeling I realized that I felt like it was wrong for me to still be angry—but I am.
Besides clinging to my friend Alissa when the tears overtook me during the ceremony, we also walked to the edge of Lake Union to release tealight candles in floating lanterns as Mina had requested in her will. Alissa, her husband, me, and my brother wound up congregating together for the stroll. We were loud and a bit irreverent and knowing Mina as I do I know she was with us—and she loved it. I can hear her giggles as we walked. As we approached the water we heard a strange sound. At first I thought it was a child crying from distress, but upon looking up we all saw a huge owl perched directly above us in the rafters of the stage that faces the lake. The owl screeched and took flight. It was eerie, odd, and out of place.
That is how death is when it swoops down amongst the living: eerie, odd, and out of place. But not really. Death is always with us whether we are aware of it or not. She and Life are exchanging little gifts between them that are the grace and indignities of our maturation and aging processes: wrinkles, lines, sagging skin, and gray hair. Like the owl, death was here before we developed our societies, cities, and rituals for tending to it. Death is only as natural as life and as I said in my other essay: life can hold all these things.
It feels good to speak of the beauty, like I am suddenly not a traitor to polite society and a traitor to the social niceties expected of us—and I am still angry.
Can we be both grateful and angry? Gawd I hope so. I think it is the only way I can possibly be with the loss and tragedy of not only Mina’s death, but death in general. Life as well.
Just this morning one of our mutual friends shared a post about her dog being in a devastating way. I immediately left the friend a voice note saying “Let her go”. I did it with total tenderness and compassion and tears in my voice and eyes. But I did it. I could feel death tugging at the decimated body of her fur baby and I could not allow myself to not say something. It was received and then we both spoke of feeling Mina.
It was a relief. It is a relief to share familiar feelings with others. I, too, lost a dog a few years ago. It’s sad and hard and it feels better to share it than to keep it in. We met there in that sadness for a moment over chat.
It is also a relief to admit to my anger. If I pretend it is not there then what else am I not allowed to feel? It was a relief to hear others say that they felt relieved because I expressed it in my last essay. I expressed my anger when I stood up before the congregation at the memorial. I expressed my anger when I first found out about her death. Some part of me has been aware of my anger every moment of everyday ever since. No, anger is not always in the foreground of my awareness, but make no mistakes it is there—and it does not go away.
It is not fucking fair!
Mina was taken and it was not a natural death. It was evil in action and I will not withhold my rage at the dark forces that attacked my friend and that brutally and habitually attack our Mother. Mina’s death was an attack on The Mother. Does this detract from the beauty? No. It brings it into almost painful relief. Not only the beauty of the memorial—the beauty of life and of Mina’s life, specifically.
Fuck! I am angry. I won’t apologize for it, or sanitize it. I want to pull down temples and gouge out eyes and rip to shreds everyone who hurt her as well others who dared to take advantage of her death.
It’s ugly and it’s holy—my rage—a sacred vulgarity that burns and which I want to turn from, but I can’t. I can’t hold it either, not in its entirety. It’s for more than Mina. It’s for the perversion and rape of life. It's for the pollution and usury of the wild and innocent. It’s deep and primal and I cannot control it.
It’s beautiful—this rage—and it scares me.
Did I need others to validate my anger, to ease my guilt, and verify this phase of my grief that may or may not ever come to an end? Yes. Yes, I did.
So may this be validation if you need it, too:
Your rage is holy. Learn to hold it. Your anger is justified. Turn it towards justice. Your grief can hold all of that and so much more. And around everything we are wrapped in grace—and She is always watching.
Lotsa love,
~Justice