Someone I know well (or perhaps after all these years, not at all) asked me why I’m always dwelling on topics like grief and all that other stuff, which by other stuff she meant death and dying.

This was in response to our chat about Mother’s Day.

To know me is to know that at some point, somehow or somewhere, I’m going to spill my views on the complicated inheritance of being a mother, losing a child, having a handful of mothers, and learning what it means to do later life re-parenting. Love, loss, learning ~ it’s all part of it. Suffice to say, Mother’s Day is not all flowers and eggs Benny. Not for many. Not even.

And so because I dared to hint that grief hangs out in the donut hole on the breakfast plate of Mother’s Day, especially for those who grieve the death of their mother or child, be that recently or decades ago, I was accused of being a Debbie Downer. Why not just live life without thinking of those things? Why not just avoid grief and deny the reality of one’s eventual death? These seemed to be the unspoken questions that hung in the air between us.

To be fair, I do wake up every day thinking about grief and death but far from bringing me down, these thoughts inform the ways I’ve learned to live a tad braver, love a smidgeon deeper, and pursue life’s vista moments.

I’m taking more time to be with my grief in recent years. Flipping through one of the newest books on my shelf (Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy) has helped me tap into the collective grief of living in a nation divided and upon a planet plundered. Turning on the TV at odd hours of the day throughout these early months of the pandemic does the trick, too. But mostly, I just let Grief find me in a reflective moment while I’m staring off into space or when I’m at the grocery store and a certain song comes on.

The grief I’m feeling now is for all of us. I don’t bear it all but I carry my personal share so I can feel the weight and shape of it; how it wedges into the lower curve of my spine or sits upon my shoulder muscles, jabbing my back occasionally as if to remind me of its somatic power. I am no exterior guardian, it whispers. I live inside you.

And so I stop when I can to shake it loose in whatever form it wants to be let out – tears, smiles, laughter, dance, writing, breath, song, or even via the ladder held to my heart ear if I lean in listening to a shell or cohere my breath with a tree. (Trees have a long and storied history hosting grief. So do the oceans and all their inhabitants.)

Grief has apprenticed me to a fiercer sense of noticing and connection with joy. And it has initiated me into a truer realm of being human. No longer do I stuff down and lock away my Grief. Grief is my kindred rogue essence and is with me everywhere, pointing me to the heartbreak and also the beauty. Alas, Grief sees beauty as no Other can.

Maybe all this sounds scary for those afraid to spiral within. This landscape is seldom a place we are led willingly. More often than not, Grief must yank us by the hand to lead us there and will keep doing so until we no longer resist the urge to numb out.

The more we’re willing to feel it though, the more we can heal it and by heal I mean all that separates me from returning to the place within where I am most “I.” I call this grief acceptance experience Eye to I, because whenever I dare look Grief in the eye and say, Okay…I see you, something miraculous happens. It’s like looking into a window and seeing a faint reflection of my soul mirrored back to me.

So, yes. I’m learning to befriend Grief. And I continue to be contemplative about death and dying because that is my work in the world. It’s not heavy nor a thing to be pitied. It’s enlivening.

And if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s part of the fine print in all our contracts.

Sorrow Shared } by Janice Falls

We divide your sorrow among us.
Does nine go into infinity evenly?
We listen, our heart ears wide
To the roars and whispers of your grief.
We ask questions which
like your own, are unanswerable.
So horrified are you by this loss
there can be no words or logic.
Breathe with me you ask
and our breath, like a choir,
rushes out to meet you,
a small but wise comfort
holding you in the breath of life.