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.
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*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.