The Day Dolly Died

Not more than a week ago, I had the random thought of what I’d do if Dolly died. I hadn’t been feeling particularly worried. I knew she had been battling an illness and was less in the public eye, but I had no evidence her death was imminent. It was just a thought that I wanted to move on from: God, that would be awful.

On Tuesday, I was back at my desk after a good meeting. Some things had recently fallen into place, and I was feeling buoyant. A quick scroll over on Facebook and I saw a friend’s post: “Check on your Dolly fans. We are not okay.” What?! I shook my head—no, no, no, this can’t be right. Next up was the official announcement (beautifully done, by the way) from her nephew. Denial (no!), anger (why?!), bargaining (why HER?!). I went through the first three stages* of grief in short order. Then depression. I arrived on the fourth and decided to linger there. Acceptance will have to wait.

Oh, if people would stop taking and just once try to give / We could make the world we’re living in a better place to live.

"A Better Place to Live" may be one of Dolly's lesser-known recordings, but I can find no better song to encapsulate this singular woman. Not one she’s known for, but one she lived. Today, she is being rightfully heralded as a modern-day saint—the most universally beloved human we’ve had the pleasure of knowing, whether we were lucky enough to have met her or not.

Recorded in 1969 and, of course, written by Dolly, the song appeared on her eighth solo album, Coat of Many Colors. Released in 1971, it quickly became the most critically acclaimed record of her relatively young career, and it still sits on many lists as one of the greatest country albums of all time. While the title track did the heavy lifting of opening the album, the upbeat but unassuming "A Better Place to Live" served as the final track, offering a fitting, hopeful bookend to Dolly's wistful beginning.

If we’d love one another instead of finding faults / We could afford the price of peace, love is all it costs

We are always better when we focus on what matters most, whether that is a coat stitched together from rags and love, or quite simply: giving, loving, forgiving, and rising together. Dolly knew this. Dolly lived this.

If we’d all climb together, we’d climb the highest hill / We could make the world we’re living in a better place to live

I spent hours this afternoon trying to focus on work, on things I had to do, but all I could do was scroll and cry. With audiophile parents, there was a lot of music in my house when I grew up—mostly jazz and blues, which didn’t hold my interest. But there were two worn albums in the country section of their vinyl collection that became my childhood favorites: Coat of Many Colors and Love is Like a Butterfly. I played them over and over, imagining her as a child and as a young woman in love. Her idyllic voice and simple beauty just made everything sweet.

I deepened my admiration when I saw her on the big screen, playing characters that didn’t stretch too far from her authentic self—with or without the big hair and sparkly outfits—and reading her memoir solidified all I had assumed. She was humble, funny, strong, sharp, savvy, and endlessly creative, but above all else, generous and loving. She was to be beheld forevermore. We went to Dollywood. I saw her at the Hollywood Bowl. I gushed when I could and held her in my heart. I heard the news today and my heart broke.

I discovered my particular love for her wasn’t particularly unique. I mean, I knew people loved her, but as much as me? Evidently so. Maybe even more. Tributes upon tributes, clips upon clips. I agreed with all I read and watched, was moved again and again, laughed here and there, cried some more, and saw the universal love that was expressed shift to despondence and despair. A bleak world has dimmed a bit more. For us all.

What would Dolly do?

There’s a bit of magic in a simple little smile / Something that just makes life seem a little more worthwhile.

And there’s a world of meaning in the touch of someone’s hand / A gentle touch that lets your brother know you understand

Dolly has told us what to do from the very beginning. She’s shown us the way. I’ll take her most famous lyric to heart as her final goodbye and trust she knows what’s best. She always has.

If I should stay

Well, I would only be in your way

And so I’ll go, and yet I know

I’ll think of you each step of the way

And I will always love you

Thank you Dolly. We’ve got this.

*-Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote about the stages of grief in 1969, the same year Dolly wrote A Better Place to Live. And while presented in a linear fashion, grief is nothing but. Current understanding recognizes that some may not experience all the stages, in a different order, or may feel them all at once. And, feeling significant grief when a beloved celebrity dies? It is quite normal, but can feel confusing. Collective grief is real, but can also be very personal, as secondary loss, it can have all the symptoms we see when one has lost a loved one. Sadness, withdrawal, fatigue. But if it is shunned or dismissed, may create more problems. Such misunderstood grieving may evolve into disenfranchised or suffocated grief for the griever. Be kind to yourself and the Dolly groupies among you. Do what Dolly would do.

Things!

For the first time, I realized the luminous Mary Oliver and I weren’t quite on the same page.

It’s been over a month now since I began what would be an arduous, two-week task of cleaning out my Kalamazoo storage unit. Why did I have a Kalamazoo storage unit, and what does that have to do with Mary Oliver, you ask? Well, one house downsizing and one move across the country created the need—too many things, not enough room—and that’s why Mary Oliver had hers, solidified in her poem, “Storage.” I think I had a few other reasons.

Oliver starts with her usual direct observation:

When I moved from one house to another
there were many things I had no room
for.

True that. In late 2020, I sold the house that was ours for 12 years and most recently served as quarantine central. A big house. Our family home. The home that saw the big kids go from elementary school to graduation, the home Charla was born into, and the home Brian last slept in. Going from 3,200 square feet to 1,600 square feet—a sweet home complete with a turret was waiting for me and my youngest—required significant downsizing.

The big kids were going their separate ways: Dylan and Olivia were newly married, with all their stuff headed to Iowa, and Sarah was moving into her own apartment. But that made little difference. The things that remained had accumulated over twenty-five years, filling up the garage, basement, closets, and cabinets. I come from good hoarding stock, so you know I thought it was all important.

But I found my limits. The basic living stuff that wasn’t meant for the new home was sold or donated. That was easy. But then there were the precious (and semi-precious) things. Brian’s things. His gear, his papers. Stuff from our lives before we were together. Stuff I hadn’t looked at in years but had a whiff of nostalgia. I didn’t even give it a second thought: they wouldn’t fit in the new home (literally and figuratively, Charla and I were beginning again), and they certainly wouldn’t be disposed of. Into the storage unit they went. Two years later, we moved to Santa Fe. You’d think I’d have cleared it all out then. Reviewed. Edited. Let go. Nope. More things went in. Less thought.

When I moved away, the storage unit and what it contained was mostly out of sight and out of mind. But I would remember what was there from time to time and feel a particular pang of grief and then relief, memories held and protected. Mary had a different reaction:

Occasionally I went there and looked in,
but nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.

So one day I undid the lock
and called the trash man. He took
everything.

Good for her. Four years later, I am back in Michigan for the summer, soaking up my new grandson for an extended period. Now I have time. Now it’s time to unburden. 

Initially, I was totally with Mary—look at all these things! 

Motivated to completely clear it out, Sarah and I started practically and efficiently while Sam and Elijah cheered us on. The easy stuff was up front: cushions without a couch—dumpster, clunky bed frames—donate; a working chainsaw (?)—sell. Not a twinge of the heart.

We are only a foot in. 

Sarah found Brian’s driver's license, randomly in a box of random things. Then I saw this thing—his video camera. Those things—a box of his college papers and photos and the desk he loved to work at.

And then, oh, this thing—the vintage large-format camera that had belonged to my dad. My dad? Oy. This was going to be hard.

Sarah and I were both immediately overcome and overwhelmed. Sarah was sad and angry at her dad for dying and putting us in this predicament. I was upset looking at the things that represented two of the most important men in my life, neither of whom could tell me anything of what these things meant to them.

As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important.

I wish they grew fewer, Mary. I really do.

I remembered the afternoon I tried to take down Brian's garden fence in Portage, weeping because rolling up that green wire fence felt like I was physically tearing him away from our yard. I had to learn then—and am still learning now—that physical things do not represent his place in my story. But standing in the humid Michigan heat, I felt I wasn’t ready for the physical and emotional weight of the storage unit, or for what I was tearing away.

Until I was. Lucky for me, I had therapy planned that day. I had been annoyed knowing I had to break away from the unit, but it was a colossal pain to reschedule, so I kept the call.

Donna validated the emotional and physical toll of such work—deferred grief work—and reminded me of the many ways that love weaves its way into the physical stuff of our lives. But she also reminded me that the love woven into our memories and experiences is what really matters. Conjuring Brian typing at his desk into the wee hours, or what I remember of my dad and me putting together a simple cabinet (yup, in the storage unit), are the real things of love. How grateful I am for these layers of memory.

I felt like the little donkey when
his burden is finally lifted. Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing–the reason they can fly.

Mary wants to burn it all down to make room for the birds (I mean, of course she does!). But my heart doesn't work in clean, sweeping blazes. My heart hoards love. However, I need not hoard things.

Sarah and I kept at it and made progress. I kept at it for two weeks more, lingering over the love and letting go of the things. I tossed, sold, and donated, and then donated some more. A widow of sixteen years came by to pick up three boxes of Christmas decorations that would be given to families in need—such a better place for the oodles of lights Brian had struggled with but kept alive. I’ll keep that memory, thank you very much.

Light for miles…

As I went through the boxes of saved papers, I found the deed to the cameras—a formal letter of gifting from a father to his daughter. Worthy of a frame. The camera stays. A few other precious family items stay with us, too: Brian’s mementos, the best of the best kid drawings; Dylan gets the desk; Sarah, a chair; Charla, a fairy cabinet.

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I mean, I really hate to split hairs with Mary, but it wasn’t about making room in my heart for love. I’ve said it before: our hearts are expandable. It is why a mother can love every child she has, their loves, and still make room for a grandchild and all the family to come. It is why we can have more than one true love over a lifetime, and love our fathers and stepfathers, too.

I finished what I set out to do. It was empty. I cried as the final piece, a broken cabinet, went to the dumpster—worrying I was betraying my father, but knowing I was freeing myself.

I chose to let go of the physical weight of these things that somehow intensified the weight of the memories. And I will carry the lightness of the love they represent in my growing heart instead, and let it soar a bit more.

Love is a Story we Never Tire of Telling…

I read those words on an early morning walk on the first day of March—a walk free of wind and full of intention, as I set off to bring myself back to the land and into my heart. The weather was decidedly spring-like, and I walked my usual neighborhood-to-open-space route, feeling the shift from the sad, sour mood of the night before as I hit the desert ground. As I look skyward, I’m thinking about all the planetary alignments taking place and how I’m invited to realign right alongside. It’s a good walk as I goalset and storyplot, knowing a new chapter of my life is unfolding.

Toward the end, I opened my email on my phone and found Pádraig Ó Tuama’s weekly missive—always an inspiration, his thoughts and a poem to boot—and as I skimmed (I am still walking after all), these words jumped off my little screen into my soul. A perfect reminder as I think about what is ahead this month: Love is a story we never tire of telling. Yes. Don’t you love a sentence that carries so much?

Love is a story we never tire of telling. Whether we know it or not, we are telling the story of love every day in so many ways—showing up for ourselves, our friends and family, and caring for colleagues, our community, and neighbors we know and don’t know. We tell the story of love in our actions and as we protest, pray, or participate; we tell it all the time.

But what really hit me reading those words was another meaning: the idea that Love is the story we never tire of telling. For me, March contains stories I’ve told so many times before—of disease, of awareness and action, of grief and acceptance, of life, and of death. March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and also the month Brian died, nine years ago.

For years, I have come into this month with body memory first, usually around late January or early February. Why am I sad? Oh, yes, the beginning of the end was right about now. Then March begins, and the stories I tell have a container and a reason for being repeated. The stories of colorectal cancer increasing in young people, of Brian’s late-stage diagnosis, of the impossible thought of what might have happened had he had a colonoscopy (he was 48 when he was diagnosed, not yet screening age). Again and again, I’ll share the stories and encourage colonoscopies. Love is a story we never tire of telling.

I’ll never tire of telling the story of Brian facing his diagnosis and death with so much strength and maybe a tad too much stoicism, but inspiring nonetheless, and heartbreaking. Because his life was a story of love: the way he loved every moment and laughed at most of them; the way he showed up for his family, his many jobs, his wonderful friends, for me, and for the three amazing humans he helped bring into the world and loved beyond reason. And he deserved more. But he lived a life full of love, culminating with an enormous final act—on the heels of being told he had liver failure, he shared how grateful he was for the time he was given; he wouldn’t have changed a thing. I don’t know how he did it. I tell this story a lot, but I tell it to myself more than anyone else. It’s been a driving force of my own journey of acceptance. I am blessed with the life I’ve lived so far, and I’m grateful for all that comes my way, good or bad, because how could I not be? Brian was a great teacher.

But this year, the stories are taking a different shape. I felt it earlier—the familiar triggers, yes, but with a glow after the grief, anticipating new beginnings. This month, a new story joined the fray: a wonderful continuation of Brian made an appearance with the birth of our first grandchild. To be sure, Elijah is the continuation of many stories, many lives, many loves—my daughter Sarah and her husband Sam, of course, and just think of all the individuals stretching as far back as we can imagine who had to find each other for this baby to be. And that Elijah (historically a prophet and a miracle worker) chose March to arrive, and not his February due date, emphasizes his story in my life as a luminous lineage of Brian’s.

I couldn’t be more grateful, more happy, or more excited about all the new stories that will unfold thanks to little Elijah, and I know Brian shares in all of them.

It is two weeks since I started to write this post, knowing what March would bring—familiar stories of gratitude and grief and new stories of babies and beginnings, all stories of so much love—and you can bet I’ll never tire of telling any of them.

Baby Elijah and Grammie GG

*This line comes from a bittersweet poem, “Dukka” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a poem of all the ways we love while enduring war. Please find her work featured in a beautiful episode of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound on On Being.

You Won’t Dig My Grave

I am no weeping willow

I am no fragile flower

To be taken by the frost or by the lateness of the hour.

I have lived in consternation of the road ahead for me

And despite that I can’t see that far, there are things that I can see . . .

A new song by acclaimed singer-songwriter Josh Ritter was released just a week ago, aligning synchronistically with a heartbreaker of a breakup and offering up what I know to be true at just the right moment of strength-defining clarity. That moment I’ve known before, when you pull out of the sadness and despair and face your life, sigh a deep sigh, and realize you are here to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn from the experience, and begin again.

You won’t dig my grave, you won’t dig my grave, I have lived among the angels, you never were that brave. You won’t dig my grave, you won’t dig my grave, I have been up to the mountain, there are things you can’t take.

To be clear, I am not speaking (via Josh) to my very sweet ex-lover, but rather to the situation, to the relentless tests of my strength and thorns to my heart. Realizing, though, that I’ve experienced incredible highs and the lowest of the lows in my now 55 years, a little piercing ain’t going to do too much.

I listened to the song on repeat as I walked the worn path around my neighborhood to the open space, finding the little desert blooms thirsty only for the sun, and reminding myself of all the little blessings and the abundance of love that surrounds, regardless of anything I do to invite or deserve it, and that yes, this won’t do me in, I’m all good with this slight step back to move forward.

I’ve not kept up writing as I intended when I started this blog last year. Aforementioned romance took up a lot of time, and miles to get to and fro, so moving the thoughts into my hands and onto a screen went by the wayside. However, the thoughts were a thinking while on the road, and ultimately helped me accept the things I don’t know and trust the things I do. Like, “good enough” love just won’t cut it for a heart that knows no bounds. Step in fully with me, or don’t step in at all.

In a week or so, I’ll be back home for a whole three years. In all honesty, it hasn’t been the fairy tale you and I imagined. I feel like I am just starting to gather again after a great unraveling that uprooted me from Michigan and all my loves to my great New Mexico land that I approached with such faith, believing the ground and sky would quickly heal my broken ways. What it offered was more real and ongoing than a happy-ever-after. My heart home has given me an open, comforting, trusting container to do the work, dissolve a bit more, wonder what it is I’m so desperately longing for, and find the ways to balance the searching with the living.

You’ve never been loved the way I have; you wouldn’t understand.

By Brian, yes, the universe, you people and this land even more. Sidestepping the shallow grave, I begin again.

I forgive you. For growing a capacity to love that is great, but matched only, perhaps, by your loneliness.

Of all the comforting words directed my way as a young widow, the well-meaning “you had true love, some don’t experience that at all” never helped me. What I heard, I’m sure not intended, was that I was selfish to want deep love again, that what Brian and I had was profound, and experiencing that kind of love even once is plenty for a lifetime. Yes, we had a great love, we were soul mates. What we experienced together wasn’t just a trusting love that sustained us through better and worse, sickness and health, but a shared and exponential ability to feel new depths and versions of love. A love that evolved through the mundanity and intensity of our life with kids, pets, and across three different states. Why wouldn’t I want that again?

The capacity to love didn’t die along with Brian nor is it reserved just for him. I have a big heart that, from time to time when I am consumed by grief, snugly holds Brian’s memory as it swells to every edge. The sadness I feel is the experience of love that no longer has a place to go. Then miraculously my heart keeps its shape when the grief subsides. His memory settles in a comfortable corner (not too far away) and my heart fills with the lightness of love. Sometimes romantic love, more often an agapic love activated by me, my friends, nature, family, humanity, and a warm, universal energy that connects us all. This kind of love lifts and carries me through. Until the pangs of loneliness show up and seek center stage, momentarily obscuring all else, reminiscent of grief, but characterized by a desire for love that also has no place to go. 

“Phase One,” beautifully written by Dilruba Ahmed, and the third poem in Poetry Unbound, offers a litany of faults and a generous refrain of forgiveness. Reading it reminded me of how hard I am on my heart. I urge it to lighten up and not expect too much, blame it for falling too fast, grieving too long, and feeling too much. The title of this post is a stanza in the poem, toward the end, as the list of faults grows and the real culprits are finally named: love and loneliness. When I first read it, I focused on the loneliness, attention-hog that it is, glossing over the embedded compliment. I read it once more and reflect on the positive quality of capacity. And I realize that my capacity to feel the strength, nuance, range, distinctness, and intertangling of emotions, all rooted and related to love, is enormous. I can feel the mass of these emotions, the weight of grief, the gravitational pull of loneliness, and the lightness of love. What a gift. I don’t forgive my capacity—on the contrary—I embrace it, love it, and hope it continues to grow as long as I’m alive.

Let me be ok.

How often did I utter this simple plea after I moved back home to New Mexico? Please, let me be okay. It would start desperate, while sobbing, feeling incredibly alone, and not at all sure that I could do the big things, like move across the country with a U-haul full of stuff to a home I hadn’t seen before, to a place I hadn’t lived, without a job and not much of a plan. It felt too hard, too much, too scary, and to top it off I brought an innocent bystander, my youngest child (and her cat) with me, who does that? (People. people do.)

Then my request would be softer, while meditating, after the cathartic sob, looking at my surroundings, thinking of the luck I’ve had, and feeling an ounce of optimism creep in. But the tiny verb in my prayer was worth consideration. Let. Finding this one permission-seeking word in Kei Miller’s* inquiring poem Book of Genesis (itself being the preeminent story of Let) spurred on all this thought of my wordplay creating reality, eventually shifting my perspective from a prayerful “let me be okay” to a calmer “I am okay” despite whatever drug me down. At times I would recall the more practical phrase 'suck it up, buttercup' that Brian was quite fond of. He often directed it at our kids (poor souls), but it helped further shift my perspective. I could hear his sharp advice and knew to be okay, one had to accept the current situation and actually BE.

But was it him I was asking to begin with? Who do we turn to when we are at our lowest? When we are feeling doubt, uncertainty, or fear. I’ve never had a direct communion with God, rather I feel a connection to a spiritual Universe—to the collective energy of all living things** and all who have died, the stars above us, the ground below, all of it of us. But when I need more than stardust, I can recognize a singular consciousness—in the form of a nameless, loving energy, or yes, Brian’s personality and voice, or even, occasionally, my dad, now 26 years gone. At these times of utter aloneness, what mattered wasn’t who as much as what. I need to be reassured by a spiritual other moving me from “let me” to “I am,” someone to confidently say, “You are okay.”

So I would hear those words, from someone come and gone, a Higher Power, or my highest self. You are ok. Really. You are. Like the singular flowers that go it alone, so many of them I’d see on my walks, coming through sidewalks, or in a patch of grass. With a little more strength, I could move to the next day, the next moment, the next experience—which I would simply let. be.

——

*This was the second poem in Poetry Unbound. Simple and profound. Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet who teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and often explores themes of identity, language, and place. Were all these poets hand-selected for me? I think so.

**I am not alone, roughly 3 in 4 people believe in a higher power, be it a God, gods, or some other divine source or universal energy. You can learn more in this 2023 Fetzer Institute-funded spirituality research study and report I co-authored, with a particular focus on how beliefs and practices changed during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

A woman. By a river. Indestructible.

I haven’t been by the river in well over a year, the Chama River, where my late husband's ashes flow and where we spent so much time as a young couple. But I think of it often. I like to think Brian’s ashes are still there, flowing and clinging, though it has been over seven years since the kids and I threw most of his ashes into this wild river. The water itself isn’t much to look at, muddy from erosion, surpassed in beauty by the curves of its container and the multi-colored cliffs and mountains that rise and hold the land in northern New Mexico, just a mile west of Ghost Ranch, aka Georgia O-Keefe territory. Yet, it is remarkable water.

The last time I went to the Chama, on what would have been Brian’s 58th birthday, I lay as close as possible to the edge, finding a flat outcropping of rocks to stretch out on my back. I closed my eyes to focus on the sound of the water, made louder by its volume and urgency. Opening my eyes, I rolled over and watched the water closest to me, where it pooled up, resting in little protective spaces along the edge, then into the current once again. It reminded me of new skaters on the edge of a roller rink, holding on to the edge for dear life (Life), then, taking a deep breath, letting go, stumbling a bit but moving on, just like the water catches a stick or two, some stacked rocks, a little mud, then flows on to join the current.

As I read the first poem in Poetry Unbound*—Wonder Woman by Ada Limón—I parse this line: A woman. By a river. Indestructible. While the author** describes surviving life with chronic pain, I think of resilience borne of grief and fast-moving currents that take us without consent. Sometimes we let go willingly, not knowing how we will get through, but trusting we will. I think of myself, in my memory, so many times, by a river. I think of figurative currents in my life that carried me back to New Mexico. So I could witness the real rivers that keep moving, the mountains that give perspective, and the sky that is always huge, always hopeful. And heal. 

I’ve come to know that healing never ends, it ebbs and flows, shape-shifts, changing what we need and what we see along the way. Often, we are unaware of the forces that propel us forward, just that we’ve somehow moved through. At other times, we know exactly what we need or what is helping us along. Coming home to New Mexico would do wonders for my hurting soul, I knew that. And lying by the river in meditation would remind me of my resilience. A woman. By a river. Indestructible. My transforming in place has taken many turns and is often opaque, just like my beloved Rio Chama, but it keeps happening as I keep going, resting when needed, forever connected to the river’s flow.

—

*I have one or two copies of Poetry Unbound I’d love to gift. I was so taken by it and how it helped me that I rushed and bought a dozen copies, doling them out like Bibles whenever someone expressed a slight interest. Send me a comment and let me know if you would like a copy.

**Ada Limón is the current U.S. Poet Laureate, the first Latina to hold the position, and the first to be renewed for a second term. I also discovered that her goal is “to use poetry to draw attention to the natural world, and to promote the idea that poetry can help people connect with their emotions and heal.” 🤍