Today feels like a really difficult day.  I have cried a lot of tears.  I stayed in this weekend for the most part as I am just feeling peopled out.  Yesterday I sat for an hour with a brief walking meditation at a regular Saturday sit that I attend with a group of people.  It felt good to me.  Sitting with a group is a different experience than sitting on your own.  It is a supportive energy that you can feel and I really needed that yesterday.  I felt on more of an even keel yesterday even though I just really wanted to be on my own.  My meditation was good….was aware of my thoughts and just went back to my breath….my calming steady breath that is always with me.  Today I feel like I am just hanging on….maybe.  I phoned my sangha’s teacher today (he lives in Montana) because I felt so incrediably alone and overwhelmed with sadness and I cried my eyes out.  Letting him know how things had been happening in the past three months….the deaths of three people in my life and their relationship to me….and that I had been doing ok.  Then last night I called my cousin, who is terminally ill, to see how she is doing and it is ok…but not great.  I had an opportunity to visit her last November for a week and it was great….really lovely and I am grateful for that.  I am hoping to go again shortly for at least a few day….she is two provinces away from me.  Talking with my teacher today I could not stop crying….I felt like the walls were caving in on me….and he said….”let them cave in”.  I told him that I get it…but if one more person used the word impermanence and we are all going to die……I would scream.  I get it….but I don’t want to hear it right now.  He said how easily I connect with people…you do it so easily….and it leaves a hole….when we lose someone…it leaves a hole.  I am letting the walls cave today.

I am going to France for the month of June…..for a three week retreat at Plum Village with Thich Nhat Hanh and the monks and nuns and then spending a week in France…. Maybe rent a bike….relax….enjoy where I am.  When I was talking to my cousin she said it was too bad she was not feeling better….she could meet me there after the retreat.  That would be lovely.  Today I  have been deeply saddened how we had always talked about doing something like that together and at this point it would appear that this will never happen.  Talking with my teacher I could not stop the tears that we would not be able to do this…..he said…..with death we experience the loss of possibility.

My meditation practice enables me to be with the walls caving in today.  To let my tears flow freely and be with the pain…the loss of possibility….this sadness that at times feels like it is going to consume me whole.  I don’t know that I can sit today and focus on my breath…..but I can be with my pain.  I am grateful.