Gifts from Grief

Last Friday, I spent all day decorating our house for Christmas.  Our tree had been up for a week and the kids' winter break was about to begin.  The prospect of sixteen days off sure made me merry and bright! And as I opened the boxes and bins of old decorations, they became fresh with meaning. I framed holiday cards given to us in past years and placed them around the house. Some of them represent new friendships that were painful to leave so soon. Other pieces hold memories with my family long ago yet felt different today. Pondering the gifts of the years filled me with joy.

Grief has also had its place, so I've pondered it. We won't be home (in NJ) for the holidays. That's only ever happened once, the year Owen was born. Even then, he and I flew home for a visit just weeks into the new year. Today, we have no idea when we might return.  to that place and a circles of circles of family and friends that are changing now without us. "Even when you're moving for positive reasons... moving is a major grief event," says Russell Friedman (Grief Recovery Institute). "Rather than avoiding the feelings of grief, lean into them... Grief is the way out of the pain."

Most of us on Earth are either grieving or living not far from grief. Some can't be home at the holidays, some are truly alone. Others grieve secretly while some are unaware that grief is the secret they hold. Sometimes it comes by utter devastation or by sudden loss. Other times it's simply a bi-product of the natural course of life. No matter, grief is painful. Whatever the circumstance, Friedman's definition will fit:     

 "the conflicting emotions caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior."

Not long after our August move, a friend of ours kindly reopened the door to permission when she said I should take all the time I need. Change takes time to navigate. Even really good change. We already enjoy so much about our life in Colorado that people are confused sometimes when I say I'm doing well. It doesn't mean I don't have grief to walk through, that many moments are not hard. I'm just not depressed about what I don't have, about the distance, or even about the grave financial struggle that's come with relocating.

Grief doesn't exist in an emotional vacuum apart from peace, beauty, love. Likewise, there's a joy that is only found once we've known loss. It's why I'm thankful for past seasons of grief, why we can celebrate even in the midst of sorrow. On December 23, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter of condolence to the daughter of an old friend, William McCullough, who'd just been killed in the war. Lincoln wanted to assure her even in the depths of anguish: "The memory of your dear father, instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before." We may never be the same after mourning, but we can become more.  

Perhaps through grief we find a friendship that stands the test of turmoil. Maybe after extensive sicknesses we experience profound health for the first time. A tragedy may restart our hearts with a fresh focus on what's really important. One season of grief may uncover a former loss we were never able to process till now. These are gifts we find even as our days bring loss.

Here we are at Christmas. This season enunciates the Greatest Gift ever to come from emptying and ultimate loss.  God himself would become a child and suffer all that man could, in order to make us whole. Wholly his. Rejected, despised, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief... Jesus the Son and Light of the World knows our pain personally and always offers more of himself in the dark places. A letting go can make room. 

Rainer Maria Rilke famously spoke, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Here is a poem of his, in the same vein.

LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELL TOWER

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

You are here. You are alive.
You and I.
Let's keep going.

Taking stock

Today the world ponders the life and passing of Nelson Mandela.  And this holiday season as a whole can bend one toward reflection.  As well as burden.  In my life, it's been November where I've taken special notice since it holds for me powerful firsts and lasts, deaths and births, redemptions and travails.  Yet there's no wonder, with winter on its way (at least in our hemisphere), that anyone would take this time to take stock, store up.

I was remembering our car wreck of 1995 when I started this poem last month, already thinking on the mysteries of dying and living, when I learned of another unexpected death.  A dear soul left this world at the age of 38.  Just as his impact and that of Mandela do not end here, today, this poem could conceivably keep on going, no matter the number of Novembers I have to come. . .



Not very often now it'll flash in my brain I could have died that night but I was carried through
the force through dusk through the trauma through to dawn and I have not tried to count
the dawns I have been carried into since since I don't think it's a debt I could carry

Why am I given what others are not or do I not have what's theirs and is it better than life life
is so strange I said when she told me of some betrayal - or payback - maybe order made of
something and I beg again if I might see into what seems disorder but then catch myself

Are they really caught up into immunity, purity, ceasing of insanity insanity that's knowing
they are in fact more sane than this whole damned existence of dawns and dusks and force
is it that will carry them through trauma to something better than any could calculate

November you've had such darkness I have very often thought was dispelling through what's
been given me since that night but today you are carrying a richness of neither dark nor light
alone but of both and all all things made vivid, palpable, if only in flash, invigorated dusk

In my cup

In My Cup

Earl Grey and later ginger breakfast

but neither was first choice

I only think I have to drink my habit
because it's habit to think it

So I told myself: you'll have the tea

and poured it in a cup of no import

Except my breaking from a norm might be
important as making coffee essential to my morn

Then I let myself think on more
than drink: on death and life because of death

and when it will touch me closer with time
or even too close regardless of time 

How death does not come and go

it's all around and through and
how we might never choose to free
death if it was ours to choose

So I think to myself: I'll make the choosing
into habit when the cup is mine to fill
and I'll choose to drink what's in the cup
when the filling can't be mine

--------------------

I wrote this poem a week ago, when our local community had seen two tragic car accidents in a matter of days.  Dying was on my mind, as well as what we do with our freedom, even in the mundane.  My uncle had also been admitted to the hospital two days before and then lost his fight with cancer the following day.  Three others have died in accidents since.