the shape of grief

Upon Ferdinand's death was a big void. And I filled it with tears and words. I wrote and wrote and wrote, because I did not understand my grief and I had to figure it out.

There were many things repeated: the tears, the hollering, the pain, the hurt, the questions, the anger. Sometimes there were appreciation: gratitude, seeing the beauty.

But sometimes it seems my words were just not touching it, not describing the grief right. I really wanted to yell out to the world what it feels like, how it is, but it seems no matter how I string together the words, no matter how hard I contemplate the letters on my keyboard, there is a glass wall between me and grief. It seems I hold and cradle it, and I rock to sleep murmuring its name, yet it seems so intangible.

Then one day, my wonderful friend Leigh sent me this poem:

The Phoenix Again

On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.

After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.

You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.

It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.

And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief

To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die.

~ May Sarton

and upon reading it, I broke down and cried. I realized that I have been trying to grope with the shape of grief, and perhaps denying what it was. The poem spoke to what I feared to face up to: I had died with my son.

And it spoke for what I desired: to live again.

Those words gave shape to my grief.

Often, it is when reading the blog of a fellow bereaved when I will chance upon a line that makes me say, or think, "Oh, my gosh, you just nailed it. You just said it for me, in a way more eloquent, and more beautiful, and more wide-eyed that I ever could."

Yet, it is not just the fellow bereaved who knew my grief, or who actively and compassionately sought to feel around this hole in my life, groping, tenderly touching, patiently trying to understand it all with me. At my Blessingway, organized by my two wonderful, incredibly awesome friends, a friend read the following poem during the session in which we all honor my son Ferdinand:

When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn
you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed,
I shall say, “Baby is not there!”–mother, I am going.

I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you;
and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe,
and kiss you and kiss you again.

In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves
you will hear my whisper in your bed,
and my laughter will flash with the lightning
through the open window into your room.

If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night,
I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep mother, sleep.”

On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed,
and lie upon your bosom while you sleep.

I shall become a dream,
and through the little opening of your eyelids
I shall slip into the depths of your sleep;
and when you wake up and look round startled,
like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.

When, on the great festival of puja,
the neighbours’ children come and play about the house,
I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.

Dear auntie will come with puja-presents and will ask,
“Where is our baby, sister?”
Mother, you will tell her softly,
“He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Oh, how I trembled as those words left her lips. Those words made me realize how close my son is to me, and yet how far away he is. Those words reached deep and touched me where it is the most raw and most tender. My entire being shook, down to the very depth of my soul, because in those words, my grief had once again been given shape. Those words beautifully expressed my grief and longing. I read the poem many times over after the Blessingway and cried many good crys.

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How about you? How do you find shape to your grief?- thrugh your own writing, by reading? Do you have a poem that you return to often, be it for comfort, or just to give yourself permission to have a good, good cry?

the 'are you there, god? it's me, medusa' blogolympics

Maybe, for you, it’s God with a capital G. Or perhaps it’s the Universe. Or Allah or Buddha or Shakti or Jesus or Gitche Manitou. Or the random spark of nature, of dust and regrowth free of myth. Or nothing.

For many of us, growing a headful of snakes through the experience of babyloss drums up a host of unanswerable questions: Why? Is there really anybody Out There? What’s the point of all this, and where do I go from here?

We thrash and cry and stomp feet and we may leave, answering what feels like abandonment with abandonment. Then we may find quietness, and we may find our way back to faith, or perhaps faith with a modified floorplan. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we are comforted with randomness, subscribing to no particular being who may or may not be responsible for who stays and who doesn't.

For the next while, babylost parents of varied faiths—Christian, Hindu, Atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Naturalist/Wiccan and more—will keep house here at Glow in the Woods. As guest authors, they’ll share with us how their beliefs have coloured their re-entry into the ordinary world and affected their path towards healing.

We'll be publishing them on the site through the month of October, and at any point we invite you to share your own story on your blog using the same meditations given to our guest authors:

• How has your religion or belief system helped you to contemplate the universal questions that babyloss props up so vividly in front of the heart?
• How did the institutions surrounding your faith (church, synogogue, temple, spiritual mentors) acknowledge your loss—or did they? If your beliefs are more freeform than institutional, what other sources of acknowledgement or comfort did you discover for yourself?
• Have you had episodes of startling clarity, or of being neck-deep in theological mud? Where did those episodes lead you, and for what purpose? How did they affect the kind of spirit-baby mother you are today?
• Trauma and loss can inspire moments of doubt and lapses in faith. What conviction, experience or encounter propelled you through that moment and brought you back into the fold—or helped you be okay with staying lapsed?

We're fascinated to see what comes to the surface for you. Don't feel you must explain why you believe what you believe. Just choose one moment, one idea, one teaching or mantra or sentiment that rang a bell in your heart—or simply tell us where you stand at this moment. The above are simply prompts from which you can explore as you wish.

how to participate

We’d love to see you all join in this conversation. Please share your reflections on your own blog by including your link in the comments of any are you there, god? post—either in response to a story written by an author who shares your spiritual background, or to explore new angles thanks to an author with a different perspective. Or, simply comment as you normally do, adding your voice to this space.

If you’re inspired to participate by posting your own story on your blog, the only rules of this exercise are word count—a maximum of 1000—and a few other points of commonsense.

• Be naked. Your writing need not be a religious hallmark card. The more authentic you are about what you know and what you don’t know, the more provocative and valuable this will be for everyone. Be open to talking about doubt, and uncomfortable lines of questioning, and episodes of therapeutic vice (we kid, but you get the idea).
• Please write in the context of your own experience, and refrain from using your beliefs as a basis to explain the spiritual fate of the loved ones of others.
• You’re all such clever mamas and papas we feel it’s almost unneccesary to qualify this, but we should: no proselytizing, please. Your intent is not to convince anyone of anything, nor to serve as an invitation to your faith. It is only to tell your story in the context of your beliefs.

The same groundrules will apply to all participants, contributors and readers/commenters alike. Please respect the sacred convictions and learning of everyone here by adding to dialogue rather than countering it with theologic generalizations or debate.

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Let’s all subscribe to a Buddhist principle as we share: that of gentle speech. We are here to create a conversation that is non-divisive, encouraging, thoughtful, and reckoned and measured in accordance with solidarity and healing.

We’re curious to prove our hunch—that this gathering will serve to illustrate the oneness of parenthood, of love for children, of a need for light and hope that crosses all boundaries. That no matter what semantics we subscribe to and what shapes our beliefs take, we all share the same unanswerable questions and walk this path together.

The memory of birth and the expectation of death always lurk within the human being, making him separate from his fellows and consequently capable of intercourse with them. Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

From E.M. Forster’s Two Cheers for Democracy: What I Believe