#261: Sitting with grief

I’ve not been feeling like showing up here. I lost my closest friend recently, and it doesn’t feel okay. I don’t have comforting words for myself or others. I’m sitting with this state of being. When the sun comes out, I sit and solar charge myself.

This experience of loss has taught me that the line between the personal and universal is blurrier than I thought. I’m reading Wintering by Katherine May to find solace and her words and attempt at articulating her pain. It gives me strength, like a blanket of love when it’s too cold.

I’m not ready to talk about the memories and my own pain just yet, but I will use this space to feel seen and safe. I will wear my broken heart on my sleeve. For the one who taught me unconditional love in all its pure, unfiltered glory.

“We are solitary creatures au fond. It happens so rarely that one feels another understands. But when one does feel it, it’s not only a joy, it’s a help and comfort in dark moments.”
-Katherine Mansfield

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Grief Poems

Double exposure experiment, 2023

1. After a Death by Roo Borson

Seeing that there’s no other way,
I turn his absence into a chair.
I can sit in it,
gaze out through the window.
I can do what I do best
and then go out into the world.
And I can return then with my useless love,
to rest,
because the chair is there.

2. I Have Outlasted All Desire by Alexander Pushkin
Translated by Babette Deutsch

I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleanings of an empty heart.
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb-
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter’s whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.

3. Excerpt: Agoraphobia by Linda Pastan

Though I cannot leave this house,   
I have memorized the view
from every window—
23 framed landscapes, containing   
each nuance of weather and light.   
And I know the measure
of every room, not as a prisoner   
pacing a cell
but as the embryo knows
the walls of the womb, free
to swim as its body tells it, to nudge   
the softly fleshed walls,
dreading only the moment
of contraction when it will be forced   
into the gaudy world.

Read the full poem here.

4. Excerpt: Flame by Rae Armantrout

In the midst of the evident collapse,
I’m bored. What is there left
to say, I say.

Read the full poem here.

5. The Heaven of Animals by James L. Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.   
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,   
Anyway, beyond their knowing.   
Their instincts wholly bloom   
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,   
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.   
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,   
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.   
And those that are hunted   
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge   
Of what is in glory above them,   
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.   
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk   
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,   
They rise, they walk again.

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A few comforting things

• Watch: My Mom Has Two Sons: Me and a Squirrel

• Watch: Oamul Lu’s animation style makes me feel grateful

• Download + Do: YearCompass - a booklet that helps you reflect on the past year and plan the next one

• Listen: On Bringing People Together: Madeleine Dore

• Subscribe: A Year of Mental Health

• Read: “There is no such thing as happily ever after. There is only happily sad or sadly happy.” -Laurel Braitman, What Looks Like Bravery

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A wish for 2024 by Adam J Kurtz. Holding onto his words.

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Be brave as you gravitate towards the light,
Rohini