Grief #6

Grief is a wild and howling wilderness, and you can only wander it lonely. By definition, any attempt to form a comforting company and traverse it together will set it somewhat at a remove.

But a word of warning: if you attempt to avoid the crossing altogether by surrounding yourself constantly with crowds of busy companions, it will grow in your gut and slowly take over your whole body. Or if you think you can cut the journey short, or hurry through, holding your breath and rushing past as though avoiding an unpleasant sight or smell; this is useless. Grief is inevitable. It will hunt you.

It is better to find one or two companions who are lost in their own wastelands, or who have wandered through theirs in the past, and then you can cross lonely-together.

Side-by-side, but each silent, alone, and lost in their own loss. This way, each dulls somewhat the pain of the other and the journey is made bearable.

A moment for explanation

 I rarely write with no sense of an audience. I don't exactly write FOR a specific audience, I just generally write knowing that eventually someone will read it. 

The numbered pieces on Grief that I've been posting this year were all written knowing that they would eventually be read by an audience, but it has taken me five years to be ready to share them. I'm sharing them because I wrote them to be read. Thank you for reading them. 

I am also writing the story of the initial impact, but I'm not ready to share that just yet. I used to have a very clear picture of who my readers were, but that's become murky, hence the hesitation, the delay to hit "publish". 

I think I'm mostly writing for myself these days, but still always knowing that eventually, someone will read it.

Grief #5

Grief is repeated suffocation. 

The sudden blow of memory is not so much a painful one, but rather a sensation of having all the breath expelled from your lungs at once. A stumbling cessation of that essential rhythm: in-out-in-out-in-out. 

Then... remember THIS? 

Nothing. 

 --sucking for air--gasp--

BREATHE, dammit. 

Life must go on.

And then you do. You breathe. The wet, hot air of grief and misery slowly gives way to clearer, fresher breezes and your heart goes on shoving oxygenated blood through your arteries, in spite of yourself. 

You go on breathing and living.

Grief #4

When you encounter grief-- an inevitable, unenviable part of the human condition-- you have a choice, I think. Defense seems imperative. The instinct to throw up a brittle wall of counter-emotion is universal, it seems; cynicism, anger, hurt, stoicism, heroism. But there is possibly another option. 

It may be possible to soften to absorb the impact.  What if instead, you unlock your knees, don't brace for impact, don't try to withstand the force and flood. What if you drink it in? What if you swirl your fingers through the flood of it and watch the eddies ripple outward, back towards the shore? What if you wade along, through it? Perhaps with your nose barely above the water line, your toes barely scrabbling along the stony bottom, but not fighting the current. Let it sweep you inexorably forward through the days, weeks, months. Then slowly, it may begin to ebb. You may find yourself washed gently up onto an unfamiliar shoreline, soft, re-formed.

Maybe this new destination will be Redemption.

A Woman in a Box

 Before I became a woman, they handed me a box.

Here, they said. This is for you to stay safe in.

This box is too small, I said. It’s the wrong shape for me.

But don’t you want to be safe? If you put yourself into the box, everything will be all right. You will be safe– you’ll be a Good Wife, and a Good Mother. This box is the only way to know for sure that your husband and your children are happy.

But what about me? Will I be happy?

You’ll be safe.

So I climbed into the box.

It doesn’t fit, I cried! Look, I stick out over here, and this leg is too long, and my breasts are too large and and I have questions, ideas, things I want to see and do.

From outside the box, they handed me a knife.

Here, they said. This is for you. Cut off the pieces that don’t fit in the box.

I took the knife, trembling.

That will hurt, I whispered.

But it’s the only way to be safe. It’s the only way to be Right and Good. Cut, they cried!

So I cut.

I cut off all the parts of me that didn’t fit. I held my breath and made my largeness small. I made my small tender parts big and tough to fill the empty corners. I pulled the lid down tight, so I could be safe inside the box. 

And I painted a laughing face on the outside of the box.