Finding Easter Eggs

Easter 2024

Easter is a time of renewal and rebirth—of faith, spirit, and being. It’s the promise of spring and all that it portends. And it’s a powerful metaphor on many levels for me this year, a time of profound transition—as I release those situations, relationships, and identities that no longer serve or nurture me, and I intentionally welcome the people, places, and experiences that enrich and fulfill me—without over-functioning or dissolving my boundaries.

Easier said than done, especially when the indelible subtext of my son Elliot’s almost six-year absence will always be prominently present.

Still, Easter is a season of surprises, filled with eggs, from tasty to tangy, and yes, I’ve had my fill of the latter recently. So, it’s not a surprise that I had my own “wild hare”  yesterday (though some say, “wild hair” and I had that, too). I compiled my posts from Easters past. It’s an informative and often heart-wrenching journey that helps me discern what I knew, when I knew it—and what I did not know yet. Also, it’s interesting to track the map of my impulse to write. Remembering my Elliot always (May 17, 1992 – August 5, 2018).

Easter 2023: Catching My Breath

On this, the fifth Easter since I lost my precious oldest son, Elliot, in a tragic motorcycle accident, I am flooded with potent and persistent images of the present and the absent—also struggling with fresh flavors of loss.

The memory of Elliot’s astonishing junior saxophone recital at the University of Toronto on Easter 2014 is still as palpable as it is irretrievable. Then, there are remembrances of those heavy years as a single mom, surreptitiously hiding coin-filled plastic eggs in the dark after my boys had finally gone to bed while preparing to “celebrate” with my terminally ill parents in extended care. But I smile when a flash crosses my mind’s eye of my mom’s infamous “black and white” coconut-festooned bunny cakes of Easters past. Just need to remember to breathe:

Breathtaking Now

Breathing in liquid 

grace

finding precious 

little 

space

within the chaos of 

this 

place—

where staccato

thoughts 

I erase

with each

sacred 

inhale

I embrace

Easter 2021: Shakuhachi and Saxophone

Easter is a complicated and befuddling holiday—so many meanings, layers, beliefs, rituals, and memories, but one stands out for me. Easter will always remind me of Elliot. In 2014, Easter Sunday just happened to merge with his spectacular fourth-year saxophone recital at the University of Toronto. His precise, riveting, and affecting command of the instrument mesmerized and stunned his rapt audience of devoted fans. I remember feeling there could not possibly be enough room in my heart to contain the flood of joy, love, and pride I experienced in those remarkable moments.

On Easter, I do my best to stay steeped in the beauty of that sacred space seven years ago—which feels like both a lifetime and a heartbeat. As I honor this rare and extraordinary human, forever missed, I endeavor to embrace the grace and joy of this glorious memory—and the notion that love never dies.

Here is one of Elliot’s most haunting poems, “Shakuhachi,” which describes his love for another eccentric instrument. This piece evokes his unbridled passion for life’s music—and words.

SHAKUHACHI
by Elliot Wright

Someone should not-
ify the authorities—
This can’t belong to me.

I shouldn’t be
allowed to touch it when in
every Japanese

restaurant I’ve been
in they hasten to me with
a fork,

this mendicant ghost’s
pneumatic bamboo carapace,
this severed bundle

of lacquered vacuoles.
Hollowed stock, red bore tender
as a ribbon of

his throat—he who is
surely ululating to-
ward me from the Pure

Land in futile rage.
It came to me woven in
the raft of my

grandfather’s trinkets,
that gregarious poacher,
anxious collector,

lover of things and
strangers—those stop-gap measures
against that vacuum

the mind so abhors.
No wonder, then, that he should
have parted with this

chime-hammer of the
void, this attendant to the
court of nothingness—

this contradiction
given me

Easter 2018: There’s No Place Like Home

This excursion is neither business nor pleasure. It’s in the gray area in between—the shadow and the light of Good Friday and Easter at an extended-stay hotel. The staff is affable, the yogurt plentiful, and Wi-Fi free. Indeed, the plumbing gods have spoken, and I have no option but to listen.

”Sometimes, that’s just how the universe rolls,” says my college-attending son Ian. He’s very Zen that way. So, perhaps, that’s the lesson.

We control nothing.

However, this scene is dramatic, because it’s the second plumbing expulsion I have endured since Dec. 31, 2017. Grateful I have insurance, but as it often turns out, that feels more like a curse than a blessing in the reality of actually using it.  Wrangling a second water damage claim in the space of ninety days makes my adjuster quite testy.

It’s complex.  This time, my neighbor, with whom I share a wall in my “Grey Gardens” townhome community, had several slab leaks that summarily seeped downhill into my dining room and kitchen. I made the grim discovery when I hopped off the last step of my staircase into my dining room one morning about three weeks ago, and . . . it splashed.

This was a red flag.

As the saga unfolded, my neighbors’ plumber dug a massive trench under their slab only to discover they went in the wrong direction. Oops! Then, absolute mayhem ensued when the befuddled plumber used the wrong material for the pressure-line repair and had to redo all the work to pass city inspection. It has been like a bad dream — one thing after another. They repaired one leak, and another pipe broke. They fixed that. Then, another one went. Even the monster jet-engine-style drying fans in my moist ground-floor rooms could not keep up. Once again, brand new wood floors, round two. That means an encore of boxing up my belongings, rebuilding kitchen cabinets, and living on takeout. Disconnected appliances and the stench of raw mildew sent me, Izzy, and Patches to our modest hotel each eve on a wave of bittersweet gratitude.

But the most disconcerting part is the suspended animation—navigating an untethered existence between hotel and home, saturation and deconstruction, a rock and a hard place. It’s a disorienting purgatory that’s like camping in your regular life—except without the natural beauty, peace, or blazing fire for the marshmallows. This mode makes you a special kind of crazy, ruminating on deep, probing questions like, “Is there really any good place for the litter box in a hotel room?” Then there’s the day I need those black pumps for a grown-up client meeting, and all I have at the hotel is a pair of magenta-sequin flip-flops.

However, hotel life has a certain simplicity. It’s making a living that’s the hard part, unless of course, it’s the oldest profession.

But here’s the real epiphany—ironic for the Easter season, I know. I think this all might be a useful metaphor for my life. Both plumbing leaks were stealth invaders—obscured by walls, doors, and foundations. They required deep excavation to expose the hidden damage. That’s what’s needed for effective repair and healing of the human kind, as well.  Like these projects, I am a work in progress—revealing more hidden damage with each passing day, repairing it, and continuously evolving.

I deceived myself when I purchased this place several years ago. There was so much to do to make it even remotely livable. That should have been a major warning sign, but it’s probably what hooked me. Fixing things can give me a superficial, yet admittedly frustrating, sense of purpose—whether it’s about plumbing, people, or projects. My unconscious mantra is typically: “I can make this work,” But increasingly, I’m seeing the value of releasing some of this assumed responsibility and valuing myself enough to make better choices—and set healthier boundaries. So, Dorothy, what have you learned?

1. Durable stability is an inside job.

2. Sometimes, a disaster is a potent teacher.

3. Life can be exhausting.

4.  It doesn’t have to be this hard — to be me.

5. And breathe.

   

Easter 2009: Are You Listening to Your Life?

Theologian Frederick Buechner writes:

“How do you listen to your life? How do you get into the habit of doing it? How do you keep your ears perked and your eyes peeled for the presence of God or the presence of anything else? One thing I have said, which I think is true, is to pay attention to any of those moments in your life when unexpected tears come in your eyes. You never know when that may happen, what may trigger them. Very often I think if you pay attention to those moments, you realize that something deep beneath the surface of who you are, something deep beneath the surface of the world, is trying to speak to you about who you are.

You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it. Almost any movie before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.

They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are. More often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and summoning you to where you should go to next.

And I wondered why. I think I know why. I think what happened was that we were remembering Eden. This marvelous dance of humans and beasts and joy and freedom – and God was certainly present there this joy and freedom from so many things that plague us. It is where we all started from, I think, in some fashion, some odd way. It is where, by God’s good grace, we are all headed.

Just this glimpse of it was more poignant than grief and something I’ve always remembered. That is an example of what I mean by listening to your life. It would be an example of the best advice I can give you. If anyone wants to start listening in a new way, keep track of those moments when something brings those tears to your eyes.”

After absorbing the wisdom of Buechner, I thought about some tears that have caught me off guard in my life:

1. The laughter of my sons.
2. My favorite music.
3. Some moments of triumph in movies or plays. Ian always asks, “Are you really crying, mom?” I always answer, “Yes, happy tears.”
4. A passionate kiss.
5. A good massage.

With a twinkle in his pastoral eye, Joe Clifford said we have a profound, spiritual reaction to joy—to God. And it’s not enough to experience the moment — we must use it as a way to discover our own life’s calling—what God has called to do and be. Are you listening to your life — and your tears?

Happy hunting for your Easter eggs . . . all year round.