LOVE IS BLIND

Grieving Ferris

Seven years ago on March 29th, the woman who saved my life died. Yesterday as I cleaned out some files, I found a long-forgotten poem I’d written for her.

Ferris, an early student of Thich Nhat Hanh and a colleague of Jon Kabat-Zinn, had been my therapist when life fell apart in my late thirties. She lifted the veils that obscured my perceptions, taught me how to forgive, and re-ignited my lapsed meditation practice. A year or so after our work together had stopped, I bumped into her in town. After catching up and hugging, she said, “We should get together.” I asked, “Is that okay with your having been my therapist?” She said, “Sure, I’m not your therapist anymore.”

So began our friendship. We didn’t see each other often, but when we did it was as though no time had passed since our last conversation. Ferris, who was earthy and reverent, had been an actress, a natural childbirth advocate in the 1960s, and the builder and occupant of an off-grid cabin in the woods. I was thrilled that she wanted to be my friend and did my best to be one by not assuming our time together to be an extension of therapy. I was rewarded by her trust in confiding in me.

When Ferris lost her sight due to benign brain tumors, I visited her more often. Blindness had not diminished her exuberance for life. We’d go for walks with her holding my arm while relishing in detailed descriptions of the sky’s color, the trees’ shadows, and the light hitting the mountains. She would say, “I see it so clearly in my mind. I love when an artist talks about her surroundings. Bless you.” She often asked when I first arrived, “Tell me everything you saw on your ride here.”

That March night when I was told of Ferris’s passing, I went outside to sit on the dock. It was moments from nightfall, chilly. I practiced what she had taught me to do when faced with painful emotion: breathe in the darkness and breathe out light. We both were born in years of the dragon, though twelve years apart. As I focused on my breath while crying, a dense fog rolled down the lake wrapping me in a comforter of impermanence, at once reassuring and sublime—the dragon’s breath swaddling me in an emblem of emptiness and form.

One crisp early morning later that spring as I walked the dogs to the whale songs of the lake’s ice surface melting, I thought about how much Ferris would have savored this moment—the air’s intention to warm thwarted by the groaning mile-long ice cube. Appreciation for her friendship, wisdom, and unconditional love saturated me. Even though I’m not a poet, the first two stanzas of a poem presented themselves, so I wrote them down as soon as I got back to the house. An hour later, the sun shining in a blue sky, as I looked out the window at the lake while eating breakfast, a self-possessed auburn and gray speckled coyote walked out of the woods into my line of vision, paused in contemplation, turned left, and trotted buoyantly down the lake looking side to side with a grin.

For Ferris

Prehistoric lake chanteuse singing her solid surrender to spring.

Breathing in this moment for you. Breathing out joy in the morning soundtrack.

Venus, a headlight in the southeastern sky moments before

Negative space brightens between branches.

Breathing in this moment for you. Breathing out joy in the color of dawn.

Cloudless sky diluted at the horizon. Snow blanket bright white.

Coyote bounds free.

Breathing in this moment for you. Breathing out joy into my grief.