2022

My Temple My Body by Autumn Skye

I wanted to hate this year for what it took from me. Our family has been somewhat cursing it since Tanner left.

But when I sat down to reflect on 2022, I didn’t find the disdain I thought I would.

Though losing him would never have been my preference, I’ve changed in ways I can appreciate from this vantage point. The vantage point that sees things as they are. Unchangeable.

There is a type of abundance in grief I hadn’t expected to find early on. An abundance in all directions. Of love, feeling, emoting, of heart opening sorrow… of anger, rage, disgust. Of fighting with reality. It all exists in plenty.

There has also been the unexpected, Like how, in our shared grief, I’ve both come to learn about, and remember more of Tanner’s implicit goodness, open heartedness, and human kindness than I had known on my own.

Why? Because we regularly share our stories with each other. His friends have entrusted me with their experiences of his love and generosity. His brothers and sisters with his goofiness and sense of humor. The roles I didn’t know him in.

So now I get to be the repository of his memory. The keeper of his stories. It’s a new way of holding him in my body, and in my bones. A new way for him to be knitted into my cells.

And though there is massive sadness, longing, and pain, alongside that, there has also been 6 straight months of celebration. Of praise for the gift of knowing him, of loving him, of holding him, and having had the opportunity to do life with him.

Our family is also tighter, the things that matter most have been implicitly magnified. Without discussion we forgive quickly, and squabble less.

My focus has shifted, my gaze lingers longer, my hands touch more often, the people I love.

My edges have softened, I’m more patient, tender, and gentle, than I’ve ever been before.

I also didn’t know that, though I lost him physically, I didn’t exactly lose him. Grief has a way of keeping our loved ones present. Immanent even. I carry him with me everywhere I go.

There is no “left behind” the way I feared in the beginning. He is moving right alongside me into 2023 and beyond.

This sense of being with him is double edged. It means the grief is ever present, and I have to find moments of living in the spaces between. But it also means all of my moments are infused with my beloved. And I’ll take that over emptiness, silence, or numbness any day.

What Tanner is giving me now is an unending well of love to draw from. It’s breathtaking in its beauty. And beastly in its tragedy.

My own soul has transformed into a refuge. A holy temple to come and worship and commune with the Son/Sun.

All of these seeming paradoxes are teaching me to live with multiple truths at once. Expanding my capacity to hold reality in a way that feels multidimensional and alive.

Like I was when I was a child, everything, and I do mean everything, feels sacred. It's reawakened me to the living, breathing, inspirited, cosmos once again.

There is a current of Eros inside grief, that connects death to life, and life to death. The never ending turn of time. My son is in this current, and this current is in me.

I will not curse any part of it, because cursing it would dishonor his story. His death is now as much a part of his story, as his life.

I will have reverence for it all. Even if I never understand it. I will honor it just the same.