Interesting times, to say the least. So many people are going through various stages and shapes of grief. Grief for loved ones, grief for what could have been, grief for homes burned to the ground, grief for their country, grief for the land, the water, the air, the animals.
On the river trail recently, I ran into a dear friend whose wife has just died. He has been incredibly busy with the business necessary to complete the death of a spouse. He was on his way for a massage, and then to the desert for some down time, finally, to be with the spaciousness that allows the sadness, the loss, the emptiness.
Another friend I ran into was grieving the loss of her grown son, and saying that she must paint because it makes her focus 100% on painting, and stops the continual crazy-making tape that plays in her head surrounding her grief.
A different friend is living with someone who is gradually dying of lung cancer. She does her day-to-day with her partner seeing the decline, planning for the changes and trying to be with each precious moment. Grief in each moment in their very being.
A friend-of-a-friend’s teen son committed suicide, as did my nephew’s son. Imagine how those families are dealing with their grief.
I am still grieving my dear friend who died in November. At first it was riveting and sad and traumatic, and now a few months later, it feels like emptiness, such a loss, she’s not there to call and check in with, laugh with, hear about her kids, her life.
I can’t even come to terms with how it feels to see your own house go up in flames, and everything you own go up with it. Having only a few minutes to evacuate, and then to look back and see fireballs lighting up the roof, it’s just too heartbreaking.
And what is happening to our nation, and the animals and the land destruction and the water and air pollution. This is a whole other layer of grief that we may not be aware of as we go about our daily lives. Tragic, incomprehensible, a kind of sacred sadness.
There are so many flavors of grief: acute sorrow, total sadness, anger sometimes, emptiness, longing, self-protection, a shuddering fear for our world, despair. Profound feeling is a natural consequence of our deep connections, love and participation with others, with life and with our world.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her 1969 book, “On Death and Dying,” explains the steps of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance, in that order. I’m not sure this is how it works. I feel like grief is different for all of us, and needs to work its way through us, deeply. We are carried along by its current without knowing where it will lead.
Allowing time and space for this is important, and seeing and feeling whatever presents itself. Sometimes there are joyous memories of good times. Then, everything can switch and change and go who-knows-where. Sometimes we can connect with others suffering losses everywhere.
Often, I feel this grief will not ever leave. The heartache comes through, yet I sense it lives in me, and always will. It seems like grief is cumulative, and all that we’ve experienced at our age lives within us. It has become part of us, of our relationships and who we are in our lives.
To deny our process around grieving, whatever it is and however it goes, is to rob ourselves of the wisdom and compassion we find in ourselves and in others. It seems to link us with others who grieve, and also with a universal empathy toward everyone who’s ever experienced loss. Things don’t last, not even us. Nothing stays, all is impermanent.
“Grief teaches us tenderness and patience with ourselves, and reminds us lovingly not to hold on too tightly. Impermanence is inescapable, we learn; no one and nothing escapes her touch.”
– Joan Halifax
Blessings to all who wander on this path.
Martha McClellan has lived in Durango since 1993 and has been an educator, consultant and writer. Reach her at mmm@bresnan.net.
