Years ago, a writing teacher offered us a prompt that I’ve used many times: “write for five minutes about what I want people to know about me.” Today I wrote how I love being outdoors. How I love to walk in nature with people I love. How I love talking, and connecting with people and places. How I love wide open spaces. How I love to hold both grief and gratitude at the same time, like smiles with fun memories mixed with tears at funerals. How I love laughter.
Of course, there’s more. But five minutes was easy.
Then she offered us a second prompt: “Five minutes: write about what I do NOT want people to know about me”. Today I wrote this: I teach the ancient practices of mindfulness, of being-here-nowness, of presence. But I don’t always live this focused way. I don’t want you to know that I need help, call it therapy or mentoring or external reminders, re-minders, to land in my feet here in this moment and then this moment which, I’m told and I tell others, is the only moment we have to be here. I don’t want you to know that I jump to the past and often reach for people after they are gone.
Of course, there’s more. But five minutes revealed those truths.
These prompts led me to continue writing and here’s what landed on the page: I am reaching back in time for my cousin Diane who was killed by a motorist on November 20, 2025 while running Portland’s Bayside Trail. I am holding onto her and our past decades together. The regret lingers of not calling her recently to plan a walk. We loved walking together, being in nature, moving, chuckling, chatting about kids, grandkids, and silly stuff. In 2000, we met most mornings to fly our feet over many Portland Trails, to move fast, to talk fast, to get-up-and-go. I am grasping at memories of how we pounded pavement, walked on bike paths, hiked high enough on Maine trails to see the New Hampshire mountains. How our sneakers wore out quickly from how hard they hit grass and tar and dirt.
I leaned on her for what I thought might be stupid questions, like what-do-I-do-with-this-plant, given my lack of green thumb. One day I emailed her a gardening inquiry. She wrote me this answer (with a photo): “Hi Sue, Here’s the stuff. The box I have here is by Ortho. ‘Makes the soil more acid for growing acid-loving plants—azalea, camellia and rhododendrons, etc. Turns hydrangeas from pink to blue.’”
We often joked about our waning ability to remember. So, she ended with, “I remembered!”
Today as past memories invaded my brain, I noticed that, of course, there’s more.
And I noticed that I time-travel not only to the past but also to the future I want with her, a future that does not exist.
What happened to present moment attention?
And then her funeral. And then the family gathering at the sacred St. Hyacinth’s quiet cemetery, Westbrook, Maine. Westbrook, where my mother and her three siblings were born and raised. Westbrook, where my grandfather and uncle owned and operated a clothing store on Main St. where I bought my clothes and laughed and hung out with relatives. Westbrook holds the past for me.
And here, now, at the graveyard, December 6, 2025, 28 degrees, the cold bites our skin as our warm hearts huddle together. A new snow covers the hill we need to climb to arrive at Diane’s gravesite. We plant slow, icy footsteps. Cousins around me sob, “NO! no, no.” I stand to the left of this older one as he hugs my shoulder, and to the right of that younger one, who embraces her ten-year-old son and strokes his short dark hair.
Even in the crowd’s respectful hush, I want to talk, to Diane, mostly. But here we are, loved ones, you might say, presencing ourselves now, in this moment. We orient ourselves right here, with the scent of evergreen from the bush Diane’s green thumb planted recently at her husband’s, and now her, grave. We inhale crisp air and exhale, seeing our breath. I am struck by how togetherness matters as we share time, breathing as one, tasting snowflakes, hearing each other’s sniffles. There is expansive space here. We could spread out, but we move in close. In the distances between headstones, we stand still, solemn, steady, solid, sad. We feel both the emptiness of the gaping hole in our souls left by Diane and the fullness of sorrow. Chosen by her daughter and two sisters, a silver bird-shaped urn for her ashes sits on a small makeshift table and glints in the sun. She loved birds and beautiful flowers, and both now cover the deep blue cover on that table. The brown branches of the deciduous trees are dry, unlike our eyes. We feel the collective joy of connection and how that joy co-exists with our shared pain. Buried beneath me lie my ancestors. Their strengths enter me, right here, right now, and my grieving body stands a little taller, breathes a little deeper, feels a little more grounded. Mother, father, aunts, uncle and grandparents, seem to be here, now. Hands in prayer position, I bow to this place, to my lineage, and to my roots, as I read their French-Canadian family names on their headstones. Albert, Lebel, Gagnon. Rocheleau. We pray to say good-bye to Diane. I feel rooted and focused for the first time in this traumatic week with its sense of groundlessness. Here, now holding both grief and gratitude. Here now, feeling love.
What I want us to know is that re-minding ourselves of our belonging and our bonds to people and places can help us embrace the past and usher us into presence. My weight now yields to gravity, the earth seems to rise to meet my boots and my feet kiss this holy ground.
