the shape of grief

Upon Ferdinand's death was a big void. And I filled it with tears and words. I wrote and wrote and wrote, because I did not understand my grief and I had to figure it out.

There were many things repeated: the tears, the hollering, the pain, the hurt, the questions, the anger. Sometimes there were appreciation: gratitude, seeing the beauty.

But sometimes it seems my words were just not touching it, not describing the grief right. I really wanted to yell out to the world what it feels like, how it is, but it seems no matter how I string together the words, no matter how hard I contemplate the letters on my keyboard, there is a glass wall between me and grief. It seems I hold and cradle it, and I rock to sleep murmuring its name, yet it seems so intangible.

Then one day, my wonderful friend Leigh sent me this poem:

The Phoenix Again

On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.

After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.

You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.

It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.

And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief

To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die.

~ May Sarton

and upon reading it, I broke down and cried. I realized that I have been trying to grope with the shape of grief, and perhaps denying what it was. The poem spoke to what I feared to face up to: I had died with my son.

And it spoke for what I desired: to live again.

Those words gave shape to my grief.

Often, it is when reading the blog of a fellow bereaved when I will chance upon a line that makes me say, or think, "Oh, my gosh, you just nailed it. You just said it for me, in a way more eloquent, and more beautiful, and more wide-eyed that I ever could."

Yet, it is not just the fellow bereaved who knew my grief, or who actively and compassionately sought to feel around this hole in my life, groping, tenderly touching, patiently trying to understand it all with me. At my Blessingway, organized by my two wonderful, incredibly awesome friends, a friend read the following poem during the session in which we all honor my son Ferdinand:

When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn
you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed,
I shall say, “Baby is not there!”–mother, I am going.

I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you;
and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe,
and kiss you and kiss you again.

In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves
you will hear my whisper in your bed,
and my laughter will flash with the lightning
through the open window into your room.

If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night,
I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep mother, sleep.”

On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed,
and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.

I shall become a dream,
and through the little opening of your eyelids
I shall slip into the depths of your sleep;
and when you wake up and look round startled,
like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.

When, on the great festival of puja,
the neighbours’ children come and play about the house,
I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.

Dear auntie will come with puja-presents and will ask,
“Where is our baby, sister?”
Mother, you will tell her softly,
“He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Oh, how I trembled as those words left her lips. Those words made me realize how close my son is to me, and yet how far away he is. Those words reached deep and touched me where it is the most raw and most tender. My entire being shook, down to the very depth of my soul, because in those words, my grief had once again been given shape. Those words beautifully expressed my grief and longing. I read the poem many times over after the Blessingway and cried many good crys.

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How about you? How do you find shape to your grief?- thrugh your own writing, by reading? Do you have a poem that you return to often, be it for comfort, or just to give yourself permission to have a good, good cry?

darkness, and light

Within light there is darkness, but
do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light, but
do not look for that light.

~ zen quote ~

Settling in for a wait at the chiro's office, I grabbed a copy of the National Geographic and sat back to read the feature article: "Our Vanishing Night" It explores how man's desire and need for light had affected our lives, our reproduction, and that effect is spilling into the animal world, affecting migration, predatory patterns, and our relationship to darkness.

"Light is a powerful biological force", it said, birds get drawn to it and that resulted in heads-on collision onto buildings. Nocturnal animals are at higher risk of being preyed upon because man's urge to have light had resulted in them being more easily exposed to predators.

The presence of artificial light is affecting animals' breeding and migratory patterns, and not to their advantage. Turtle hatchlings are lost by the hundreds of thousands each year because they are confused by the artifical light source and lose their orientation, and thus lose sight of the ocean, where they need to go home to.

In humans, rates of breast cancer has been linked to nightime brightness of neighborhoods.

The article ended on a grave note- with our power to create light, we have forgotten the scale of our being; we have become blind to our place in the Universe... we think we have control, but in fact we may be wreaking havoc, upon our very own world.

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I closed the magazine and thought of how light is so often over-rated. Overly esteemed. Overly yearned for. I pondered my evolving relationship with light and darkness...

When I was young, I was scared of the dark. I had to sleep with the light on. Then an adult will come and turn off the light after I have fallen asleep. My grandma had to come with me to use the toilet during the middle of the night, otherwise I would leave a whole trail of lights through the house.

Then, at some point, I finally awakened to the wisdom of my body and of Nature and I realized that my body needs the dark. It needed the dark to be fully rested. It needed the dark to repair itself. It needed the dark to regulate my biological rhythms. Light resembled noise to me at night. They were intrusive, talkative and annoying. At night, I needed the dark. Now I like to sleep under a thick blanket of darkness. It feels safe, and neccesary. And not just me. The plants too, and the animals. Everything needs the dark.

And then of course, once, I saw an entire sea of stars in a black sky. Enveloped by darkness, with no light trying to assert its presence, I felt I saw through and through galaxies and universes and witnessed every single star in my eyes, every single twinkle of light traveled from light years beyond to meet with my mundane being and I was bowed over. Totally humbled. Without the dark, no beauty; no gasping in the face of the power of what just is.

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From the moment we learned that Ferdinand had died, it was darkness for me. The nurse dimmed the lights to give us privacy after the horrible news was announced. But I guess symbolically it was a pronouncement of our baby's fate, and a gesture of acknowledgment of how our lives had become from that moment forth- dark, gloomy, sad, oppressively sorrowful.

So often and so many times I have written of sitting in the dark, being in the dark. Strangled by the dark. Suffocated. Blinded. Trapped.

But I also found comfort in it.

The light was too piercing. The light, it represented blatant joy and insensitivy of the other. Like the friend who wrote me about her glorious day with her children, gallivanting with horses and singing to rainbows. That was a blinding light she sent me, piercing into my darkness, saying "Boo!" to me in the throes of my woes. It seemed to me she said, Look! I am in the light. Life is beautiful and gorgeous, can't you see?

And I pulled my blanket closer around me, shut my eyes to the glaring bright, and turned my face to the wall.

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The thing is, I need both. Darkness, and light. They are inseparable, and essential.

Darkness is not forever, it will turn around and show its other face, the light.

But, to have darkness turn on its own time is different from me flicking on a light myself. Or someone swaying a kerosene lamp right in my face.

I have seen the light, I have.

It comes from the depths of darkness. It comes from the other pools of darkness. The light comes from fellow bereaved.

And therefore it was welcomed. That light is not glaring, loud or self-righteous. It had nothing to prove. That light, from fellow bereaved, is just the right glow. Like a warm, kind nod to me, acknowledging my grief journey and sometimes, just that, and it flickers off again. But I know then that I am not alone in the dark, and darkness cannot be forever.

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To know that light will come again is important. Darkness is vital- for healing, for rest, for solitude and contemplation. For dreams and for beauty. Light provides something different. Like an exhale after a long holding in of the breath. A change in pace and rhythm. An opportunity to evaluate things in a different light.

We celebrate the Winter Solstice. We watch, as the days grow shorter and shorter, and the nights, longer and colder. We hold out till Winter Solstice, then, we turn off the artifical lights and throw a match into the fireplace, welcoming the light back, enjoying the blaze of warmth and glow while darkness still surrounds us. We go out in the cold dark night, bundled up but still feeling the nippy cold. We raised our heads and look to the dark sky, and over the horizon, wondering about the next new day.

This year, I want to sit and wait and watch the first sunrise after the longest night of the year. I want to see the first light come through; I want to witness that promise, for centuries, that the light shall return, even after the longest night. I need to see that the promise will be kept. I will watch the first light crack through the dark, and watch the embracing dance between dark and light as the long night gives way to the new day. I wish to see that intimate connection.

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I need both: darkness, and light. They are essential to my being, important to my grief journey. In between are subtle nuances, but I shall not explain.

Photo by Nicholas Hughes, From Verse 1 of the series In Darkness Visible

I loved this photo, the works by this photographer. He seems to have found that transient time and place where darkness and light fuse seamlessly. They need to strike just the right balance as he releases the shutter... so we can see that darkness and light indeed do need each other, and with passion too.

Whatever you need this season, whether it is winter or summer for you now, I wish for you whatever you yearn for and whatever you need, to nourish yourself from the very depth. Be it light, be it darkness.

reason

There is this forest road some forty minutes away from our cabin. The first time we drove it to check out the sights, it was a few months after our baby died. Sensing how we all need the solace and silence of nature, my husband R packed us all into the car for a drive. The views astounded us. The silence, and the liveliness of it all. And, to see large fields of ferns, growing amongst soldiers of trees, was simply an unforgettable sight, for us used to the gray and brown and small foliage of the desert.

Recently, we took the drive again. I wanted to show you some pictures, but none portrayed the grandness and nonchalance of the place. It is rugged, yet regal. Very quiet. So still, yet brimming over with life (and decay, of course). The forest road runs at a high altitude, so there are several points where you stop and look out over massive areas densely crowded with trees, across mesas and often eye-to-eye with the clouds. You feel you stand almost at the top of the world, centuries-old rocks supporting you. The ground beneath feels solid, after centuries of movement. It feels strong, after it learned to move with the currents of time and forces of nature. Sweet little colorful flowers bloom here and there to contrast with the earth-old trees and rocks.

Here, along the road, amongst the ancient and the transient, I could feel Ferdinand's spirit very intimately. I knew that I am surrounded by the wholeness of his spirit, even his body. I felt then that he was not lost somewhere, or forever, but here, in the present, at one with the nature and the universe, breathing with me everywhere I go. And here, for an instant, I felt that a reason did not matter anymore.

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For a long time after he died, I wanted a reason. Desperately. Holding the one page pathological report in my hands, I googled furiously for answers. Those laconic yet loaded terms, within them must be encoded the answer to the mystery of his death.

But I did not find any answers. Not at all.

I searched my brains for things I did and did not do through the 40 weeks that I carried him, and tried to find a reason. Why? Because I felt it would give me some control. If it is because I ate shrimps, then, the next time I shall not touch a shrimp and all shall be fine.

Except I know that is wishful thinking. If only it could be that easy, to have that reassurance. Something else could of course happen.

A reason was so important, so I could hold someone (that is, me) or something, accountable. So I can be on the other side, in control and be all-knowing.

Slowly, gradually, I know that an answer, or a reason, may well just serve as a blind. Just something to give me a false sense of control. Just something to give me the illusion that I know the answer to questions that never shall have answers.

So, sometimes, I feel, there is no need for an answer. Because then there is no false perception of being in control. Then there is no illusion that I hold the key to a door that I can open for others. Sometimes, when immersed in the quiet prowess of nature, I feel that no reason is necessary, only love.

But, only sometimes.

Do you seek a reason? How? Why? If you found a reason, did it help?