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Category: grieving

Sadness, Shared

Sadness, Shared

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It’s a rainy day here, a work-plus-travel day for me as my sister and  I drive out to Kentucky together to go through our parents’ things.

This is a sad duty, one our brother has borne pretty much alone, so it’s time for us to pitch in.

Already I”m imagining the house again without our parents in it. The sofa where Mom and I would  sit and talk, glasses of iced tea on the coffee table in front of us. The chair against which Dad would lean his cane — a cane with a padded handle that he loved and to which he affixed one of those giveaway address labels you get in the mail.

Thinking of the cane, thinking of the emptiness, thinking of how thankful I am not to have to do this alone. It’s sadness, shared.

The Next Day

The Next Day

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Common wisdom says the mileposts of grieving are the big days, the first Thanksgiving, Christmas or birthday without your loved one. My sister and brothers and I have passed all of these in the first three and a half months.

What I’ve learned, though, is that grief is a wayward thing. It sneaks up on me when I’m waiting for a Metro train or rummaging through a drawer to find an emery board.

It’s there in the earrings Mom brought me back from Ireland in 1998 or any of her sweaters I couldn’t bear to give away. I bury my nose in them sometime, inhale the faint odor that was her closet.

Mom was a dignified person, alone in her being. She was not big on hugging. My deep connection to her was expressed in words and deeds. But I miss her now in a physical way. 

It’s the riddle of the ages, the riddle of corporeality. What we love of a person is so often the mind, the spirit. But it’s a spirit that must exist in the flesh, in a body that moves in this world. Which is why, in the end, it’s the worn wallet or tattered address book that brings us to tears.


(Mom with her sisters and brother; she’s second from the right.)

The Archaeology of Grief

The Archaeology of Grief

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“The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten.”

I’m more than halfway through Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk and the dogeared pages are growing. More and more often I find myself holding her phrases in mind, turning them over, searching for the invisible strings that tether them to the page, so light are they, so deft at plumbing the dusky chambers of the human heart.

This one today came after a description of a dying rabbit and how adept Macdonald became at the coup de grace, at putting the bunnies her hawk, Mabel, killed out of their misery. “The serious, everything puzzle that was death and going away.”

Macdonald was grieving her father’s abrupt passing as she tamed her hawk; she was learning to be a participant in life rather than just an observer. That’s what gave her the “momentary shouldering of responsibility” that allowed her to kill the rabbit.

And she was ruminating, always ruminating. She didn’t feel regret for the killing but for the animal itself. “It wasn’t a promising sorrow,” she says. “It was the sorrow of all deaths.”

I bought this book because I thought it would be a companion in grief. It has become just that. It is  the spade, but it is also the salve.

Finding Francis

Finding Francis

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It’s not as if I had lost him, or didn’t know about him at all. But there was a bit of the miraculous in what happened yesterday.

I was facing a difficult situation at work, a delicate, pretending-like-everything-is-okay-but-it’s-really-not situation. And that, on top of the grief and worry, was making for some desperate hours. I needed quick relief, an instant infusion of calmness and strength. So for some reason — I’m not sure why — I googled a 16th-century saint, Francis de Sales.

This is not St. Francis of the Franciscans, namesake of Pope Francis. This is the other Francis. I know about him because my parish priests are of his order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, and his writings are sometimes reprinted in the bulletin.

Still, googling saints is not something I do in times of trouble. I’m more likely to pace or bite my nails. Nevertheless, the impulse was so strong that it was like reaching for Motrin when I feel a headache coming on. There was the near certain promise of relief. I knew this was what I was supposed to do.

So I found this: “Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” And this: “Have patience with all things but chiefly have patience with yourself.” And this: “The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or give you unfailing peace to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.”

Yesterday I found Francis when I needed him the most.

Eye of Storm?

Eye of Storm?

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Sometimes life decides to throw a lot of things at you at once. Work woes on top of grieving on top of other stuff.

I’m using the word “decides” lightly, of course, and with some irony. Life hasn’t “decided” anything. Life is just happening. So how do  I handle the concerns, the worries, the to-dos? How do I  control the uncontrollable?

What I’m hoping for is the eye of the storm. I’ve been blown around and buffeted for weeks now, so it has to be here somewhere. I don’t even expect the storm to be over. I just want a break from it.

Maybe if I think small like this, not ask for too much, the way will be clearer, the passing smooth. All I’m asking for is a patch of sunlight in the clouds, the calm air to catch my breath.

Muted Palette

Muted Palette

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At the end of the street, a maple is blazing. And on Monday’s drive through the mountains, hillsides were studies in russet and gold.

On the whole, though, it’s been a muted palette this autumn. Or maybe my vision is clouded this year.

It’s difficult sometimes to know where the interior weather ends and the exterior weather begins.

Events on the Wing

Events on the Wing

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If a journal is to have any value either for the writer or any potential
reader, the writer must be able to be objective about what he
experiences on the pulse. For the whole point of a journal is this
seizing events on the wing. Yet the substance will come not from narration but from the examination of experience, an attempt, at least, to reduce it to essence.  — May Sarton, The House by the Sea

I think about this as I remember the cemetery, the flag half mast, a large hawk circling in the leaden sky. There was a bank of autumn color from one stand of trees. Otherwise, the white stones and green grass made for a frightful symmetry.

Beyond the boundaries, cattle grazed, and  hills rolled on in the distance. As the priest said the ancient prayers, my eyes looked down at the flower petals under foot, one white, one yellow.

A peaceful place. A resting place. The sun broke through the clouds just as the burial was complete. 

Turning East

Turning East

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Nighttime lingers here on the western edge of Eastern Daylight Time. It is dark until 8. Great light for a writer, at least this one, who finds the dim, still, early morning hours the best ones for creative pursuits. Add the mournful whistle of a freight train — which sounds here once an hour or more — and the picture is complete.

So I pause for a moment before turning east and moving on. I pause in this house I know and love so well. Pause with the boxes of Mom’s clothes and papers that I’m taking back to Virginia. Pause with the solemnity of what I’ve been doing, what I must continue to do.

Morning email brings messages from friends, words of support and love. How lucky I am to have them. How could I do this without them?

The Word

The Word

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It’s been more than a week now since my mother passed away. The wake and funeral are behind us. Closets have been cleaned, clothes sorted, papers boxed for another time. The Kleenex box is almost empty. This is not a good time to run out of tissues!

What I’m searching for, I realize, is not closure but continuance. How will Mom go on? I can save a few of her sweaters and dresses, plenty of photographs and other memorabilia — but what I want most are the words she’s written.

Father Linh, who said Mom’s funeral mass, wisely made the Word his theme. “In the beginning was the Word,” he said. In the Word we find eternal life.

Mom started the Museum of the Written Word. She dealt with words all her life. She didn’t write as many words as she had hoped. But she encouraged others to write them. One of them was me. I best get on with it.

Eulogy

Eulogy

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I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go through with it, but I hope I will. Today at Mom’s funeral I hope I’m able to stand up and say a few words about her. It’s a sad duty, but an important one. Because she can no longer speak for herself, we must speak for her.

But how to do that? How to sum up a life in a few paragraphs?

No choice but to plunge in, to type words on a page, print the page, edit the page, add some new words, remove some old ones. No choice but to try and do it. Because the eulogy is not just for the person who is gone, of course; it’s for all of us still present, all of us who must keep on living.