I have been reassembling our freezers, moving turkey and frozen wontons and homemade soup from the inside freezer to the newly empty outside freezer. It’s empty because friends have been able to go home: their frozen chickens, applesauce and tomato paste have gone home, too.

I am also re-assembling my office. Strewn across desk and floor are the important files which I grabbed for our “go-bag”: all of these need to be pared down before I chuck them back into the file cabinet.

One more re-assembly in process: a difficult working relationship has been terminated. This is a relief. But the ending has me questioning my judgment, wondering what I could have said or done differently. I’d like to set this to rest, to know the “truth,” but I have a sneaking suspicion that there is no single truth here. My understanding of myself needs to be re-assembled; I fear it’s not going to look quite so sleek and sure as I would like, dammit.

There is a final internal re-assembly going on, messier, deeper and harder than all of the above. A well of grief from this summer is slowly unfurling in my chest. When I look at the fallen, blackened forest across the lake, when I drive Silverton Hill, when I hear what my friends and neighbors are going through as they return to the damaged land, I fall into sorrow.

Every few years, George and I purchase something—a bookcase, a rolling side table, a bathroom cupboard—that comes in a flatpack. Because I am allegedly the handy person in my household, assembly often falls to me. The goal, always, is to have no parts left over at the end. No extra screws, no extraneous plastic joint, no superfluous hinges: everything used, everything fits. All tidy.

A commitment to tidy assembly is appropriate for flatpack tables and cabinets. It works pretty well for freezers and office spaces, too. But tidy assembly doesn’t work well for humans dealing with loss. There is always something left over; there is more reality than we can stuff into our small mental boxes. Grief is, by nature, overwhelming. Personally, I have found myself crying unpredictably; being mean as a snake; wanting to sleep all day; feeling swamped and useless; avoiding human contact. While it’s tempting to file these feelings under blame, or self-reproach, or defeat, or numbness—and then walk away as if that were the end of it—if we are incredibly brave, we will face into the losses. We can stay in the heart of the matter even as we are hot messes. 

I would like to pretend that I am “better” than this. But as my spiritual director said, “There is nothing to be ashamed of; there is nothing to be ignored.” So I am doing my best to accept the whole range of sensations and emotions—my own and yours too—because that’s where the juice is. That’s the re-assembly life invites: welcoming all of reality with this completely beautiful and completely inadequate self.