Lethargy After a Death

  for Colleen

After the death of a spouse or a loved one, lethargy quickly sets in. It’s hard to find the motivation to do anything. The normal activities of living—shopping for food, cooking, cleaning the dishes, doing laundry—feel like a weight that drags our entire body down. 

Sharing a Cup of Tea

             Each year we set out full of good intentions and resolutions. We set up plans for self improvement, with ideas and strategies for what we can do every day to make ourselves better (physically, mentally, spiritually). Take them with a pinch of salt. Rather than create a list of 20 things that you have to do every day (which I did for almost a year and ended up improved but more miserable than happy), resolve to do what nourishes you.

 

Leavings

 

            Few of us look forward to change. We like routine and comfort. Yet over the course of our life, we will leave many places and people, and they will leave us. The reasons will be varied—new jobs, marriage, wanderlust, and sometimes what drew us together was one mutual interest, and when that had run its course, we drifted apart. Sometimes we simply sense that there is more waiting for us.

Rolling the Stone

 

There are stones we put in our pockets to remind us of where our life has turned, as well as of the times it has surprised us. “Well, today was certainly a Stone to remember!”

 

There are question stones that we hold in our hands, turn them over, and ponder the what ifs, the maybes, the perhaps. 

 

When someone dies, Caroline Fish says, grief can feel heavy, like a boulder, and at other times it seems more like a pebble, a pebble that we will carry with us always.

 

Come to the Table

            We come to the table where every suffering heart has a place. We share our stories of being shattered and lost, and talk of the stillness of our days and the erosion of dreams in the long drift of night. We weep by the rivers of Babylon as we remember our dead and the terrible, sad beauty of love.

We come to the table to nourish one another. We have had our fill of struggle and despair. We share what we have with each other, and pass faith from hand to hand. In holy giving and receiving, we bear witness to the communion of sacrifice and grace.

 

We come to the table to say to each other that in the midst of despair there is hope. That where we are broken, there is mending. That where we are angry, there is reconciliation. We come in compassion to bring courage to each other for the challenges that lie ahead, and to learn how to live in community together. 

 

                                                            Mark Liebenow, Christmas 2021

Stone Monastery of Grief

 For many people, the world of grief seems like a void, a large cavern of terror that everyone wants to flee, a place filled with utterly depressing chaos and rampaging emotions. And it is. It’s also filled with people who have unshakable compassion.

 

There are long periods of silence after the first onslaught of grief calms, and to those who grieve, the experience feels like living in a monastery. So much has been taken away that life feels pared back to stone walls and quiet, except for occasional rantings in the middle of the night. We’re always slightly cold, and the food we eat, while nutritious and warm, is nothing to write home about.

 

Chairs

Christiana Rasmussen wrote about chairs in her grief post last week. I imagine she will say something more about it this week, but I’m also going to run with the image. You can read her posts at www.secondfirsts.com.

She also interviewed me for her Dear Life podcast via Zoom. She was sitting at home in her chair while I was at home in mine, and it felt like we were in the same place, sharing our experiences of grief over a table. It’s rare to find someone who understands everything you are saying about grief without having to explain.

 

Podcast on Grief and Hope

 

Podcast on Grief and Hope

Christina Rasmussen and I spent an invigorating hour talking about the landscape of grief and how we found our way through its wilderness and put our lives back together after our spouses died.

 

You can listen to the Dear Life Podcast here: http://www.dearlifepodcast.com/episodes/ep78

Living with An Open Heart

It wasn’t like me, but I let myself be vulnerable to someone by sharing a personal feeling without knowing how the person would react. They could reject it and never speak to me again, or a deeper relationship could begin. 

This is a big step when you’re grieving because you don’t have as many friends as before, because when you started talking about grief, some of your friends edged for the exits because death talk made them uncomfortable. Early in grief, when the darkness descends in mist, so many emotions are surging through you that you’re not sure what your main emotion is. You don’t want to frustrate your friends with inexactitude, but it seems like there are a dozen emotions all fighting for the top spot, so you talk about them all.

 

In Darkness My Heart Breathes

I hurry through the warmth of the day to reach the night’s cool solace. In the exhalation of the tired sun over the earth’s dusty horizon, as gray shadows deepen into the long evening hours, as bright stars and planets appear in the clarity of the cobalt night air, I let go of all the chores that did not get done.

New Year of Grief

The first New Year’s after a loved one dies, the future looks like a rocky coast. There is no celebrating. No late night dancing. No sparklers or blowing of horns. No party.

We don’t know what to do or which direction to head. Because our loved one is not here, no matter what amazing things also happened last year, like a job promotion or a new car, the death renders them meaningless. We do not look forward to what is coming in the new year because most of our dreams involved the one who died.

Solace of Nature

Whenever grief knotted me up, I headed for nature. Breathing the fresh air of the mountains, wandering through the woods, or sauntering along a river, uncluttered my mind and reopened my heart.

Nature asked little of me. It accepted me as I was, and invited me to share its community.

I could sit beside a river for hours and let the sounds of the undulating water soothe my struggles. I could wander in the forest’s shadows when the brightness of the day became too much. As I hiked over the mountains, I could physically work out my anger, frustrations, and find moments of happiness that pushed back against despair.

The Grief Cafe

When we lose someone we love, we become members of the Grief Café. It doesn’t matter who died or under what circumstances, we loved them and our hearts have broken and are leaking. There are no dues and only one initiation rite, which we’ve already gone through. A look in the eyes is enough to tell who belongs. 

The Freedom of Walking

Walking is an act of freedom.

Taking a break from writing, I go out for a walk. This time I’m not heading into the woods. I’m walking on the streets of the neighborhoods around me. Literally. Some have no sidewalks. Some don’t even have a shoulder, and I have to step in the ditch when cars approach. 

Dark World Community

Since Evelyn’s death, I often go to Yosemite. In the darkness of night, I walk into the meadow and lose myself in the wonder of the constellations turning overhead. 

Comfort in a Time of Grief

You know how it is when you suffer a tragedy and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and are happy again in no time at all? Neither do I.

When we’re deep in grief, there’s not much we can do to get out of it. There’s little that anyone can say that softens the impact of our loved one’s death. When we’ve moved further on in grief, we’re more understanding, but it will never be all right that our loved one died.  

Finding Strength in Grief

As we follow grief’s advice, we are discovering that we have an amazing amount of strength. In the beginning, we weren’t sure we would survive this worst thing that could ever happen.

We have a right to grieve because people we love have died. They died too soon, and they died before we were ready. They were an important part of our lives, and their absence leaves a hole. We are learning to live with this.




Community of Grievers

When someone we love dies, friends tend to disappear, and it's easy to feel abandoned. 

In our struggle to survive a death, it’s important to assemble a community of people to help us deal with the impact of grief. Left on our own, we would curl up in a corner until we dried into a prune. Unfortunately, many of our friends won’t know what to say or do for grief, and will keep their distance. 

My Heart Is a Wooden Room

My heart is wooden room, an empty octagon with cushions on an oak floor. The room is nestled in the earth and rises from it. The room is rooted in the earth that is rooted to the ocean in front and the mountain behind. It is organic and breathes. Love lives in this room in the midst of sorrow.

Standing In a Dark World, Waiting

When death comes, we leave the world of light behind and enter a realm of shadows.

Colors mute to gray. Sounds are all in the distance. Even if it’s sunny and in the eighties, the air feels cold and we wear a jacket. Food tastes like cardboard, so we don’t eat. Everything we pick up is rough to the touch, so we stay home. Our world shifts into slow gear.