Grief Is a Wild Place

    

         Grief is a wild place.

 

            We like the idea of the wilderness because it’s unknown, and because what we know isn’t enough to calm our monkey minds. We need to believe that there is more to life than what we perceive on the surface, and the wilderness spurs our imagination—of primal fears, yes, but also of beauty, hope, and transcendence.

 

Grief is a wilderness. An ocean. A desert. A dark forest.

 

            We like the challenge of figuring out something so different, something vast and seemingly unfathomable. We like mysteries. Some of us also like to take risks be where it is real, going to places where we can die if we make a mistake, either from wild animals with bigger teeth or from falling off a mountain. We like being surrounded by something larger than our own life, a place filled with wonder and majesty because grief compresses our world into a dull, constricting room. 

 

            When we don’t know WHERE we are, we discover WHO we are.

 

            When we’re grieving, it feels like our life has ended with the death of our loved one and nothing important is left. Turn out the lights; say good night. But life doesn’t end when someone dear to us dies. As devastated as we feel, the lifeforce within us has not been destroyed and eventually it flows back and renews, like the earth when the warmth of spring returns.

 

The wilderness taught me how to walk with grief as a companion.

 

            The wilderness is not a void, neither in nature nor in grief. At times it is raw and uncomfortable, like when a cold thunderstorm blows through and soaks our tent and belongings. We can like it or not, but this doesn’t change reality. Then the sun comes out and dries our clothes, birds return to the trees and chirp, and life feels okay again. 

 

            There is a beyond in grief, an immortality of soul that we do not lose. 

 

As solid as it seems, the wilderness is also continually changing as it adjusts to new situations. Pieces of the mountain fall off. A forest burns down to the ground, and a new meadow starts to grow. One community of life ends, and a new one begins. We feel sorrow for the grove of trees that is gone, because we loved its presence, yet there is anticipation for the new life being born. The wilderness is, and is becoming. Like us.

 

            Grief isn’t a well-marked trail. It’s a half-seen, half-felt mystery that we wander through.

 

            When grief started, I went to Yosemite to hike because on the trail I could hear what grief was doing. In the beginning, I thought that I would push through a dark forest and over a mountain with the only goal being to arrive on the other side, and the trail itself was unimportant. But the end of one trail was simply the beginning of the next. So, I relaxed into the journey and let grief guide me. I slowed down and paid attention to the landscape I was walking through and made connections with what was living there. I awakened to the realization that nature was transitory, even mountains made of granite, and this trail would be different the next time I hiked through. 

 

To lose ourselves in grief is to discover our deeper heart. 

 

            Every day I want to be open to the life’s changes. I want to do what I feel like doing, not what I think I should or what others expect of me. I want to say yes to life again and let it flow, not bottle it up and turn away. 

 

            It’s our imagination and compassion that connect us to each other.

 

            Even if we don’t like to hike, there is a wilderness within us waiting to be explored. The wilderness strips away our pretense and illusions about how we think life should work, and gives us the courage to face reality. Accepting that everything living will eventually die reorients our focus to celebrate each day for what it is.