Prologue

Cynthia Peabody had promised her grief therapist she’d take the six-week meditation course. It had a side benefit of helping insomnia. She’d taken Zoom classes for the last three months, beginning shortly after Art’s passing when, without warning, the old panic attacks had started rearing their ugly heads. The logical next step, once she’d accepted it was time to get off her depressed duff and start reconnecting with the world, was to take classes in person. Yet there she was on the mat in her living room participating by way of the large TV screen.

Truth: Arthur Peabody wasn’t likely to return from the dead, and she couldn’t go on with this self-imposed lockdown tuning out the world, pining for him. Reality: She had to look out for herself now. And she would venture out among the living again. Just not yet.

“Take a deep breath, hold it … now let it out.”

She sat on her yoga mat, shoulders down and legs crossed as well as a woman her age could. Grateful she didn’t have hip or knee replacements to hinder her. Up until now they’d done yoga from their chairs. Moving to the mat was new.

“Close your eyes,” the young perky instructor in size zero yoga pants and tank top suggested, “and let’s begin our journey.”

The instructor followed with a breathy story about a walk through the park, under a blue sky. She suggested feeling the sun on their cheeks and to notice the scent of pine and fresh mown grass.

Cynthia liked the freedom to let her thoughts roam and her senses pique. Soon, in her mind, completely open to the meditation suggestions, she took to the air.

I’m flying. My wings stretch long above the current as I soar. I tilt, drop lower, and glide weightlessly over the houses toward the small pond on the great green. It’s my home.

“Now give yourself an affirming message in your meditation walk,” the young instructor suggested.

 It is said I bring peace, good fortune—a balance between joy and sadness.

“Then, allow yourself to feel the grief you carry,” she encouraged.

Today I bring a message of sorrow and mourning for I have lost my mate.

With tears welling, Cynthia threw back her meditation bird body and pushed her feet out to land on the greenest grass she’d ever seen, a mirror image of the pond in the middle of the golf course behind her home. It was easy to imagine something right outside the door.

“Savasana pose,” the instructor continued. “Completely and thoroughly, relax. And don’t forget to breathe deeply, using your belly.”

Which was what Cynthia did. She flopped back into the supine position with outstretched legs and arms at her sides. She could feel it. The grass. She could smell it, too. With her eyes closed, she remained in the most relaxed state she could remember since Art’s diagnosis last year.

She took another deep inhale, savoring the great floaty feeling. This meditation stuff was on to something. It felt so real. The pond. The grass. Lying on her back.  But she’d been a bird, flying, so she rolled over and reframed the vision from Child’s Pose—nestling on her feather covered breast, on a particularly thick patch of grass.

She’d lost track of time until the instructor gently tinkled a bell to bring the participants back from their meditations.

Cynthia had to shake her head to help snap out of it.

“Think of one takeaway from your meditation walk and focus on it for the rest of the day.” The parting words seemed like good advice.

Cynthia utilized senior body mechanics training for getting back up from the floor. Only Arthur Peabody’s ashes in his cherrywood box on the console beneath the TV was present to see her magnificent feat. For him, and him alone, she made a curtsy.

Her meditation takeaway was fully engrained in her mind. It was time to start participating in life again.

Done for the day, she pulled the scrunchie from her tiny ponytail and shook out her hair as she signed off from the Zoom class.

 When Cynthia glanced down at her workout shirt, she noticed a long, fresh blade of grass stuck to her chest. Although she hadn’t left the house in two days.