Sunday, September 17, 2017

Murmuration


Image source: Starlings #21 by Paolo Patrizi, Pyragraph

Something about grief…

Forgive me this indulgence: to put real things to words is to fail. Forgive me for my failure.

My family was stoic.

My grandmothers both lost their husbands when their families were still young.

I offer them as examples.

My grandmothers met their losses with little drama. They had the work of holding their families together. I don’t think there were a lot of cuddles going around: stories about working in the fields in the rain until the bonnet mildewed to the head, but not a lot of stories about indulgences.

There is no greater love than this …

A gift of time, energy, feeling, strength, all of it spent without question – not one moment did they, my grandmothers, consider abandoning their love.

Their circumstances, their husbands’ deaths and their changed fortunes in the world, were akin to a hurricane, a natural disaster. It was a time when the economy was crashing and it was still definitively a man’s world. These strong, strong women took it day by day and poured themselves out, exhausted their youths - without question.

These were not one-dimensional people.
They were not perfect. (None of us are perfect.)

They lived in a world where there were so many deeply engrained ideas about how things were supposed to be and who had the right to succeed: so many obstacles to be overcome. Some of these obstacles were imposed by the world and some were inscribed internally, a code written into their systems. They did the best they could within a world that did not celebrate them or raise them up for their efforts. They persisted despite the fact they had no reason to believe, no expectation even, that their children would know all they poured out for them.

Their reward was that their families, their children, continued in the world. Their hope was that their children might not suffer. Their faith was that there would be for these children moments of joy, complete and unalloyed.

My grandmother Cooper once took my sister, bleeding and crying into her arms and comforted her. The closest thing I ever saw grandmother give to a cuddle was prompted by a bicycle accident. On seeing my sister after smashing into a brick wall, my cousin and I ran screaming bloody-murder to the house. My grandmother came barreling out, like a tank or a force of nature, scooping up my long-legged sister, made stronger by grandmother love and adrenaline, carried her back to the house. Grandmother held and rocked her, wiping away her blood, until daddy got there.

I think I am the only one left who was there that day and I have an obligation to that moment and a thousand others like it.

Loss, the death of a loved one, is so much of being human.


Image Source: Enlightenment in the Cemetery: The Adams Memorial and Buddhism in 19th Century America, New York Historical Society Blog

People talk about regret and closure.

“Closure” is a f**king fantasy. It’s the voice in your head that tries to fix things. It’s stupid. You can’t fix it. Real things can’t be fixed, that’s what makes them real. There are no do-overs. You can’t reach back in time and say what needed to be said, or do what needed to be done. It’s a stick to beat yourself with.

Regret is the knife of grief.

It comes at you in the corners of your life, when you’re not looking. It slashes you wide open. Regret is stitched into grief. I think it is nearly impossible to lose, really lose, and regret not be there.

Give me the knife of regret, it is the scar and I would have it no other way.

Interwoven, tangled – into this grief are the moments, all the moments, the contentment as well as the grief, the gratitude that you, all of you, are with me.

My house is full of ghosts, lovely, lovely ghosts. These days I have a long list of ghosts. Every moment of any place I could call home is infused with these ghosts – a cup of coffee, the weed I pull, late nights pondering the universe conjure you my ghosts. I would rather, so much rather, have you in the world fully, but I am grateful that at least you are with me as ghosts.

Grief is a raven gliding high above on wind currents with the land spread out below. There is a moment when grief is raw, but not so raw as to be blinding, that it puts everything in perspective, the important things snap into to focus and the stupid fall away. You promise yourself, gliding on that current, that you won’t lose sight of what matters, that you won’t let your attention be taken by stupid things again and you’ll always remember this feeling. But of course you forget, at least sometimes. You forget what will be remembered of you and what will not. You forget what you can do that matters – and what does not. You forget, at least sometimes.

I wish I had words to tell you how lucky I am. They are with me. I have an obligation to that and I do the best I can as they did before me. I pray that the ghost I become will be as kind as theirs are to me.