Being Creative with Grief

After being batted around by grief for a time, many of us want to take this raw energy, and our new clarity about reality, and be creative with it. We want to regain a measure of control over a force that has been tossing us around for months. I don’t play a musical instrument, paint, dance, weave, or create sculptures, but I do write, and I wrote down every memory, image, insight, and story of my life with Evelyn, and shaped some of them into essays and poems.

 

We take the remnants that grief leaves us, and sew them together in a patchwork quilt with the sinews of our heart. 

 

Artists of Dark Mountains

painting by Alec DeJesus, “Vices of the Burning Bear” 

When grief comes, and suffering pulls a shroud over the sun, we move into the shadows of dark alleys and walk over shards of broken meaning. We may feel abandoned and alone, but at least this place is safe from trauma.

The darkness is where artists go to create. 

Café Adagio

Grief advice for a complacent millennial.

Sometimes you need attitude when talking to people about grief because so many are clueless, and polite words don’t penetrate their foot of insulation. Grief isn’t polite. It’s messy and filled with stampeding bison, but it also invites kindness, if we are paying attention. 

This is an imaginary conversation – what I wish I could have said.

Life In a Museum

“your life / It’s a painting hanging in a dark museum” Guillaume Apollinaire

After death knocked me out, I woke in a dark room. There was one painting hanging on the wall, lit by a spotlight. It was a portrait of my love who died, and it was all I could see.

In a corner of my eye, I noticed a crazy kaleidoscope of images flashing with feelings and jumbled thoughts. But when I tried to look directly at it, it moved to another corner.

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