Did I have any strand of concern, upon entering into training with hospice and working towards my license as a mental health counselor, that it had been too long since I had lost my mother for me to truly relate to grieving clients authentically? That my direct experiences with grief were becoming too far in the past for me to tap and into? Yes–I think I did. My time with hospice in Taos this winter marked the 9 (or 10?) year anniversary of my mom’s death. Something about that amount of time, a whole decade, seemed significant. Long enough ago that now I have to google her obituary to remember the date of her passing. During this last winter, marking that length of time, it seemed to me that it was possibly an insurmountable distance that there was no coming back from.
As it turns out, my grain of concern that I was becoming distanced from my grief was blown off the table with a dramatic flourish last month. Just as I was finishing up hosting my first ever 6 week therapeutic group on grief Ireceived news that one of my close family members was confronting diagnosis with a terminal illness.
Nevermind the fact that I am never moving away from my grief. There’s the weight of not my past, and also her past, and also the past that’s behind us, which as my mother, she was my gateway from and to. During my life neither of us ever had the opportunity to reach back into our shared history and the common threads of our difficult childhoods, either separately or together. There’s the sadness of certain memories, so vast and dark that when they visit, they threaten to take me out of commission for hours or days. These hardest memories seem to be kind, though. They know to visit me only briefly, never dropping down close enough to fully materialize. Maybe they never will because they know that I am afraid of drowning.
There’s the depth of disappointment I am left to sift through not just about losing my mom, but about everything my mom couldn’t be for me, and also everything that she didn’t get to do for her. How I move in relation to my grief is like the earth rotating in respect to the sun. Held up in contrast to the weight and depth of all the past, often it feels that today I am a point. I am a child holding up a blade of grass against the sun in the sky to make a puppet show, playing with the contrast of dark and light, laughing at the impossibility of the distance between my fingers and the explosive body and the skin on their raised hand, tinged tan, melanin pigments absorbing electromagnetic radiation from way up there in a place where she’ll never go. I am so small, defined by orientation towards a large, distant, massive force emanating light and exerting a pull on me at all times. My every movement is bathed in the light of this larger force. There is no “forwards” or “backwards” to the way that I move in regards to my grief. I revolve around it, so that every step away is also a moving with and towards.
For weeks I wrote and rewrote what I might share with others about where my grief process is right now. I sat for hours with my brain in a heavy fog. I wrapped myself up in blankets and layed on the couch looking out the window. A number of times I walked outside in the evening when it’s getting dark, waiting for tears to boil to the surface. There is so much turning through my mind and heart. My father’s illness has been difficult to diagnose. Our relationship over the years has been challenging and complex, especially when it comes to the territory of illness, healthcare, mutual care, and mental health. The story of this grief is far from over, so when I share about grief, and when I facilitate sessions of pain friend, I can only authentically share from the place that I’m in: raw, soft, indeterminate, morphing, shifting, peeling, bruised, fresh and dewey with tears. I have been drawing on the reserves down in the cellar of what has been my life, ruminating, distilling, drinking, preparing to make a way forward into a life where some future version of me that I’m birthing exists without a living father. But I don’t know what will happen. Potentially, there’s quite a bit of time and experience between me and this loss, and I’ll be navigating what it’s like to share some of that time with him, and with other members of my family. I am curious about what kinds of experiences you have had with others in your life when it comes to being together in the midst of suffering.
I don’t know if you believe in destiny, or something like a life path, or that we choose our own life stories on some level. I’ll tell you that I seem destined, maybe just by the nature of my character, to wear open wounds right on my sleeves where others can see them. I don’t watch from the sidelines. I bring myself right into things. I learn by letting myself be muddied, dragged through, and transformed. Curiosity, fearlessness, and some unknowable ingredients too–all have caused me to put myself directly in the path of suffering, confusion, chaos, and even violence. Doing so is what has given me the immense gift of being able to offer guidance to others not from the elevated place of the counselor, but right by in it, side-by-side others, as a fellow sufferer and a friend. Going through grief continually throughout my life I have learned to build and rebuild a shelter within myself where the mystery and the beauty that accompany grief and loss might come to sit and dwell. Like a hummingbird returns to pollinate at that same tree outside your window where last year you offered nectar to it. Whenever she hovered there you got silent and still. I try to hold that kind of nurturance place for grief.
I love it when that grief shelter isn’t just something that I hold and protect within me, when it extends beyond me and exists in the space between us and our shared experiences of loss and pain. I am asking you write to me and share with me a memory or a story that you have about closeness and intimacy in times of grief, illness, or sadness. I invite you to get as granular as you can about these experiences. Where exactly were you? What were you doing? What sensations were present? I invite you to evoke the memory in vivid detail. In recounting it you might discover something you hadn’t seen before about what it was exactly that made this experience supportive and nourishing. I offer this collective visualization that you can use to share your story with me and others without signing your name. It’s anonymous! If you’d like to connect with me directly about your story rather than share it via this activity, you can also feel free to email me.
Learning what kind of presence it takes to be with others during the middle of a flare up, a break up, an episode of shock, an illness a crying spell–either others or my own–these experiences are at the core of my somatic practice. I remember when my mom and I had a rare moment alone during her 14 months in a hospice facility. She moved towards death like an inchworm measuring the marigolds–slowly, pretty much uneventfully, with knitting projects, gelato, and pastries. Since she was in a hospice home, and when I visited her there were usually other family members present, it was rare when I was with her that we weren’t accompanied by a group of people, door ajar. From the time I got the call that she had a tumor in her brain, to the day when she left her physical body, we only had brief episodes of time alone in each other’s presence. Once in a conference room though, during a meeting with my uncle, my second cousin, and a bunch of hospice staff, we were left alone for just a few minutes. Others left to get coffee, or a snack, or just to give us a moment of space. We turned to each other and made eye contact just briefly, wordless. She may have said my name out loud. I think that I said something like “I can’t believe….”. A loud wail came out of my body. Then I jilted my body away from her, turning my shoulder away, turning into myself, as if to protect her from my pain. As fast tears spilled out of her she wiped them away. It is so hard to sit in these moments and let sadness be. It is so hard to be with pain, whether it be our own or another person’s.
There are common things that you’ll hear described if you read or study about what kind of presence is required to sit “at the bedside” of someone engulfed in pain, or what kind of support is most supportive to offer someone grieving.
You’ll read not to place extra demands or expectations, or to schedule hard & fast appointments.
You’ll hear that everyone processes loss differently, so it’s important to be non-judgemental and open to whatever a person is feeling.
You’ll probably be told not to cringe, perseverate, or say something like “oh my god, that’s terrible!” or “I could never imagine going through that!” when the pain of someone’s story threatens to overwhelm you.
You’ll probably (hopefully) also hear to avoid well-wishes that take the tone of “get better soon!” “you got this!” I’m sure you’ll feel better tomorrow!” “I’m sure that you’ll feel better tomorrow!” or “everything will be alright!”
Many grief and death workers talk about the importance of simple body comforts. A meal dropped off without any questions or door-knocking. Homemade chicken soup. I think about some of what my friends have offered me in hard moments. Slipping under the covers into a bed with clean sheets, the shades partly drawn so that the light is soft and cool, a gentle fan blowing. A hot water bottle. A weighted blanket. A tall glass of ice cold water with just a few drops of liquor and lavender bitters. There’s the beauty of fresh fruit, incense burning, flowers blooming, or pleasing music played through a decent set of speakers adjusted to just the right volume.
Consider what it means to be “present”. Often, even when we want to be with suffering, the difficulty of it means that we’re caught in the in between, inching towards, but cringing away. Opening our eyes, and we judge, condemn, minimize, or label. We peel open a bandage to take a look, and then before allowing airing out, diligently observing, applying saline or balm or some other medicine, we cover it back over, impatient to not have to see what threatens to scare us, or even horrify us, overwhelming our capacity. We fear that in these moments we’ll surpass our window of tolerance, our nervous systems and our emotions will erupt out of control, or we’ll see something that we can’t unsee, something that we have to live with forever.
“The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.”
–Simone Weil, an anti-fascist activist, tuberculosis patient, philosopher, and mystic, who died on hunger strike in solidarity with residents of German-occupied France at the age of 34
Send me an email and tell me a story about what has been most comforting to you. Here’s a link to that collective visualization tool if you’re willing to share your experience with me.