I shaved my face a couple weeks back. I don’t know if it was the way my hair was sticking up or the funny hairline we share, but when I looked in the mirror last night and saw myself, I thought I looked like my grandpa, Cecil Vernon Jewett (or at least the old pictures of him when he was around my age). He served in the Navy during WWII, afterwards serving as a minister in the Salvation Army alongside my grandma for the rest of his career. I have fond memories of visiting their old St. Pete home as a kid and watching westerns on the floor underneath is old trusty recliner, getting up early and going fishing or golfing, and rooting for the Detroit Tigers.

I lost a dear friend and mentor way too early to Glioblastoma earlier this year. I’ve been easing my way through Tallu’s book, What We Wish Were True, which she wrote in the remaining months of her life after her diagnosis. I’ve only been able to read small chunks at a time and then put it down for a few weeks before picking it back up again. I read the chapter titled “The Salmon” last night and it was particularly triggering for reasons I’m not entirely sure. The tears usually come and go quickly, but last night they just kept coming. I’m not a stranger to loss, but I’ve come to the rather jarring realization recently that I am a complete stranger to reckoning with it. Of all the loss I’ve experienced up to this point, I’ve never, not once, grieved with intention and presence, at least not until now. From the moment Tallu entered my life she was pushing me forward into a deeper way of being. Sometimes through her words but most often through her every day disposition. It seems this divine gift is one that she continues to give in death as she did in life.

I don’t know how much like my grandpa I actually am. It might not go further than a funny hairline or a glance in the mirror when I shave my face once every blue moon. But I’d like to think im more like him than I know. I’d like to think im more like my grandma, my papa, my meemee, my mom, my dad, my sisters than I know. In fact, I’d like to know instead of liking to think about what might be true. But knowing, real knowing, seems to come only with intention and presence. And intention and presence bring with them both unimaginable joy and unfathomable pain. I think the latter, combined with my semi-natural defense mechanism of numbing avoidance, are why I’ve become so good at mentally and physically checking out. But in the end, the trade off isn’t even remotely close to worth it.

I’ve become captivated over the last few years with the Celtic mythological “thin places”, where the distance between heaven and earth is particularly short. Thin places are often sacred places, but in reality can be anywhere that wakes the divine within the soul. Author Eric Weiner suggests that thin places may offer glimpses “not of heaven, but of earth as it really is, unencumbered. Unmasked”. Grief is a thin place. Or at least it has been for me these last few months. So is snow lake in Mt. Rainier National Park, where I was lucky enough to get up early and take the 2 hour drive and hike in to leap, alone, into her treacherously cold and life giving waters last week.

“Ego would prefer that I not look directly into my deeper self, for there I would learn things bound to free me from its bondage. I would learn of the endless beauty that lies beyond the writhing of my personal self. I would learn that beyond my torment lies the glory of my soul”
-Marianne Williamson

What I know now more than ever is that I don’t want to wait for grief or rare excursions in order to experience the earth (and perhaps, heaven) as it really is. I impart myself and those I hold nearest and dearest a profound disservice when I do. So here’s to seeking intention and presence, and all the joy and pain that come with, in each day, in each moment, in each breath taken. Here’s to the hard work of passing on that intention and presence to my kids, my family, my community, who I love and want so much for in this life. And here’s to my grandpa Jewett and the legacy he left behind for me to discover, starting with an impromptu stache and a weird hairline.

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