Dear Ones, Grief is not easy.
Bereavement
Since Monday early afternoon, I’ve been stricken with bereavement. As I write this now, it’s in the hour of 4 AM, I’ve been awake since 3AM give or take Friday. Which for me is unusual as since turning 40 (15 years ago) I like to sleep and tend to sleep like a log. Grief is never easy, and as humans, we all share this understanding in our own way more or less.
For me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this, each grief is unique and quite different. Like creatures, no two are alike and yet share related properties.
Oh Katia.
She was a soul sister residing in the bullseye, inner sanctum bosom of my heart. This grief is complicated and for now I’ll not write about our relationship but about the experience of bereavement.
MONDAY: THIS time - experiencing bereavement, it came on slowly, like a big high tide coming into a Maine inlet. Slowly, consistently, persistently. A slow dawning, awakening that she’s gone. But the feeling was one of dumbfounded - stunned. And like before, my ears instantly started ringing. Like entering a twilight zone. Weird, and all surreal. It’s like coming down with a fever that fluctuates. And in the mind’s background, all these scenes playing back of time with the person. The narratives, the stories, the scenes with echos of feelings. TUESDAY: I slept in - didn’t get up at 5. I washed my face with tears all morning and intermittently in the afternoon. I was pretty useless and I just accepted that. WEDNESDAY: Was like the fever seemed to break, but really like falling below normal. It was like the day after a storm. I felt clear. I felt grateful for life. I felt grateful for the times shared with Katia. The tide was back out. I gave an oboe lesson that morning. I participated in a woman’s ZOOM group that evening, I had a long conversation with a cousin late evening. THURSDAY: Fever returned. I awoke at 5, couldn’t compose, sat in bed, drank a lot of coffee and played solitaire until 8. I had no tears in the morning. Just kind of stunned. I watched the sky gradually turn light. I spent the day cleaning, spacing out, drinking hot tea, repeat. In the afternoon I painted and drank hot tea. I couldn’t play a note on the oboe or even piano. I couldn’t really read either. I took a long hot shower and while doing so, scrubbed the shower area. I find great comfort when I’m upset in liberating my destructive tendencies by cleaning something, making my environment clear. Thursday evening, I found a LONG voice mail I had kept on my iPhone from Katia left on June 5th, 2020. She sounded healthy and with vitality. She spoke of visiting (reuniting) here and there once we can. She spoke about the landscape where she lives. The beauty of New Mexico - I love it too. FRIDAY - I awake 3 AM, distraught and numb - both. Ears ringing. Can’t sleep. Now I ask myself - who was/is Katia without the stories we tell ourselves? Who was Katia within all the times shared ?- and I sense a fragrance, an energy, a presence, her unique “soul print” and that gist of character with which she so profoundly graced my life. A life changing exchange. The sense of her beyond the vessel and events. Beyond her words. Beyond her name. Who am I, who are you, beyond the stories we tell ourselves? The stuff we own, the things we do? How does that being inform us and how we go through the dream? Katia and I had our own Pas de Deux. I’m grateful and yet right now I feel like there’s a and echo chamber inside now where I held the stories and anticipation and connection. My bereavement is the sense of her gone missing from my heart - where she was and is no longer other than the echos. And now the tears return. I hurt and I feel ashamed at the hurting. Why can’t I just feel grateful with what was? Perhaps I took great comfort in the sheltering tree of her love and I did. The absence of just knowing we’ll not hug or reunite like we hoped. I think of how so many people felt the horror of loved ones going off to war afraid of their son’s never returning - whole or - at all. Or of amores going away. I don’t think this as a way to belittle my feelings - but rather - consider in compassion fellow humans and how horrific war is. At a time when being keen to how life is such a gift. Can humans ever get beyond armed conflict? Can’t we do better?
It strengthens my resolve to improve as a human in my communication skills and as an artist. “I do believe that the ultimate purpose of creation, and humanity as a part of creation, is to increase love consciousness.” Well, dear beloved Katia, you have certainly filled my heart and soul and mind and life with a lot of love consciousness. I am so grateful. My life would have been incomplete without you. OOH my heart is breaking open. May my shattered heart be more aware and sensitive to the love which abounds and passes all understanding. All the eternal love everywhere. I feel so empty where you swam in the center pool of my heart. And now my eyes are a river., and it just started to rain.
A new day.