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| Photo Credit: David Hawgood |
Live long enough, and loss, real loss, is inevitable, after all. We know it, but we live in the happy illusion in our youth that it is not so, that death and disease are the aberrations. Middle age knows they are the rule, and that soon or late they come for everyone we love.
But, I told her, there's an up side, too. The older I get, the better able to weather grief I seem to become. It turns out that in this, as in so many things, practice helps. Grief is a skill that grows better with use, if we dare to trust it--to feel it, acknowledge it, and keep walking.
I'm stronger now than I was at twenty, and I know it. I told my daughter so.
"Mom," she said, "Um... that's kind of dark."
I guess maybe it is.
Here's what I know:
I lost a friend this week. My good friend Abby has died, and I can't quite piece that knowledge together in my head. I don't get it, about death. Not yet. (I guess that means I'm still young enough that it does seem like an aberration to me after all.)
I understand grief, though. And watching Abby's wife Janet walk this valley is breaking my heart. No courage, no generosity of spirit, no warmth of heart takes away the pure, high, keening pain of Janet's loss. She speaks of it sometimes, bows down and weeps from it sometimes, but mostly, she keeps walking. And it is breaking my heart to watch her.
Here's what else I know: when your life brims over with pain and sadness--the real kind that can't be fixed with an attitude adjustment--you gotta go out and grow a bigger life. In fact, all of us, all the time, should be growing our lives as wide as our hearts can hold, so that, wherever there is grief, there will be some ghost of joy and gratitude to bear it company.
Be large. Love many. Give your time, give your energy, and above all else, give your empathy and enter in to all the joys and sorrows that there are in your friends' lives. Drink deep from the cup of life, especially when it is bitter, from motives of pure self-interest. Because in times of loss, it's all you've got to keep you going.
Don't tell me about the littleness of your life. Live large. When loss comes to you, too, it will give you something to hold on to.
Comments
On my blog today, I commented about how my own pettiness has ebbed over time... I think this is due to the skill you speak of and a recognition of just how short life is... too short to nurse grudges, or at least (haha), not the way I used to!
Baby steps!
Again, always love your blog.
I think that you right the more we live the more we understand certain things, like our mortality, but by the Gods that does not make it any easier.
Virtual humongous hug and positive energy.
We hold you and the others who grieve in the Light.
When someone very dear to me died it took 7 years of grieving before I didn't fall at times through the hole punctured in life.
I hesitate to share, but maybe I will. If you feel it might help, read my poem "Waking at the Funeral" I wrote for my dear aunt:
http://www.zianet.com/lunarosity/wilcoxdan.html
Daniel Wilcox
I know the common wisdom is that we can start to expect this in our middle age. For me, these kinds of deaths, this kind of loss, started when I was in my 20s. Would I cope better with them if they had started to hit later? I don't know. I do know that, like you, I have found... not so much that they are easier over time, but perhaps, as you say, that I am more skilled. I certainly have more resources, internal and external.
I am so sorry for your loss, and for Janet's. Really, that's all...
Holding you in the Light, in the Goddess who is Death as part of Life, especially this time of year.
Your writing in this moment reminds me of the following Poetry, something I read many, many times while healing from that which does not heal, never completely. Perhaps if you have not read it, it may find a place within your spirit as well.
The Cure
We think we get over things.
We don’t get over things.
Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
Never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?
The way to get over a life is to die,
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things,
and be then not any less pain
but true to form.
Because anything natural has an
inherent shape and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing
but the shape of it.
Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life without
obliterating,, getting over, a
single instant of it.
— Albert Huffstickler, from “Wanda” Walking Wounded
Peace,
Nahnni
That is, one tries to heal depression and to protect and value grief for it's depth and connection with the divine.
Real grief also has room, then, for genuine compassion, even when it is currently impossible to express it. Thank you for sharing yours.
Blessed Be.
I think that christophoer makes some points that I know to be true, but have not reflected on. I know there can be joy in grief,
Holding you in the light.
Glenn