In the days that followed I thought about grief; how nothing and nobody can prepare you for it. People tell you their stories but until you experience it for yourself you can’t possibly understand. There’s no going around it. Or under or over it. You’ve got to go through it. It will hit you in waves so enormous that you are smacked against the shore. It will permeate the very fabric of your life, so that everything you do is stained by it; every moment, good or bad, is steeped in sadness for a while. Even the nice moments, the achievements and successes, are tinged with the knowledge that someone or something is missing. And the first time that you smile or laugh, you catch yourself, because happiness feels so unfamiliar.
Hazel Hayes, Out of Love
How do you confront Grief and win? You don’t. You let Grief speak. You listen to his words and take in his lessons. You heed his warning as you wait for better days. There is no asset more valuable than retrospect, and retrospect is Grief’s gift to you. Grief is the messenger without whom there is no growth, no wisdom, no acceptance of what was and no hope for new beginnings.
And maybe, once Grief has etched his message into the skin of your soul, it’s really you who’s won.
Not a glorified or sensational victory — but a victory nevertheless. A victory whose wisdom eludes the masses but is indispensable to you. A quiet, dignified victory that tells you it’s okay to go on and shows you how. So sit with Grief. Talk to him. Learn his patterns and remember his story. Look upon his presence as a blessing and his visit as a soothing salve for your wounds.
What a beautiful way to put it in words! I would like you to see this.
-Dushka Zapata.
This is so utterly beautiful. I’d like to believe that the understanding brings with it, a gradual acceptance; as your body tries to accomodate and grow around the part of you that’s irrevocably lost. And when you start living again, seeing the world through the bleary eyes of your grief, another lesson awaits you.
It calls to mind, this snippet from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara:
Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
I sat down to work on the Hel prompt for #mythober and I had every intention of making her as fierce and downcast, and half blue (or half dead) as the author Snorri claimed she was or is, but here’s the deal, that’s not what happened. (And you can expect that if you try to focus on anything that belongs to Loki, things may go sideways rather quickly. That is the essence of chaos.) I am still hesitant to call this piece “Hel” but that truly was my intention when I started it. Death, in my opinion, is not the end, it is a transformation. It is an exchange from one form of energy to the next, a caterpillar into a butterfly, a tiny acorn into a massive oak tree. When I first intentionally sought out the Norse myths, I understood that the people who once followed, and are still drawn to follow these old gods are a people one or becoming one with nature. Their followers have no big cathedrals, no mega churches, they have no need. The forests, mountains, and the seas; nature is their church, always has been. There were and still are believed to be numerous places the spirits of the dead could end up, just as there are in life. I have interpreted Hel in my mind as a spiritual personification of the energy transformation that comes with death. In my mind, It’s her back that is the “dead“ half although it is very much alive in this piece. Her body is becoming a forest, her hair the rocks and he dress the river bed and snow. Hel is drawing part of you to herself, always to the mound and you can’t look away, you understand or will understand the eventuality of your life. Always moving forward, always transforming. Once on the other side of her you will understand that you can’t go back because you aren’t going that way, just as in life. This is just my interpretation, I’m still learning but have an enormous amount of respect for the followers of Norse paganism trying to piece everything back together. Skol! . . Prints and other goodies through Society6
“And I think grief applies to more than just death. Grieving from failed relationships, from parental relationships, from the person you used to be a few years ago. It hits like a tidal wave, submerging and relentless, and before there’s any time to process—to breathe—the waves keep hiting, harder and harder. Grief can happen suddenly and effectively, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever admitted to myself.”
