"My most pungent grief feeling comes from the statement that lives in my heart, 'I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this.'"
My most pungent grief feeling comes from the statement that lives in my heart, "I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this." It is the sting I circle back to. My struggle rumination that lets me know I am the human and this is the experience. So many happenings have entered and exited my life before she died and I passed them off without my concern before moving along. Life was easier. Lighter. But now, as I wade in the pools of grief on my sad days I sit with this statement that aligns with my broken heart and let it be here.
Today, my rumination and I sat in the forest and we let the words attach to all the loss I have experienced in the last three years. There is very little understanding about secondary loss and how it permeates ones life after death. Just when you think it is the worst of it, the secondary losses begin to trickle in like sugar ants and the next thing you know, there is a colony of relationships you have to live with, reconcile with, or remove. Everything feels acute. Relationships, the weather. Everything. All things are examined with the knowing that time isn't on my side, yet the clock seems to be ticking faster than ever when I just want to slow it all down. Without fail, I find myself stuck between passivity and acceleration. Choose or cede. Every decision feels heavy while some of the colony take advantage of my in-between state. Secondary losses attach to the empty space her passing created, and the gap widens as I refuse to give up on my own needs in exchange for another's. The next thing I know, I am in the darkest forest and the only soul is mine. I sit without light and wait. No coming, no going. All dharmas are empty.
As of late I have made a conscious effort towards a grounding practice as I await support. Ironically, secondary losses seem to need more than a friend and a coffee. While primary loss needed solitude, it seemed easier to understand given the permanency of death being absolute. But secondary loss hits hard betrayal notes. It shines the spotlight on selfishness. Not an easy one to swallow while knowing time's value and the value of human experiences. I have been in a vortex of choices outside of myself running my show and the chaos takes a toll. With immense difficulty I stood my ground and exited my closest relationship. It felt like the mid stride of an injury run, a ten foot walk to water while dying of thirst. Letting go is a real feat and not for the faint of heart. Following letting go there is the rebuilding. Like standing in front of my life hit by a typhoon, I am to rectify this life with minimal energy, and no assistance. Step one. Find the earth, sink my feet in the moss, and let Ma guide the way. She is my support as I sit with a face full of tears in my hands.
I count trees, leaves, blades of grass to shift my focus. I listen to the mixture of my exhales drawing my hurt outwards and mixing with the patter of raindrops on cedar bows. It's courageous work to sit in pain. But Ma nurtures with her trees, with her tides in the near distance, and her understanding. She too knows that happiness doesn't make the news. Yet, she will offer it to me anyways. Acceptance is also courageous work and so is the path away from familiar chaos. My ruminating is right, I didn't ask for this. But I am allowed to give myself grace, room to greave, ground, ... and let it all go.
MARCH 20/2020
I dreamt about you all night last night. I was shooting and when I looked in my camera there you where, your spirit dancing in the distance in the grass with the wall of one of your photographs as your backdrop. I couldn’t put the camera down. I just watched and absorbed your most beautiful hair, your smile and your light. When the image faded I quickly checked the play back and it was FULL of the most beautiful memories we hold. I threw myself into those memories...
I was folding your old dresses as a little girl, laughing with you and cooking. But then I was pulled back out and standing with my camera again. It was a reminder much like a note I recite from a friend almost daily:
“Focus not on the apparent chaos, but on the love that pushes it outwards so we can heal.”
With Metta,
L.
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