May 2016

Bolinas CA

I leave home in Pacifica around 8am on a Saturday morning with my thermos of Earl Grey tea with honey and half and half. I drive up Highway 1 through sun and fog, along the ocean and over the Golden Gate Bridge, listening to Stevie Nicks lament lost loves. I finally emerge into Marin County, where I stop to get food for the day at Good Earth in Mill Valley — beet salad, a baked tofu sandwich, and sparkling water for lunch; tamari roasted almonds, dark chocolate, and tiny clementines for snacks. 

I meander over the hills of Marin and down into Bolinas, a Northern California hamlet of hippies and artists. The GPS guides me to Commonweal, a retreat center housed in an old drafty building on a ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It's cold and I park far away, not having been there before. I wander until I find a room warmed by a fire in a big wood stove, filled with a diverse group of about twelve.  

I'm a few minutes late and introductions have already started. The circle widens to include me, and I find space for my notebook and bag of food, tissues, and soft gray blanket as I take off my jacket, unwind my scarf, and seat myself on the dark blue carpet. Maura, the retreat leader, keeps the introductions going.  

“Michael, from San Anselmo. My wife Kathy died about five years ago from breast cancer. I’ve been to other retreats here, and found out about this one through the newsletter.” An older gentleman with a bald head and a beard wearing sports tech clothes, holding a thermos of coffee. 

“I’m Sylvia. I have stage 4 lymphoma. I’ve been in and out of the hospital countless times over the last few years. I live in Oakland, and I know Maura from her group at Alta Bates.” An African American woman in her sixties with a kind face in baggy dark gray sweats.  

“My name is Shirin. My twelve year old daughter has cancer. We live in Berkeley, and go to the group at Alta Bates too.” A delicate woman with a smooth cap of dark hair in her late thirties, wearing a rose pink skirt and cream colored blouse with tan tights and knee high brown boots. 

My turn. “I’m Shivani. I live in Pacifica. My husband Dave passed away about two and a half months ago. My therapist told me about this retreat when he was in hospice.” I’m thirty-eight and have blue hair and tired eyes. I’m wearing ratty black yoga pants and Dave’s BAD SEED t-shirt with an oversized blue cashmere cardigan pulled tight around me, and gray fingerless gloves threaded with silver. 

We go around the circle until everyone has a chance to introduce themselves. Then Maura introduces the structure of the retreat. “We’ll spend our time today writing, journeying, and discussing the archetypal human journey of impermanence, illness, and healing.” She talks about Joseph Campbell’s work, how we mythologize our lives so that we can understand and process pain and grief.

We start by setting intentions for the day in our notebooks. Mine is: “Figure out how to grieve and let go without letting it take over my whole life."  

Next comes a guided meditation. We lay on our backs around the room. I wrap my blanket around myself, and place my head on a pillow. Maura sits in the middle of the circle on a low stool with a drum between her knees. Ba-dam. Ba-dam. Ba-dam. “Feel the earth support you. Feel it spin beneath you.” My eyes drift shut. 

“Go down into the earth.” Ba-dam. I picture myself tunneling down into the floor and through the dirt beneath the building. 

“Emerge into a place of comfort and calm.” My mind wanders. What is a place of comfort for me? Dave’s arms. Our bed. No, that’s not what she means. Ba-dam. 

I drop down and find myself in a clearing in a field of yellow wild flowers. There's a small stone cottage in the distance, neat but faded, surrounded by lilac bushes and jasmine. Redwoods, ancient and lean, tower above the clearing. I hear the waves breaking beyond the forest. The breeze is scented with brine and honey and sunshine. 

Towards the ocean or to the cottage? I wonder, even as I start to make my way through the flowers and down the small hill.

I feel the sun warm my left cheek and the top of my head as I walk. Two hawks sail above, riding the wind in and out of the valley while starlings dance against the clear sky. I reach the cottage and pause. The scent of lilacs and jasmine is heavy here, leading me deeper into the garden and up to the wooden door.  

I lay my hand against the wooden door, feel the warmth it has absorbed from the sun pass into my hand. I pause to listen for movement or a greeting from inside, but there are only the birds and the breeze.

I slowly enter. One end of the room is filled with bookshelves and a big soft red couch. A kitchen with a wood stove and a small wooden table with two chairs fills the other end. A vase of sweet peas and cornflowers, and a Japanese steel gray teapot with two small yellow ceramic tea cups sit on the table. I pour myself tea, breathing in the chamomile and fennel steam, and hold the cup between my hands to warm them as I wander over to peruse the books. 

“A being with a message for you joins you in your place of comfort and calm.” Maura says. I turn towards the door as someone walks in. They are wearing the body of Sylvia from Oakland. They radiate warm light.

“Listen to the message.” Sylvia smiles at me, and goes to sit on the couch. I move slowly, sitting at the other end and clutching my teacup so hard that tea sloshes onto my hand.  

“Do you have a message for me?” I ask. 

Sylvia sits, gazing into my eyes, radiating light. I shift, uncomfortable, counting my breaths in and out as I try to understand the message.

"Is this a message from Dave?” I ask. She doesn’t respond. I breathe in and out, holding her gaze, feeling her warmth and light. 

Ba-dam. “Come back up through the earth and return to this room,” Maura says from far away. 

“Love.” I say. "Is there anything else?” I ask, almost desperately.  

Ba-dam. I want to stay with Sylvia in the cottage, but find myself abruptly back in my body, curled up in my blanket lying on the floor. 

Maura brings us back to the circle slowly, allowing us time to come out of the meditation. I sit up and look around for Sylvia, who hadn’t made much of an impression on me earlier. I study her covertly as she chats with the friend she came with. She seems nice but nothing out of the ordinary. Why her? I wonder. 

Later, over lunch, Sylvia and I talk. I share clementines and dark chocolate with her, and tell her about my shoulder and neck pain, always an issue but worse since Dave died. I mention that I feel guilty for complaining when she has stage 4 cancer, but she shrugs that off and talks about how myofascial release has helped her with chronic pain. She demonstrates with a lacrosse ball she has tucked in her bag, putting the ball between her shoulder and the wall and rolling her gently back and forth over it, her whole body swaying as she concentrates on unwinding the tension. She hands me the ball afterwards, telling me to keep it and use it on my shoulder. “Lacrosse balls work better than tennis balls or golf balls,” she says, “They’re squishier.”

I don’t tell her that a being wearing her body brought me a message of love during the morning meditation.

After lunch, we all go our separate ways for a walking meditation. It’s cold, even wrapped in layers of soft cloth, the sky solid with clouds. I pass others from the group, nodding or smiling, allowing each other space to be with our grief. I stroll slowly down a path above the ocean, noticing the grays and blues and browns, the landscape beaten down by the wind and ocean spray to small gnarled cypress and thick sheafs of beach grasses. 

I come finally to a falling down wooden chapel, and push open the door. Inside there are wooden shelves and tables filled with white and gray and black flat rocks with words written on them. Joy. Grief. Pain. Desire. Anger. Fear. Names of lost loves punctuate the emotions of the rocks, and I sob as I absorb the grief and bittersweet beauty filling the room.

I watch a bluebird as I wander back, flitting from branch to branch and finally disappearing as I return to the building. I wonder if it is Dave, who used boyisabird for his usernames and email address for years. In blue, my favorite color, so I recognize him.

We re-enter the retreat room, and close out the day by writing words on two flat rocks. Maura will take one to the chapel, and the other will go home with us. “Write down something you want to leave behind and something you want to carry with you.” I write grief on one of the rocks and place it in the center pile. I put my second rock in my bag and slowly gather my things, quietly thanking Maura and the room at large as I leave.

Later, after a slow drive back down the coast and a soak in the hot tub with a glass of white wine, I place Sylvia’s lacrosse ball and a small white rock with the word “love” on it on my makeshift altar, next to Ganesh and a small jar of Dave’s ashes. I write in my notebook, “Today I began to reorient from grief towards love."