It has been a while since I posted to my website. I have been inundated with grief at the passing of my beloved cousin Richard, who was found by SAR after he didn't return from a hike in the Gila wilderness. He was my cousin but that doesn't really describe our closeness, more like brother and sister. His wisdom has guided me my whole life and it still does.
No wonder it is called paroxysms of grief. How hard it is to celebrate a rebirth of hope and life when I feel as if pieces of me are ripped away with each new paroxysm! And they still come so fast that I feel blindsided by a tsunami almost every time.
Richard comforted me when Abuela, my grandmother and his Aunt Lucie, died. He comforted me when Geary, Arielle's father, was lost and found dead after 4 months. He comforted me when my sister Susan was lost in the wilderness and never found. He comforted me when Bob, my uncle, died, and when Mike, my brother died alone in a hospital. Oh, how will he comfort me now in this fresh and too raw grief, when it is he who is gone?
When I wrote this my husband Mike had left me alone for the first time. It was much harder than I imagined. Irrational fears of him being suddenly gone too. Today may be a bit better. Yoga and meditation helps me some; just as in the past. I hope you who mourn can receive that blessing too. Kind thoughts and hugs help. Eventually painting will help with the melancholy. I had my daughter Arielle and her daughter Willa visit; baby laughter is the best and I know how to let that sweetness ease the pain.
It seems a big thing to not wake to see the new day framed in a rime of salt. This grieving business is such hard work whether it is done as you watch your parent decline or as a sudden heartwrench taken from us too quickly. The only way through for me is to cherish that capacity to love, to mourn, and to honor the person's passing.
It is a very delicate balance to maintain my calm center in this Sufi swirl of mourning. Yoga helps with the grief now as it did when Geary disappeared and I spent an agonizing 4 months not knowing what happened to him. No Search and Rescue was called for him despite my reporting of his suicidal communications because he was judged to be a normal adult male making a decision to leave a wife and newborn daughter. SAR would not have saved him from suicide but may have found him, and answers, sooner than the spring thaw.
I started doing yoga with Lilias Yoga and my infant daughter on the bedroom floor. I was free to dissolve into tears or spend as long in Savasana as Arielle would let me. It was difficult to imagine going to a yoga class but eventually I did and it helped, of course. It was a very long time before I even knew there would be a light at the end of the long dark looming maw of grief. Yoga and Arielle's best lessons were to be present, to never blind yourself to beauty or kindness, nor stop your ears to laughter and joy.
Susan was so far into the back country that just reporting her missing and initiating SAR took 2 days. It left our family shaken to the core but with a shared purpose to find answers and to support each other in grief. Most of those answers were excruciatingly vague, leaving us with more questions. Each of us had to make their own way thru grief. Some more gracefully, some with great pain, some refusing acceptance of the inevitable. All having to come to grips with maybe………. never knowing. It taught me to confront the separation in the family, whatever it might be and heal it quickly. Life turns on a sharp edge, ever ready to sever the tightrope we walk.
Knowing that Richard is embedded in my soul and will never be apart from me helps to ease my corporeal sense of loss. Oh! the awful prospect of never hearing his voice again and my heart cracks again so loudly even Richard heard it. His smell, like sunshine on water.
I developed enough resilience to make it out of that grief with a more discerning capacity for joy and gratitude.
I hope I can make it out of this one, also.
No wonder it is called paroxysms of grief. How hard it is to celebrate a rebirth of hope and life when I feel as if pieces of me are ripped away with each new paroxysm! And they still come so fast that I feel blindsided by a tsunami almost every time.
Richard comforted me when Abuela, my grandmother and his Aunt Lucie, died. He comforted me when Geary, Arielle's father, was lost and found dead after 4 months. He comforted me when my sister Susan was lost in the wilderness and never found. He comforted me when Bob, my uncle, died, and when Mike, my brother died alone in a hospital. Oh, how will he comfort me now in this fresh and too raw grief, when it is he who is gone?
When I wrote this my husband Mike had left me alone for the first time. It was much harder than I imagined. Irrational fears of him being suddenly gone too. Today may be a bit better. Yoga and meditation helps me some; just as in the past. I hope you who mourn can receive that blessing too. Kind thoughts and hugs help. Eventually painting will help with the melancholy. I had my daughter Arielle and her daughter Willa visit; baby laughter is the best and I know how to let that sweetness ease the pain.
It seems a big thing to not wake to see the new day framed in a rime of salt. This grieving business is such hard work whether it is done as you watch your parent decline or as a sudden heartwrench taken from us too quickly. The only way through for me is to cherish that capacity to love, to mourn, and to honor the person's passing.
It is a very delicate balance to maintain my calm center in this Sufi swirl of mourning. Yoga helps with the grief now as it did when Geary disappeared and I spent an agonizing 4 months not knowing what happened to him. No Search and Rescue was called for him despite my reporting of his suicidal communications because he was judged to be a normal adult male making a decision to leave a wife and newborn daughter. SAR would not have saved him from suicide but may have found him, and answers, sooner than the spring thaw.
I started doing yoga with Lilias Yoga and my infant daughter on the bedroom floor. I was free to dissolve into tears or spend as long in Savasana as Arielle would let me. It was difficult to imagine going to a yoga class but eventually I did and it helped, of course. It was a very long time before I even knew there would be a light at the end of the long dark looming maw of grief. Yoga and Arielle's best lessons were to be present, to never blind yourself to beauty or kindness, nor stop your ears to laughter and joy.
Susan was so far into the back country that just reporting her missing and initiating SAR took 2 days. It left our family shaken to the core but with a shared purpose to find answers and to support each other in grief. Most of those answers were excruciatingly vague, leaving us with more questions. Each of us had to make their own way thru grief. Some more gracefully, some with great pain, some refusing acceptance of the inevitable. All having to come to grips with maybe………. never knowing. It taught me to confront the separation in the family, whatever it might be and heal it quickly. Life turns on a sharp edge, ever ready to sever the tightrope we walk.
Knowing that Richard is embedded in my soul and will never be apart from me helps to ease my corporeal sense of loss. Oh! the awful prospect of never hearing his voice again and my heart cracks again so loudly even Richard heard it. His smell, like sunshine on water.
I developed enough resilience to make it out of that grief with a more discerning capacity for joy and gratitude.
I hope I can make it out of this one, also.
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