#SOL20: How Hope Finds Expression: Notes from the Pandemic

Bird’s Nest 

I.

Hope is grief’s companion. They walk together within us. Know one and often the other has surfaced as well. We worry for those whose husbands, wives, parents, grandparents have died during this pandemic. We worry that the rituals that guide us when death happens are now missing. I have thought about that a lot this last week.

I don’t remember much of the immediate days following my husband’s death. I recall bits of the service, but could not tell you most of the people who attended. I do not think I ever understood what shock and sorrow does to a body before his death. I knew though that I needed to get back to living after the brief but intense months leading up to Rob’s death. I needed to see to my child who had just turned 17. We needed to figure out how to live with such holes, such absence in our lives.

II.

What I mostly remember in the days and weeks following Rob’s death was how hope found expression in the oddest ways. For example, one morning I noticed that on every outdoor light fixture, there was a bird’s nest. On each entry way to my home there was life beginning. In ways I could not anticipate, it felt like each was a sign beyond the borders of this world to the next.

I walked miles in the days and months that followed. I walked alone and often was accompanied by a robin that darted in an out of tree branches. I read voraciously seeking answers between pages. I listened to inspirational talks on my phone as I walked. It would take me two years to begin to listen to music as each song was a trigger to sadness until it was not.

I did four things that helped to heal me:

1. I cared for my child.
2. I wrote most every day and took up painting and kept numerous art journals.
3. I began to meditate and I walked miles and miles and miles.
4. I healed with friends who knew loss too. Some were virtual. Most were not.

I write this as I have empathy for all who suffer tonight. I feel for each of you.  I also have confidence that those who grieve now, who feel lost and numb, will make the solace that is most needed.

It comes from within.

I wish you your own bird’s nest to discover.
I wish you the grace that comes with hope.
I wish you most—those signs beyond this place and time that heal and fill you with hope. 

#SOL2020 - Sorrow Fell like Rain: Notes from the Pandemic

Rain Coming. (M.A. Reilly, 2020)

I. 
Today there was lightning and thunder. A deep, angry rumble that signaled what had already begun somewhere else in the region. Rain falling hard. A flicker of lights. A loss of power.

Today I heard 100,000 to 200,000 people will likely die from COVID-19 here in the United States. I understand those numbers as everyone I have ever loved who has died. 200,000 moms. 200,000 dads. 200,000 husbands. 200,000 brothers and sisters. 200,000 childhood friends. 

200,000.

II.
Grief alters us. Well before the coming death, we feel anticipatory grief. “The name given to the tumultuous set of feelings and reactions that occur in some people who are expecting death in a loved one. These emotions can be just as intense as the conventional sort of grief felt after a death" (from here). 

In the weeks before Rob’s death as I watched him slip further from life, I was mostly terrified. I found reasons to drive alone. I can still hear myself screaming, still remember how the sound was like something wounded, something dying and it filled the whole car until out of breath the sound lessened to cries and then whimpers and breathing and finally blessed silence. 

III. 
Today, we are wounded and terrified as beyond us, a wide void is opening. The incalculable loss of spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, and of selves will fill it. A crypt we cannot name. A stone we cannot engrave.

Who I was four years ago ended in profound ways with Rob’s death. Knowing how that loss still shapes me, I find tonight that my body cannot hold the calculations of death before us. 
It cannot compute the pain. 
It cannot fathom the emptiness that such loss will produce. 

Waves upon waves of sorrow will rain down on us.

IV. 
This is the history we fail to record when mass horror happens. We simply cannot bear such burden.

Four years later, I still feel the coldness of Rob’s hand between mind. I still hear the silence that grew louder between his rattled breaths. 

I still know how a heart that stops sounds.