Why does it take grief for us to notice the world?
Hi Reader Friend.
Welcome to a new week. We made it!
I keep thinking that I should choose some kind of schedule for writing and stick with it. I see how other Substack writers send out a daily or weekly missive. If only I could be so disciplined. I let the writer in me run wild, choosing for herself when to put fingers to keys. The inspiration to write is not something I’ve ever been able to control, and I keep reminding myself of this but myself keeps defaulting to a critical, self-judgy stance.
I remember when my professor at UVM, when I was working on an M.Ed. about fifteen years ago, asked what my writing process was. I remember drawing a complete blank and thinking, oh shit, I’m supposed to have a process?
There is no process and there never has been one. I write when the muse strikes and am grateful she shows up at all. Thank you, as always, for caring enough to read. I love you.
Onto the subject du jour: grief.
I hear people express grief a lot and have for many years now. In my role as a chaplain in the hospital, as a hospice chaplain and now as a congregational minister. People are almost always grieving something, the loss of someone or something (home, usually, for the elderly). I’m always struck by the clarity and details with which people describe the thing that is no longer in their life: the plants around the house in Florida the woman had to leave after her husband died; the way the deceased wife wore her hair; the son’s terrific laugh, the one who died of a drug overdose. Details, intimacy. It’s as if grief hyper-focuses our senses. So much so that at times it even seems like we can smell the smell of the person who has died or hear the sound of the daughter’s voice. We remember with great detail the house we left after the divorce, where everything was and how it felt to be there when it was filled with the relatives at Thanksgiving.
I wonder why we seem to engage more with the specifics of life after the fact. Did the the Florida woman kneel down each day and marvel at the beauty of the plants? Did the gentleman take the time to tell his wife how much he loved the swirl of her hair pinned up in the day and set free before bed at night? Did he say it or just think it?
Why doesn’t anyone fully grasp how very nice it is to hear how much people care about us? Why on earth do we save all the nice stories for the memorial service, the best freaking gathering of your life, only you’re dead.
Sometimes we get to experience this in life, usually when something bad happens, like maybe we almost die. I remember so very, very clearly, in the aftermath of an accident years ago, when I was in the hospital, how shocked I was by the outpouring of concern and love. I remember thinking I had no idea I mattered so much. People called, visited, brought gifts.
Is it really so hard to stop for a sec and tell your kid how proud you are of her? Your dad how grateful you are that he taught you to do stuff?
The details of the greatness seem to come falling out of us after the fact, when the person or place is gone; we weep endlessly in the void, live in the past, day after new day. I can’t help but wonder, though, if we spent more time saying, expressing, sharing what we’re thinking, while it’s happening, when they are alive, if perhaps the grief would be less severe when the thing comes to an end.
I’m kind of a weirdo when it comes to expressing my love for things. I stop and thank flowers for their beauty, I tell the birds how much I love their sounds. Sometimes I even thank my car for starting up in the cold. I marvel at the trees even though they’re in my sightline every single day. Don’t get me wrong, I have my grumpy days, I have my bad moods, lots of things drive me nuts, but I try really hard to appreciate the details. It’s a habit and once you get started it becomes a way of life.
I’m hoping that this experiment in gratitude and presence will serve me well when the day comes that it’s done.
I am hoping that when the lights go out I will feel content, having been in life and not just passing through.
Take good care of each other out there and stop and thank a tree for being so beautiful. xomo