#SOL17: What Sorrow Reveals

An Offering (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I thought grief was an experience to move through, like a figure walking through calendar pages amassing new understandings that would ease and redefine the pain. Grief does not yield to time as I first thought. It is impervious to calendars as it has never been a linear matter. Rather,  grief is more fluid, less borderlands. It unfolds and refolds new landscape and old triggers revealing what was cherished, forgotten, lost, and remembered. It is both sweet and bitter.

Most everything animate is a trigger. A couple out walking. The call of birds from trees. The rustle of wind through leaves. The change of seasons. The random mention of John Cage on a radio show. Most everything inanimate is a trigger too. Every read book in a house built from books. The creak of a stair. A found post it note wedged in the back of a drawer. The forty journals left behind. The brush used to lather when shaving. The anticipation that still arrives with Friday evenings.  Habit is the largest trigger.

There has not been a day since Rob's death when some recollection has risen sharply and reminded me of what Rob can no longer experience. Life pulses on. Perhaps that has been the hardest to accept--the grand indifference of life and this understanding of how life presses on has allowed me a few insights.

1. Feelings are not truths, nor are they doors into the future. They are quick moments of the present that tell me: I will not die from this loss regardless of the sharp awareness that still happens when the enormity of the loss swamps me. Time does not avert the flood of feeling, although it does reduce its duration.
2. Acceptance is a choice and perhaps more importantly, a practice. Each matters. Choosing to accept Rob's death is also choosing to accept responsibility for my life. Practice at each is often far more deliberate than how I lived previously. 
3. In the span of five months,  life as I knew changed dramatically. Loss like this can happen again. The best antidote to such uncertainty is to live and love deliberately, beginning with my son. 
4. Love remains solid, informing after Rob's death. Love did not die. Knowing I have been so well loved centers me each day. Rob's love continues in the absence of his corporeal self. I remain the most loved person on this planet as I carry with me the love that formed me. I did not know that such a gift would be revealed as sorrow edged.

#SOL17: Beginnings

Cliffs of Moher (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

“Tus maith leath na hoibre.”*  Irish Blessing

I.

A friend sent me, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O'Donohue. It has become important, as it is so wise and I am in need of such wisdom. O'Donohue writes,

Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown. Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated...Goethe says that once the commitment is made, destiny conspires with us to support and realize it...A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.

The last line stays with me. Lingers. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect. 


II.

I have been waiting.
Even when I did not think that could be true, I have been waiting.

Waiting to hear the sound of Rob's footsteps as he climbed the flight of stairs from the garage like he did for 14 years.
Waiting for someone to explain how my husband could die so quickly, so young.
Waiting for breath to return that isn't tinged with pain.
Waiting for time to rewrite itself.
Waiting for God to come down from heaven and apologize.
Waiting for solace to rename this grief.
Waiting for my heart to restart.
Waiting, like those women who lean their elbows on windowsills and dream of other places, other times.


III.

Edward Said told us that we are often well past beginning when we are able to name it as so. I closed my dissertation with that observation. How could I know that I would embody it so fully 20 years later?

I am well past the beginning.





*"A good beginning is half the work.” 

#SOL16: Portal

Rob in Ireland. 

I.

In Marie Howe's poem, Gate, she opens by writing:

"I had no idea that the gate I would step through  

to finally enter this world 

would be the space my brother's body made."

I tasted the sounds those perfect words made in my mouth--felt the immediacy that living demands. Like Howe who suffered the loss of her brother, I too know certain grief, and what such loss prompts the battered soul to do. For loss is both a gate that opens us to this moment, to the here and a burden we shoulder through the days.

Howe teaches us that we have only the present moment.


II.

The space my husband's body made as his soul soared and his life here bowed was more a passageway than an end. I did not know that at the moment.  But it was a gate to walk through and now, months later I am here, in a place I might not have come to without his death.

This is a space made by love--made by loss.


III.

What has taken shape before me is a new place of competence and uncertainty, of limits and possibilities. Across the last 15 months, I have grappled with choosing to live, not merely exist.

Who am I without him?
Who have I been?
Who won't I be?

I am no longer wife.
I am no longer RobandMaryann.
I am undefined from the ways I have known and yet, I am oddly hopeful.


IV.

What becomes possible after deep love and loss are newer ways of being in the world. Newer ways of coming to name what is essential and what is merely interesting.

I promise you--whatever it is you fear the most will announce itself after the death of your most beloved. Whatever you most fear will come knocking at that open gate seeking entrance. And understand this, you will be the better for it, if you bid it welcome. This is a time when courage has your name written all over it.

Let it in.


V.

There are gates--portals before us and to seek them requires sacrifice.  To walk through such gates is to know immense loss and promise; to know each and still feel your breath against the back of your hand.

#SOL 16: Now

Rob showing Devon how to work his first camera. We were in the Redwood Forest in late December.

I.


When someone knows sorrow--sorrow others could well experience, feeling relieved that such loss does not have your name written on it is natural.  I was listening to Kim Snyder, the director of the documentary film, Newtown speak a few weeks ago and I remembered that guilty feeling that arose when the horror of Newtown first happened. I thanked God my then 13-year-old son was alive and not touched by such misery. I was relieved to not be any of those parents. This did not stop me from feeling for those families, wondering across these last four years about them and their slain children.

II.


A few weeks ago, a woman anticipating a first wedding anniversary expressed sorrow about the death of my husband.  Her expression was timid and she explained how she felt uncomfortable about her joy given my recent loss. This surprised me for I so keenly believe in love. To have been loved so well by Rob makes belief in love easy. Yes, this loss is life altering and as such there are now certain closures and openings to my life that are uncharted. No map exists.  But honestly, no map ever did.

Love has a way of shaping reality, softening ambiguity, curbing disappointment, allowing us the pretense of an endless life.  For in the glory of love time functions without borders, curves and folds as we need, as we desire.


III.

We have this moment.  Among those who know such sorrow, the value of the present is not lost.