(Not) Empty
January 28, 2025
Grief is sticky. It glues things together, so one source of sadness links up with another. Sometimes it plays possum in my heart and I think it's gone. But it's not gone. It always seems to visit again.
I remember my mother teaching me the phrase "play possum" after we found a mama possum and her babies in one of the trash cans behind my childhood home. They're not dead, they're pretending.
One day recently my beloved ex, who is spending a few days in Texas near where I grew up, sent me a photograph of a mostly-dry lakebed in a place where my family and I spent a lot of my childhood.
In the grand scheme of climate grief, the loss of a small Texas lake doesn't even register. More than half of the worlds' large lakes are drying up. This isn't like that. But it still makes my heart seize.
My parents used to tell stories about dancing to a jukebox beside that lake, drinking longnecks under the big starry Texas sky. They started going there as young marrieds in the 1950s. How can it be gone?
It turns out that the lake isn't actually gone forever. The dams feeding that system of lakes were failing -- but now they're being repaired, and water will fill the lakes and river again by late 2025.
Suddenly I remember my dad reminiscing about a watch he lost in that lake decades ago. I'll bet while the lake is dry and they're repairing the dams, someone's finding all kinds of treasure down there.
If this were a poem, or a dream in need of interpretation, the dry lakebed could represent feeling drained, empty of resources or resilience, after pandemic and insurrection and so much more.
Does our feeling tapped-out change if we remind ourselves that the spiritual well from which we each draw is not, in fact, empty? That life-giving waters will rush back in, that we will be buoyed again?
If you're feeling empty, you're not alone. So much is broken; so much is breaking. We're struggling to figure out how we can best help each other, how to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.
When life's cup feels empty, it can be difficult to believe that it will be filled again. For me, some of the work lies in remembering that what feels empty now may not be that way forever.