For Peggy

A few years ago, I watched the enormous screen suspended above Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts for a first glimpse of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He walked slowly through the same chute that emitted the thunderous football Patriots, a smiling monk wearing the most pedestrian looking brown shoes beneath his maroon robes. His Holiness clambered to the top of his seat and beamed his Yoda light out over the crowd. He spoke of peace and basic goodness and gave a teaching that I absorbed through the pores of my skin. The audience rested in contentment, respectful, silent. He wore a Patriots baseball cap.


At intermission I seemingly sailed from my seat on the field upstairs to the food concessions. No one pushed. There was no elbowing, nor jostling. People simply moved together. As I made my way, I looked up and recognized someone I knew, a woman named Peggy. A glowing face in a sea of people.


Peggy had given me her own teaching at a time in my life when despair had become an all too comfortable cloak. My son had left for college, and I felt untethered; my role as a mom no longer defined me. I was a woman obscured by sadness; past losses subsumed me. I had lost my way. 


It was then that grace in the form of Peggy appeared. She had come upon me in a retreat, sobbing, great sobs shuddering through my body, and had offered me a space to talk. She listened, handing me tissues. When I ran down, she sat with me as if we had nothing around us but space.


Then she said, "Amy, I wish I could tell you that everything will be all right, but it won't. That's not how it works."


The message was as powerful as a thunderclap. I laughed. 


I had been pushing feelings away for years. Dread and fear had lurked beneath the surface and I had been paddling away fast, but like endless sets of waves, the feelings kept coming. I was drowning.


"Maybe you could try to make friends with your sadness," she suggested. "Welcome it, let it teach you. When you truly know sadness, you will know what it is to be happy. You will have endless moments of happiness."


I wrote Peggy a letter of thanks for her wisdom and kindness. I got that it wasn't about my mother or my childhood or my son leaving home. It was about allowing space for every moment, every feeling - as best as I could. It was about unwrapping the cloak and letting in the sun.