I wasn’t sure whether or how to tell you about it. As I sat down to write at the kitchen counter all I’ve been feeling is disorientation. I’m not sure what to do with myself and I can’t tell what time it is.
It’s hard to write about grief and loss when you’re in the middle of it. There’s also no better time.
Loss brings an Unraveling
The death of a close human, or loss of a meaningful job, relationship, or future possibility, rearranges everything.
Suddenly, nothing fits together. Everything that made sense yesterday, doesn’t today. Everything that was clear an hour ago, is no longer true. What appeared to be a seamless weft of solidity unravels.
In the unraveling, there’s a stopping.
For me and my husband, the stopping of work. My kids, the stopping of school. For my father-in-law the stopping of eating, standing on his own. The cessation of breathing easily. Although his age was long and his life rich- our collective stopping reveals a jagged misalignment between what was and what will be.
And yet in these early days of loss I attempt to “reorder” my disorientation. I try to return to the moves of an independent professional woman-mother (write emails, prepare for clients, check in on contracts, organize meals for the week, text the critical nodes in our care network, plan for the potential of more dog-sitting, scan the calendar again, think about Christmas plans and, and and…).
But in the midst of trying to re-ground, I lose it.
Finally yesterday I asked myself a direct question: what would happen if you just stopped trying to reassemble yesterday or secure a solid future?
Death is our Friend
“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love… Life always says Yes and No simultaneously.
Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.”
-Maria Rainer Rilke
Any process of change and transformation- invites a dance with death. The death of our attachments, identities, and old ways of being.
Whatever mini or grand deaths you’re experiencing right now, that unhelpful pattern, a family member, an old friend or the neighbor you never met- remember something holds you beneath it all.
No matter how each death upends your sense of things, twist your stomach, or try to convince you that things will never be good again…remember it is an invitation to a full and wholehearted “yes”.
But “yes” to what?
Embrace Reciprocity
In my grief, and because my father-in-law had some energy to watch “Fantastic Fungi” on Netflix the other day, I thought about something writer Sophie Strand said, “To be correct is to be isolated. To be incorrect is to be connected”.
The invitation of death, this finale “yes” that Rilke speaks of is not only a permanent absence. For those that continue living it’s the embrace of incorrectness as grief unfolds. Disorientation, agonizing missing, a Now rearranged beyond recognition.
This incorrectness makes it possible for something else. Forget trying to go it alone or hiding how you really feel. Surrender. Surrender to your people. To strangers. To unseen supports that are only breaking the surface of your awareness. Fall back into your wide mycelial network of reciprocity.
Loss doesn’t ask you to reseed the past or double down on a solid future. Rather it invites you to reorient to a reciprocal web of care and love.
The Invitation of Mycelial Exchange
As I held my father-in-law’s hand last week, I noticed how cold mine were compared to his. Sorry for my cold hands, I said with a smile. As he pumped my hands a little, he replied with pleasure, I’m warming them up. That’s the kind of man I am.
Our brief mycelial exchange- him generous to the last breath.
My prayer for all of us this week. That we say “yes” to our incorrectness that allows us to be held by community. That we say “yes” to the sweet intimacy of the here and now.
