There are so many extraordinary components to Zachary’s personality, I sometimes take them for granted. But not today.
As we pulled into the long, uphill driveway and parked outside of Zach’s garage, he was demanding to make a plan (which is completely predictable since his anxiety builds and sometimes tilts during times of transition.) As I was trying to figure out a way to creatively tell him it was time for a shave and a bath (a process he will do anything to engage with) he interrupted his own habitual transitional anxiety because he noticed something in his present experience. “Ducks!” He exclaimed. Once. Clearly and enthusiastically he said it once.
There were no ducks around that I could see, I thought maybe he was connecting the idea of ducks to some activity he wanted to do, like walk around the duck pond in town. But we carried on with making our plan to get Zach cleaned up and ready for the day. Later, I as I went outside to shuffle the cars around he followed me outside. “Ducks!” He again exclaimed.
Zach’s enthusiasm heightened my curiosity since Zach is not one to waste his words on stuff that is totally random (unless he is perseverating as an expression of anxiety, in which case we might hear the same word or phrase 100 times in a short period of time). I did another “once over” look around to see what ducks he could possibly be referencing. There isn’t much water around his home and I don’t think I have ever seen an actual duck on his property. But I knew he was sincere, so I did a full 360 degree surround check of what we could see.
And there they were. Broken pieces of a large tree branch that had fallen and broken up. The method in which the tree broke, allowed little branches to peek up out of the grass, and appeared to be several ducks peeking up, if the person doing the looking had an open mind.
Zach is brilliant. Maybe not by cultural standards, but when it comes to emotional intelligence he scores off the charts. Because those of us who “do” earn descriptors like “brilliant” in our culture, sometimes miss the most important and creative experiences that are right under our noses.
My mind is limited. Since I know ducks live near water, it would have never occurred to me, to open my observation window wide enough to picture that landscape as one of ducks, and not tree branches. My brain had already labeled the wood as a mess that would need cleaning before the next time the grass could be cut. I saw, labeled, concluded, and moved on from those branches, without ever realizing there was another way to see them. Until Zach’s open mind led him to more enthusiasm, as he moved toward the broken pieces of wood saying “Ducks! Ducks!”
I had to step back and take a full inventory of what was around us, almost like I backed up out of the scene altogether. And there they were. I saw what he saw. Those branches did look like a family of ducks. Since my brain knows ducks don’t come around because there isn’t much water, I never allowed for the “interpretation” of that landscape to include ducks.
But Zach’s mind is open. No limits. Just experience. Observation. Presence. And in this way, Zach is brilliant, because he allows for so many possibilities in his experience. He is not bound by the restraints of “realistic thinking” or dogma that has been drilled into him. He just calls it like he sees it. And on this day he saw ducks.
When we are on a journey of healing, we can fall into a similar trap, where our minds are so closed that our experience is limited to the constraints of our own mental training. We don’t have the language to describe what we are feeling, and who wants to feel like crap and process grief anyway? We have come to learn death is a zero sum game, and that when someone dies it is is the end of the story. And maybe that’s true. And maybe it is even critical for us to acknowledge that.
But maybe its also true that our relationship with the deceased has merely transitioned. Could it be, that each time I reach for wisdom that I gained from someone who has died, I am still in relationship with that person? Maybe there are still new memories to be made, in dreams, and in prayer. Maybe its just a different type of engagement that our minds won’t allow because they have been trained not to? Maybe there are other ways of seeing our sadness, despair and grief?
There are no answers here, only invitations. If Zach can look at a pile of branches and think “ducks” maybe there is a way for me to look at my landscapes and see them differently too? Maybe what I have been taught about death and dying is not something that can get tidied up, and summed up in a book or two? Maybe it takes a lifetime to continue unfolding and unpacking the connection that is now spiritual and no longer physical with our loved one?
The invitation is to open our minds, and our hearts. We don’t know what is here until we do. But let’s try to drop some of the restrained, dogmatic thinking that puts our grief into a “one size fits all” container. And we need to do resist doing this for two important reasons:
The first is that grief is NOT a one size fits all experience, so compartmentalizing it is futile. The second, is that when we open to another way of seeing things, the possibilities multiply. The chance of something other than agony to arise suddenly appears. And it feels like an oasis, to look up from the depths of cloudy grief depression and sadness, to see something that may just be a little different than we thought.
Have fun with this invite and look around today with an open mind and heart. See if anything looks different, as you remove the labels and indoctrination that has been part of your/our mental programming since birth. Get curious about other perspectives and ways of looking at things. Because as Dr. Wayne Dyer says in his beautifully written book called “Change your thoughts, change your life” his writing does a deep dive into this very concept.
And I encourage you to accept the invitation, if you are so inspired. Because in my humble experience, if we can see ducks where there is no water, we might be able to see healing where right now we only see pain.
And if that is even a distant possibility, it’s worth a try. We have already tried every thing else.