I didn’t know how to rest, and then he died.

Last Tuesday night, I got a call from my dad letting me know that the following morning, in what would be the final chapter of his beautiful life, my cousin would be sedated for the remainder of his time earthside. I spent the rest of the evening feeling into it. I prayed for him and tried connecting with him on a soul level, from 4159 miles of ocean and land away, then I went to sleep, asking our well and healed ancestors to receive him.

Throughout the night, I woke up a total of six times to the very loud and annoying sound of a cat scraping in the litter box (if you know, you know). I got up and closed our door each time, which would be reopened another five times by one of the two feline culprits.

Although I was able to go back to sleep every time, thanks to my current practice of asking my three dead grandmothers to lull me back to sleep when I wake up at night, I still woke up feeling utterly exhausted.

After my morning prayer and meditation, some breathwork, a little stretching, and breakfast I was still DRAGGINGGGGG.

I was working from home for the first hour prior to a 10:00 am doctor’s appointment. As I drove there, I felt so out of it, and it dawned on me that perhaps this wasn’t only lack of sleep, but also my body processing the grief of the imminent loss of my darling Epi. Once at the doctors (for my annual visit), when checking my vitals, the nurse let me know I had a fever. It took me by surprise but it also felt a little validating, no wonder my body felt so fatigued and achy!

My first thought was: wow, why do I push through so much? I was just gonna go to work and do my day as always, even though my body was sending me such strong signals. I thought I listened to my body better than this! Time to check myself!

Once I saw the doctor (a bit of an unconventional physician who practices a combination of western medicine with anthroposophical, osteopathic, ayurvedic and I’m not even sure what else, in what he himself refers to conscious medicine) and we chatted and he examined me, he determined that my crown chakra was off (which was manifesting as a right-rotated C-3 vertebra in the body — or maybe the other way around, chicken or egg ya’ know?), and that my fever was most likely a soul/consciousness level inflammatory process, not viral.

He did some fascia work, some energy work, I did some breathwork, we chatted, and after about a 45 minute session I left -without a fever-. Yet as I drove home, I felt the same level of lethargy as before. My muscles still ached when I walked upstairs to my bedroom. And I still felt like I could have slept for the next seven days.

I tended to my most immediate need for food and sat in the sun for lunch-per one of the doctor’s many recommendations- , then I went to do a Yoga Nidra. As the Nidra ended, I watched myself coming out of it immediately, in the same way I always do, and noticed the pattern, which even though I had glanced at it in the past, felt more insistent today.

You see, I give myself the time to set my body up comfortably for the practice, and the exact time of the Nidra itself - usually 15 minutes, sometimes 26, on a rare occasion 40- to rest. And THE SECOND it’s over, I hop out of bed to go do the next thing, tend to the next need. In that moment I asked myself: what the fuck do you possibly have to get up for? You’re heartbroken. Jason is home. You can just stay in bed you know?

Spoiler: I got right on up.

I forget now what exactly for, but the realization that I do not know how to rest, something I’ve known and talked about often,  as well as worked on for years (hence my absolute devotion to Nidra, because it’s the one being who has allowed me to cultivate a practice of rest in any real way) was now like  a neon sign with a siren around the circumference of my head. I could no longer ignore it.

I voiced it immediately to my sweet husband, who was kind enough to offer to put up the Hammock for me, instead of doing Jack’s (from Will & Grace) I told you so dance, which would have honestly been a fair reaction from him. Then I went out to the yard, and once again sat in the sun.

I purposely didn’t bring a book, or a journal. I watched the garden - while of course making a list of everything that needed tending- when I heard a text come through. I started chatting with a friend about what we’re getting our kiddo’s teacher for an end of year gift and some other musings (including the fact that I don’t know how to rest).                                                        She tried to let me go, because I needed to rest you see, but I begged her to  keep chatting with me as she was the only thing keeping my ass on that chair. Eventually she had to go and I sat there for another few minutes wondering to myself: Why is it so uncomfortable? Why is it so hard?

Even though I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, I could hear to the birds singing from their nest in the rose bush, the squirrels munching on the mulberries in the tree, even though I was admiring the first few little white butterflies of the season, and was actually present with the beauty of the garden and all its beings around me, I still wanted to get up!

So I eventually did, and went to tend to the garden, telling myself while I squatted close to the soil that it was still somewhat rest because I was just talking to a few plants I hadn’t connected with in the last few days and weeding just a little bit.

The next day at work I still fell like a sloth. I told my boss about what I had realized, and asked out loud: how do I repattern? Wise woman that she is she said: well, not overnight. A few minutes later after enjoying her lunch in the balcony she came back in and said: We’ve been conditioned for it for so long. As I think about perimenopause and what I want to share about what I’ve learned, I think  this is how the sperm is, it swims, swims, swims until it dies.  That’s not what the egg does.

Both of those statements landed deeply in my system. I allowed myself to simply receive them, to integrate them without needing to rationalize them. To know that I was doing enough by simply listening.

As Friday came around, my dear friend  Samantha and I went on our monthly walk through the trails of Cherokee Park. I shared this newfound/old awareness with her, and at one point she said: You have to redefine rest! Watching a movie or a show can be rest, reading a book can be rest. Although they are both also forms of escapism. To what I said; girl, we’re so uncomfortable with rest that in order for you to even consider including it in this conversation you have to give it a task! She started laughing that full, loud, joyful laugh of hers that I so adore and said: You’re so right! We hugged goodbye pondering, can we learn how to rest?

As the day progressed, I was still tired, and still didn’t quite know how to do this resting thing.

And then Epi died.  

On Saturday, May 16th, in the hours of the afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, and the evening in Santurtzi, Pais Vasco, Spain, Epifanio Paliza Monduate died quietly and peacefully, ushered into his next adventure by the sweet voice of his beloved little sister, who convoked a younger one from the tribe to give him energy (I was honored) and an elder who understood death and resurrection to offer him wisdom (my father). His left eye cried a single tear, and his spirit left his body.

That night, and the next morning, I was happy, grateful, in awe. I cried sweet rivers, chanting my morning mantra (for Saraswati right now) with tears streaming down my cheeks.

I then cooked for the week and for a family gathering we were attending that afternoon, and laid down to do a Nidra. And as soon as her voice began to guide me into comfort, I began to sob. Loud, inconsolable, whole body sobs. Jason heard me and came to hold me steadily and quietly while I continued to cry. Time shifted the way it does in the world of the dead, and I felt it both stop and fast forward while I cried hard and loud in Jason’s arms, while hugging my own arms around my belly, .

After almost an hour, I peeled myself off from the bed, splashed water on my face, put on a black flowy dress and walked downstairs to go meet Jason’s family. Once there, I sat on a big comfy porch chair and could do nothing else.

Since then, I haven’t been able to do much more than that. I talk everyday to my family and my cousin’s best friend Txelu in Spain about our grief, the memories of our life with Epi,  what happens now for him, and for all of us here without him.

I am so grateful that Jason is here and not traveling this week, or the next few. He’s been holding everything at home, so that I can crawl in and out of bed. In what feels like cosmic alignment,  his car officially died this week too (it had been on its way for a while). This has mean he’s been driving me to and from work every day this week. It has felt like another layer of care, of being held, and has allowed me to surrender deeper into this grief because I don’t even have to pay attention to the road.

Friends have been tending to me in both practical and sacred ways. One friend texted asking if they could come by just to give me a hug. We weren’t home when they arrived, yet they waited, because their daughter affirmed: “I am not leaving this porch without giving Ms. Ana a hug.” Another dear one made me a piece of art from driftwood and flowers from another friend’s garden "using objects that have lived their life fully and moved on to become something greater”.  Another brought me herbal tea blended specifically for digesting grief. People have been loving me, holding me, witnessing me, reminding my body that even in death, and in heartbreak, we belong together.

The garden has been holding me too. Every day I wander outside and instinctively reach for something; nasturtiums, coreopsis, and bolting cilantro for the altar and the table, tulsi and lemon balm for tea, mugwort for my bath, plant allies willing to support my body. I’ve been taking the grief tincture I made intuitively last fall, somehow knowing I would need it soon. I kneel on the damp earth in my pajamas, deadheading poppies, harvesting calendula and yarrow, watching the pollinators move slowly from bloom to bloom. And as I struggle to hold myself I remember that as long as I’m in relationship with this earth, she will continue to hold me.

The sun hadn’t come out since last Sunday. It has felt like Mother Earth mirroring my grief, or bringing to Louisville the unmistakable weather of Karrantza, the land that Epi loved and cared for his whole life. The sky grey and heavy, the land misty and green. And then yesterday, as I was writing this, almost exactly seven days from the hour he passed, the clouds parted and Father Sun shone bright again. Today they have returned, as if the earth herself has resumed mourning alongside us.

In the ancestral healing course I took that ended the day before I went on my trip to say goodbye to Epi, the concept that some of our ancestors yearn to see us rest, because they were unable to themselves, is something that came up several times. That by doing so, we are honoring them, and making them so very happy because it means that their suffering was not in vain. The work of Tricia Hersey is based on rest as resistance. Reminding us that denying ourselves rest is supporting colonialism and white supremacy at their core.

As grief takes my body and roots me  onto the bed, the chair, the soil, I think of Epi and how  he worked continuously during  his 62 years of life. His father died when he was 14, and he started working then and there to help his mother with the farm. He worked almost every day of his life after that, and for most of his adult life lived on a seven-days-a-week work schedule On the day he found out he had cancer, a few months after retiring, he drove himself to a travel agency, before even sharing the news with his family, to plan a trip to Canada’s National Parks where he’d always dreamt of going. He never made it.

So as my system demands that I rest this week, in a manner that does not permit me to override it, but instead insists I surrender to it, I am practicing deep listening, reverence, and honoring. I am taking naps, baths, and lingering in bed at the end of the Nidra. I am sitting on the porch, on the couch, in the yard, and simply observing, contemplating.

I am letting rest take me, letting Ma hold me.

And  in that holding, in the slowing down, I’ve been able to feel it all. To see my emotions for what they are, to name them, to be fully present with them. To welcome them, just like Rumi urged us to. I have been with them, in them, and have felt them in my body, and in doing so, have watched them move along. Anger. Frustration. Disappointment. Sadness. Gratitude. Awe. Tenderness. And so many more.

My tears still flow often, and somewhat suddenly, as has the rain all week. When they do, I receive them, I welcome them, and I invite them to stay for as long as they wish.And as I become familiar with my rest and my tears, I hope  I am honoring my beloved Epi, his passion, his will to live, and his enjoyment of all things earthly.

Que en paz descanse tu alma primo querido. ¡Hasta Siempre!

May your soul be happy and at peace.

Goian bego.