frozen tears & being with dying

meeting ourselves and each other

photo by Briana Pontius, Touch of Nature Healing

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Her hands moved across my face as I laid on the table. I was in a craniosacral therapy session with Briana Pontius (Touch of Nature Healing). 

"Frozen tears," she said. My face was dry.

A few hours later, I entered the room where my husband’s dad was lying with his feet sticking out from under the blanket. I asked if he wanted me to massage his feet. 

"Be my guest," he said with a relaxed smile, as I reached for the Frankincense essential oil I happened to have in my pocket. The dog came to lie underneath the bed, and the cat made his way onto the bed. It seems that animals know how to be with dying.

With the 6 of us there, my husband’s mom asked if we could get a photo, so I set up the camera even though it felt out of the usual pose and place for a picture. Everyone went right along with it, smiling in spite of it all, and there was meaning in all of it, a memory. Not like a memory of traveling together or celebrating a birthday, but a memory of feeling sadness, grief, gratitude, and love — all in one moment.  All in that moment, which somehow felt so full of life because it was, despite so many emotions swirling at once.

The range of emotions and experiences we can feel in one moment is like the changing weather. Our emotions often roll by unnoticed, like clouds, and many of us have learned to face towards the gentle warmth of the sun, but not how to stand in the storm and center ourselves in the winds of change.

It became clear to me several months ago that death would be a present theme in my life for a time. In a guided meditation with Elena Brower one day, the book she was reading from caught my attention —“Being with Dying” by Joan Halifax. I downloaded the book because this topic was clearing asking for my attention and devotion, and perhaps to meet it in a new way.

“We may meet each other on the other side, and can we meet ourselves and each other now?”

-Joan Halifax, Being with Dying

I’ve spent much of my life feeling resistance towards unpleasant weather within me and around me, while at the same time trying to collect, reflect, and find meaning in what arrives. I’ve come to understand that all the weather moving through us and around us invites us to be vast and open like the sky — expansive enough to hold space for all of it and to watch it pass through. When judgments dissolve towards the feelings we view as unfriendly visitors, we may even come to see them as wise elders bringing medicine.

One thing I know is that communing with the cold water has been a container for me in receiving this medicine and embodying it. The cold stings. Thoughts arise and I guide them through with deeper breaths and presence. The space within me begins to widen for the flow of life force that’s already there in each breath.

One day at the water, I came upon a cave and the icicles that dangled from the upper ledge of the cave drew my attention. The conditions were just right that they had started to melt, hollowing the center as water flowed through — like frozen tears.

photo by Briana Pontius, Touch of Nature Healing

Each time I emerge from the cold water, I feel a surge of warmth as life force pulses through me. Like the way an icicle hollows from the inside as it melts with the sun, there’s an alchemy that brings expansion. When I’m in the water, it’s like my body becomes a vessel, like an icicle being prepared to hold space for the flow. Each breath expanding in each moment that I want to escape, and I see once again that I can stay with all of it.

I went through a reiki training in March, and there were many tears. You could say it was a “watery” (emotional) experience for me. With many emotions arriving at once, it felt like a melting of frozen tears as part of an initiation to hold space for the flow of life. During this same time, my husband’s dad was in the sacred space of dying. Like watching a storm in the sky… fear, resistance, exhaustion, frustration, sadness, and grief arrived. There was nothing to fix or change, and in the words of Joan Halifax it was about, "accepting the unbearable and the unacceptable.”

In the final days, I was there again in the room where he was lying, and I touched his feet thinking of how much he had appreciated it a few weeks before. This time, I visualized the icicle hollowing in the center for the flow. As I touched his feet and breathed, I felt a warmth in my (usually) cold hands.

 What is it like, being with dying?

To know the breath within the breath
the space expanding within your chest

To feel grounded like the shoreline 
receiving each wave with steadiness
Surrender.

Earth washed by water 
to be part of the whole
Remember.

What is it like to hold space?
To bear witness to what is
with grace

Let go, let it move through
And like water from frozen tears melting down the face, may you feel love flowing through the center of this sacred space

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As emotions roll forth like rain from the sky, they catch an edge on the rock ledge. Icicles form. The alchemy of water crystallizing into ice creates a container necessary to hold space for what will eventually move through. Love and acceptance, like warmth from the sun, create a hollow center. Ice transmutes into water, changing form, soaking into the Earth, and joining the current to be recycled and offered upwards again.

When you feel those frozen tears melting down your face, may you too feel a loving current flowing through the center of this sacred space.

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