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. 

Coyote

Laurie Fitz, Rick Bernardo, and I were talking on their Connections Radio show recently about how the symbolism and ways of Coyote are helpful when we’re coping with loss and grief.

Walking West with Grief essay

New Essay Published!

 

I’m delighted to share the news that one of my essays about hiking in Yosemite to deal with my wife’s death was published this week by Under the Sun Literary Journal.

 

It’s called “Walking West with a Mountain,” and you can read it using this link:

 

https://underthesunonline.com/wordpress/2023/683-2/

 

Alone, and yet her presence

 

(photo of Half Dome by Mark Liebenow)

 

One of the big realizations after my wife died was that I was now alone. There was loneliness, and longing, and something deeper that I couldn’t describe. Life felt dry, like a desert.

 

I missed Evelyn—her daily presence, her singing, the inquisitive look in her eyes, the gentle touch of her hands, the little things she would do, the scent of her perfume. I missed the life we had built up together over 18 years, and the dreams of where we wanted to go together, dreams that had now ended. Living by myself, cooking meals, washing dishes, even watching TV, were uninteresting chores. I missed the person I was when Evelyn was around because I smiled more, and felt confident and witty. She understood my jokes, and encouraged me to try things that I wasn’t sure I could do. I missed the person I was becoming because of her.

 

Life is a River

I do not like dying. None of us do, I suppose. Every time someone or something we love dies, part of us dies with them. I also don’t like changes.




Whenever I return to Yosemite, or to any favorite place in nature, I want those places to look exactly the same. I want the scenic views that inspire me, and I want those mountains, forests, or rivers to make me feel alive. 

Sitting on a Dark Mountain

When grief comes, it pulls a blanket of darkness over our world. We enter a void of everything we’ve ever known and loved.

When my wife Evelyn died, I went to Yosemite and sat in the darkness of Glacier Point between the solitary lights of the constellations above and the campfires of happy people a mile below. The life I had known had abruptly ended, and I found myself in a place where there even the stars seemed unfamiliar. I tried not to think about the bears and mountain lions moving in the forest behind me.

Death of a Hawk

The Great Black Hawk saga.

A short essay of mine about a rare hawk was published by Entropy Magazine today. It’s also about curiosity, death, grief, compassion, wilderness, healing, kinship with nature, ecological warning, hope, and what it means to live in community with the earth. 

I worry about what I would have done if I hadn’t had nature in the months after Evelyn’s death. I often went to Yosemite to hike alone in the wilderness because I needed to figure out how I was going to survive grief. The long days on the trail gave me the time and the solitude I needed to listen for what I could not hear at home. The beauty and awe of natural world reminded me that I was not alone, and that I always had a place where I could go and renew my spirit.

You can read the essay online:

https://entropymag.org/the-birds-the-great-black-hawk/

(Yes, that's an owl in the photo because I don't have my own photo of a hawk, but the journal has a good one.)

100 Miles Beyond Where Jesus Lost His Sandals

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten journey for Christians. It’s when they look to see how far they have strayed from the path of faith, and if they need a refresher course in humility.

The title of this post struck me as fitting both the journey of faith and the journey of grief when we have to be brave and travel far beyond everything we’ve known, trusting that we will somehow make it through. 

Sequoia

Solitude permeates the snow-covered Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. On a late afternoon in December, I wander among the elders of the forest—Columbia, Telescope, the Grizzly Giant, and resting my hand on the rough, cinnamon bark of one tree nearly 3000 years old. I am moved to be touching something living that is this old.

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.

John Muir and Grief

The death of someone we love changes our life and unveils the frailty of existence. When we sit down with grief and look back, we realize that change has been continuous over the years. We are not who we were ten years ago or who we were as a teenager.

John Muir said, “Creation was not an act, it is a process, and it is going on today as much as it ever was.” Grief reminds us of this.

Choices

Before the death of my loved one, I often lived for the future, dreaming about what life would be like one day, putting off dinners and nights out to save money for it. In grief, the opposite was true and I lived in the past because I couldn’t imagine a future without my loved one in it.

Parts Missing

C.S. Lewis wrote that dealing with grief was like adjusting to life with one leg amputated. He said our whole way of life changes, and that while we may get around pretty well, we will probably walk with a limp and have recurrent pain for the rest of our life. After his wife died, Lewis didn’t think he would ever walk smoothly again.

Talking with Our Dead

Sometimes I hear the voice of a family member who has died, or I feel their presence. Is it real?

Out of the blue, I will think to send something to a friend in another state. When it arrives three days later, it’s exactly what she needed that day. How did I know? Is something going on beyond coincidence? We are more connected to each other than we think, both to the living and the dead.

Crossing Boundaries

When someone we love with our heart dies suddenly, we question what we thought were the givens about life. Life as we understood it ends. 

In the year after Evelyn died, I often went to Yosemite to take a break from grief. But I reached a point where simple survival was no longer enough. I set my fears aside and headed into the wilderness to explore grief. I took risks and pushed on every boundary I could find because I wanted to understand what life and death were about. 

Geography of Death

When I notice a bouquet of flowers along the road, I feel a moment of sadness because I know that someone died here. Someone’s spirit left their body here, and the people who knew and loved them are grieving their loss. If I’m not late to be somewhere, I try to figure out the cause of the accident — sharp curve, bad weather conditions, hit by a drunk driver — and then I check to see if any of these apply to me because I don’t want to die here.

Hiking Through Grief

            When men grieve, they often need to do something physical to help them along. Some men build things with their hands. I go hiking. My goal each day was to reach a scenic viewpoint, but more importantly I wanted to find a place along the way where I connected to something solid and real.

            In the months after my wife’s death, home was an unending flurry of details, doubts and despair, and I was unable to focus on anything for very long. Buddhism calls this “monkey mind,” when hundreds of thoughts are screeching, chattering, and jumping around, wanting my attention.

Grief and the Solace of Nature

My essay on how nature helped me deal with grief, at the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-liebenow/grief-and-the-solace-of-n_b_10812926.html

Mountain Light

Light flows down the mountains and fills the photographs of Yosemite I took a few weeks ago. October’s sunlight crinkles and flashes off the cascades that rush toward Happy Isles. When the river enters the green shade under the trees, on the left side of the island where Evelyn liked to sit, it evens out to a powerful black surge. 

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

            *

This essay was published by Junk. You can read the rest of it at: http://junklit.com/2014/04/14/mountain-light/#more-1017

Going into Nature: Yosemite

Journal entry 14

Six weeks after Evelyn’s sudden death, people aren’t stopping by to talk as often and the quietness of home is getting to me. Feeling the need for a change of pace, I head for nature.

Driving through Pleasanton, I pass Amador Clinic on the left where Evelyn collapsed and Valleycare Hospital on the right where she died, not looking at either but staring straight ahead. 

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *