making sense of it.
Little snippets swirl in my brain as I again try to make sense of it.
A friend has the truly traumatic experience of watching her dog, her dear friend, die in the middle of the night. A seizure that lasts forty-five minutes takes the little beagle. Having lost her father almost five years ago, she knows this grief. She knows how it will bring it all back again.
A friend calls to tell me her uncle died suddenly in a car accident Monday night. I can hear her say, “it just doesn’t seem real at all.” We find our way to laughter in our conversation to give her mind and heart some space from the bewildering pain.
I catch the news this evening as I am getting ready to go and teach yoga. James Kim was found dead today in Oregon. This family has become known to everyone here in the Pacific Northwest in the last few days. An amazing blessing that Kati Kim and her daughters were found Monday. A blessing James has been found, but such a deep sadness for those who knew him and those who searched and searched hoping to bring him home safe to his family.
David Whyte read “The Hazel Wood” at the reading last Friday (a new poem you can find in his new book). Before he read it, he described the scene to us…how he was walking across the Irish countryside to meet up with a group of people and found himself suddenly in a horrific storm fearing his own safety. In the poem he describes how sometimes life is like a warm room full of people and life and security and other moments are like a raging storm where death makes a choice. A snippet from his poem,
its more like some edge we’re on, everything
sustained by an invisible thread
that’s just about to break, the storm a possible
death about to choose or not choose
one life among all other lives it sees below
I try to make sense of it. Of It. Of grief. (Of death.) I am, of course, always trying to make sense of my own grief, and I know that it is okay that it doesn’t makes any sense at all. And really, I know that I cannot make sense of it all, right now in this moment. But I will keep trying. I will keep turning the thoughts in my mind and then pause to breathe. I will keep finding moments of stillness to be open to the understanding that I will never really know. I will keep searching for a place where I can feel the space to know that what I believe is enough.
on grieving (and healing)
Reader Comments (9)
It's funny that you posted this, because I've been thinking about death the past 2 days. I saw the movie "The Fountain" last night (worth seeing---strange, but I loved it) and one of the major themes was death. One thing that was repeated over and over again was that "death is the road to awe." As someone who has never truly experienced death (all my grandparents, and immediate family members are living) with the exception of a friend, death literally scares me senseless. I cried my eyes out at the movie last night, because it hit me that someday, everyone I love will die, and as much as you try and pretty it up, death is ugly and scary. Perhaps, we need to stop trying to understand it, to make it something it isn't---and just accept death as another phase of life, as a place of creation, and give ourselves room to breathe and cry and grieve and heal.
Love to you, and to your friends for their loss.
thank you for reminding me that i am not alone in this.
I don't know how to make sense of any of the hard things life throws our way. It always seems there should be a reason, something to take the edge off the pain.
Oh goodness, this is the second time I read of such pain this evening, and I too wonder why. There just does not seem to be any answer that makes sense. It shakes us to our core.
I wish you peace in your thoughts and a warm and wonderful night.
i hear you. grief often does not make any sense. i'm not sure its supposed to. i think of when i've grieved deeply and though grief brings insights, i cannot reconcile loss within my feeble human being. i love how you describe being "open to the understanding". i really think this is what our experiences are all about. the open part. much love, p.
my heart broke and i cried when i read that james kim didn't make it. i kept checking back here on your blog, so i could follow the link to find out about them.
grief is a hard thing to make sense of for me ~ i hope to find a place where it's alright for me, where i can live and breathe with it.....right now, that space/place alludes me.
xo
:(
maybe you never will be able to make sense of it...but you can give it meaning...
it's been a week of bad news all around. i hate that it takes such horrible news to bring me perspective. how have you been?