To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  Walking into the room is always the hardest part, the anticipation, the excitement. At times I feel like I don’t deserve it. Truth be told, I hate the attention. I just want to get to my mat so I can slip into the role of yoga teacher and get on with the class. I never truly relax until everyone is in their first pose, because then they’re not thinking about me anymore. They’re not thinking about Yoga Girl. They are focused on their breath and themselves. That’s when I can be anonymous again. I dive into the part I love—the guiding, the breathing, the intention setting, the community, the movement. The poetry of speaking a language that surprises me every time I bring it forth. Sometimes I say things in class that I have no idea I ever knew.

  This class, my first one since everything happened, is beautiful. I love everyone in the room. They are listening and so attentive. When it’s time for Savasana everyone is sweaty, tired, present, emotional. Fully here. I crank up the music and “Spirit Bird” by Xavier Rudd fills the room. I walk around and give people adjustments, tiny groundings of the shoulders and gentle touches to the forehead, the neck. And suddenly, I see her. Andrea. The girl in front of me has a wooden earring in her ear. It’s almost exactly the same as Andrea’s—except I know it can’t be, because hers was just a stick she found on the beach and shoved through her ear, and she was cremated with it. I smile and Andrea’s presence fills the room. The next girl has tiny tattoos scattered across her forearms. They make no sense, their placement, it’s like she’s just sprinkled them across her arm. Andrea had similar tattoos. My heart beats a little faster. I move to the next girl, and the next, and the next. One has toes that are identical to Andrea’s. Another, a single dread nestled in her messy hair. Like Andrea. Looking around, I notice that every person in this room has a piece of her. She is here. In all of us.

  With the next person I adjust I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience. I feel like I’m floating. I look down and there she is. I’ve been running in circles looking for her, but she’s been there, in this girl, in me, all along. I start to cry. My tears drip onto the face of the girl beneath me. She grabs my hand and clutches it tightly. “It’s okay,” she says. “I lost my husband. I know. I am you, too.” Now I’m sobbing and the whole room can hear me and Dennis is on the other side of the room, wondering if he needs to take over. I look at him and shake my head. No. I’m okay. There is no judgment here, just a room full of people breathing, feeling, living.

  I wipe away my tears and stand up. I feel that fire within me. I go back to my mat at the front of the room and let it burn.

  • • •

  From Rio, we fly to São Paulo. It’s very, very different. We’re not on the beach anymore but in a giant city; it’s dirty, but we meet nice people. They tell us it’s not safe to leave our hotel at night. I’ve never traveled anywhere with fear and I’m not about to begin now.

  Things didn’t start off well. The woman who arranged for my class said she was having trouble with her bank accounts and didn’t know how she would pay me. The event was oversold and there was no greenroom or quiet area where I could go before class. Everywhere I went, people pulled at me and insisted on taking selfies. The excitement felt almost aggressive, but I had to smile and look serene because that’s what people expected of Yoga Girl. I just wanted to take a breath and prepare for class, but there wasn’t a private space, and time was short.

  Things went from bad to worse. When it was time to start, the hosts gave me a headset but the mic didn’t work. I was standing in front of five hundred people who couldn’t hear me. I tried to joke my way through it, but no one laughed. Finally, someone gave me a handheld mic, which meant I couldn’t use my hands while I taught; I couldn’t reach my hands up, or demonstrate a pose, or place my hands on my heart, or adjust the students. I pride myself on being able to create an intimate space even in classes of that size. If people don’t cry during my classes, if they aren’t able to arrive at a place inside of themselves where they feel so much it overflows, I feel as though I’ve failed. How would I ever make this an intimate, genuine experience? I had no idea. But the show had to go on.

  I walked around, feeling like a clown. I said the right words, and we did what we were supposed to do, but something was so totally off. Several people had their phones on their mats and when I walked by, they took photos of me, right in the middle of their practice. I had never experienced anything like it. I felt violated.

  On the verge of tears, all I could think was that I wanted to go home. Normally, after we bow our heads at the end of a session, people take a moment to breathe, to gather themselves. Sometimes we follow up with a brief Q&A, and after that, I hug people and we take photos. But for this class, I barely got to open my eyes after I’d said namaste before people had left their mats and were shoving their phones in my face.

  I had nowhere to go—no way to escape. Before I knew it, throngs of people surrounded me. A sort of hysteria was building. Someone grabbed the side of my head with such force I thought I heard the vertebrae in my neck pop—and not in a good way. Hundreds of people were pressing up against me like an angry mob, screaming for photographs. At one point, I was dragged down and feared I would be trampled. When I surfaced again, I caught Dennis’s eye across the room. He looked panicked. “Do something!” he screamed at the promoter. “Get her out of there!” I’m not a human being anymore, I thought. I’m some Internet celebrity they need a photograph with to prove to their friends they were here. There is no yoga happening in this room. “You have to let me out of here,” I cried.

  Finally, thankfully, the crowd dispersed enough for Dennis to get to me. He picked me up and fished me out of the crowd. “This is over. Move!” he shouted, putting me down on the stairs. A girl held up her phone. “But I didn’t get a photo yet!” she said angrily. Hearing the disappointment in her voice made me feel awful.

  I hurried upstairs to the bathroom, sat on a toilet, and wrapped my arms around my legs. I had just been pushed down, had my head jacked and my hair pulled, but I felt an obligation to go back and give more of myself. A few minutes later, the crowd was still there. People were still aiming their phones. “You don’t have to do this,” Dennis said. “You don’t owe these people anything. Let’s just go.”

  I walked back down the stairs and stepped into the crowd.

  • • •

  From Brazil, we flew back to Costa Rica for another retreat. When my last class ended in Dominical, I had convinced Dennis to join Cado on a surfing trip they’d planned months earlier. He hadn’t had a moment to himself since Andrea died, and I knew he needed his own time to process, too. It couldn’t have been easy, holding our little family together. Ringo and I took a shuttle bus up to San José to spend more time with Andrea’s family. We were halfway there when Luigi called. “I’m picking you up at the station,” he said.

  I’d been angry with Luigi since Andrea’s accident. The three of us had been inseparable and now he was completely distant. Every time I’d seen him since Andrea died he had acted strange, almost cold. He kept asking about me and how I was coping but refused to talk about himself. Actually, he didn’t even want to mention Andrea’s name. I had thought I’d find relief with Luigi, knowing he was one of the only people who knew Andrea the way I did, but instead I felt like he was someone I didn’t know. It was like our relationship had died with Andrea. The last time he and I had been together I accused him of being uncaring and he’d stalked away.

  I was surprised when he called, and not sure how I would feel when I saw him. He was waiting when the bus arrived in San José. I had barely gotten myself and Ringo settled in the car when he started talking. As he spoke, tears spilled down his cheeks. I’d never seen him cry before, not once. “I’m sorry,” he said. “When they told me she didn’t make it, the first thing I thought of was you. I knew you wouldn’t be okay, no way, never. Me? I can shut down, soldier on, continue. You? I knew it would kill you. I couldn’t cry with you because I knew it would break me and you would feel like you
had to pick up the pieces. I didn’t want that. So I had to be cold. And strong. So I wouldn’t fall apart. But I realize now that I made everything worse.”

  So many things ran through my mind as he spoke. I understood now that caring for me was a coping mechanism for him. If he just focused on me, helped me, he wouldn’t have to process the fact that his best friend died, too. It was messed up, but I understood. “I just wanted you to be there,” I said. “I just can’t believe this happened. Us. Our family. Our family time. How are we going to live now?” Tears fell into my lap as I spoke. He wrapped his arm around me. “I don’t know,” he said. “I miss her so much. She was the most alive person I’ve ever known. I still can’t believe it’s real. And a part of me wants to turn around and run away, because being with you is being with her and it hurts. It’s hard to be here, with you, because it reminds me that she is not here anymore. And it’s so painful.”

  I was staying at Andrea’s house that night. I wanted to spend time there before her family closed it up for good. Luigi and I stayed in the car talking until it got dark and cold. I invited him inside and we cooked dinner, but I was too emotionally drained to even get a fork to my mouth.

  I walked upstairs to Andrea’s room. It was just as I’d left it a few weeks earlier. I opened her closet and the smell of her almost knocked me off my feet. I drank it in. It was like she was right here. I leaned into the closet and wrapped my arms around her dresses. I wanted to wear all of them. I had an overwhelming urge to put every item on the bed and sleep on them. Andrea’s mom had told me to take everything that meant anything to me, but I decided to gather only a few things. I already had her Guatemalan leather pouch—it had been hanging on my hip since the last time I was at the house. And her yoga mat and wooden mala beads. Going through her closet, a few things popped out: The long pink and yellow scarf with the little bells on the ends. She wore it at Envision and we used it as a towel to lie on at the beach after swimming naked one afternoon. I took it from the closet and wrapped it around my neck. The black dress, the one I bought her for her birthday; I have an identical one. The green top she wore all the time. The short skirt she bartered for at the festival. The pajama pants with little reindeer I always borrowed. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I pulled out a purple sweater I’d never seen her wear. A white top that was braided like a leaf in the back. An orange dress. Jeans. She never wore jeans. I thought if I just found the right thing, the thing that had been closest to her, maybe she’d come alive again if I wore it.

  After a while I couldn’t even see what was on the hangers I was pulling down because I was crying too hard. A wail came out of me that was so loud I surprised myself. I dropped down on the floor, surrounded by her things, and something that was already broken inside of me broke again. Andrea felt so close but so far away. Suddenly, Luigi was by my side. He hugged me and let me cry. When I ran out of tears I fell asleep right there as I was, lying in the pile of Andrea’s clothes, my arms wrapped around dresses she would never wear again. When I awakened I was on the floor, freezing. It was three in the morning, three hours until my flight was scheduled to leave. Luigi and I decided to go outside and wait. I went out on the balcony and lay in the hammock. Luigi followed me. “Scooch,” he said, and laid down. I had no energy left to cry. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I was numb. I rested my head on Luigi’s shoulder, about to ask him what we were going to do now, how we would ever live again, because life without her was unthinkable, when suddenly, his lips met mine. I was so stunned I didn’t know what was happening. For a second, I kissed him back. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, nor attraction or romance. It was a kiss of the most intense sadness I had ever experienced. We were two people moving through grief, and for a second, the intimacy became so intense and vulnerable that our lips just merged. It was brief. I came to my senses and pulled away. None of it made sense. I had a fiancé whom I was very much in love with. “What are we doing?” I asked. “This is not us.” “I don’t know,” he said, tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Standing, I walked to the other side of the balcony. Looking out at the jungle, I heard Andrea’s voice in my head: Grief is not an excuse to act like an asshole! Of course she was right. I needed to get my shit together. I heard Luigi behind me. “Andrea would hate this,” Luigi said. “She would say, grief isn’t an excuse to act like assholes.” I smiled. “I was just thinking the same thing,” I said. He gave me a sad smile. “Alright. Back to reality. Let’s pack up.”

  We put all of Andrea’s things back in the closet. In the end, I took only a few things: The pajama pants. The green top. The black dress. The sun was about to rise. It was time to go. We were headed downstairs when something caught my eye. The faux fur. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Our all-time favorite vest. I ran over and reached up to grab it. It was a huge faux fur vest with a giant hood that we always wore out dancing—my favorite was wearing almost nothing else, just a bikini or short-shorts with the vest. And boots. We had so much fun dressing up with it. I wrapped my arms around the vest and inhaled. It smelled like us. I put it on and turned to look at Luigi. Tears were running down his face. “You look so much like her,” he said. “I see her. In you. All the time.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. I felt like her, too.

  Luigi dropped me at the airport. “I hope I didn’t fuck anything up,” he said. I saw worry in his eyes. Had we ruined something? I answered, “You didn’t. Everything is already fucked up. I’ll see you soon.”

  • • •

  I was at customs with Ringo when we were pulled aside. “Papers, please,” the officer said.

  I handed them Ringo’s health certificate, passport, and vaccination book. After a while they returned. “We need the SENASA form signed by the Costa Rican veterinarian.” I didn’t know what they were talking about. I took Ringo everywhere with me and never had a problem. He’d been to Costa Rica more times than I could count. It was five thirty in the morning and my flight was leaving in forty minutes. I was wearing a giant fur vest, yoga pants, and woven boots. My eyes were red from crying, my face was puffy from lack of sleep. The security man looked at me with sympathy. Turns out, Costa Rica had a new law that required pets to get checked out by a local vet ten days prior to traveling. “I’m so sorry, miss, but I can’t let you pass,” he said. “You will have to go get your papers signed and book a new flight ten days from today. There is no way you’ll be getting on a plane today. Not unless you want to leave the dog behind.”

  His words triggered in me a full-blown meltdown. Having gone through so much pain and such an emotional roller coaster for so many weeks—I just didn’t give a shit about what people thought anymore. I started bawling. All-out hysterical bawling. The security guy didn’t know what to do. “Miss, please . . . I didn’t mean to make you upset.” I barely heard him. “It’s just ten days,” he said. “I know it seems like a lot, but I really can’t let you through.”

  I kept crying. After a while the security officer left and came back with another officer. I sat on the floor, clutching Ringo. After a while the crying stopped, but I didn’t. I was faking crying noises. I wanted people to think I was a little crazy. Who gives a flying fuck anyway? I thought. People were walking past, staring at me. I kicked off my boots and let out a grunt. It was, admittedly, a little pathetic. I’d become one of those people who have public meltdowns! I was a complete mess. The thought of not going home, of having yet another obstacle in my way was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I’d been doing a pretty good job keeping myself together up until then. For all the crying I’d done in public, this took the cake. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I’d been on the floor long enough that I’d probably missed my flight. I decided to just stay there. What are they going to do to me? I thought. Force me out of the airport? There is nothing anyone can do that will hurt more than I already do.

  When I opened my eyes again the security guy was standing there. He looked over his shoulder to make
sure no one was watching and handed me Ringo’s papers. “Go,” he said. I pouted. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I have no place to go and you can’t force me to leave.” I looked up at him. “I thought you had a flight to catch,” he said. I couldn’t believe it. “You’re . . . letting me go?” “Yes,” he said. “Go now. Before I change my mind.” I jumped up and gathered my things: my fur, my boots, my carry-on, my leather pouch, my Italian greyhound. I looked like a one-woman traveling circus. “Thank you!” I said. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it is, it’s going to get better,” he said, then turned and walked away. I ran to my gate. The plane was waiting. They were calling my name.

  I was home in Aruba for only a couple of days before we were off again, this time for the last leg of the tour in my homeland. Besides my business obligations, Dennis and I had a wedding to prepare for! It was the last time we’d be in Sweden before we returned that summer for our ceremony. We still had to arrange for flowers, and cake, and music. More than two hundred people were on our guest list and people would be flying in from twelve different countries. I felt good about being busy, but I was hardly myself. We went to bakeries to choose the cake, but everything felt generic and boring. I got so frustrated during one of the tastings that I snapped at the server. “This is not what you promised us!” I said. “We were supposed to try the varieties promised in our confirmation e-mail. This is not it!” As I spoke, my eyes burned with tears. “Is there a reason you are serving us what we didn’t order?” I was lashing out and I couldn’t stop myself. I knew I was behaving badly and I didn’t care. “Maybe we should take our business to a place that actually cares about its customers!” I said. Dennis excused us and we went outside. “What is going on? Why are you so angry at that waitress?” he asked. “It’s not a big deal! We’ll find a good cake. You have to stop acting like this.” I started to cry. “It’s too much,” I said. “I don’t know how to do this.” I made myself go back in and apologize. I felt like I’d completely lost the ability to manage social situations. I didn’t know how to deal with people. I didn’t know how to deal with myself.