Grief and loss

The death of anyone or anything is tragic. Whether we are directly involved or witnesses from a distance, the presence of death resonates inside us and reminds us of the impermanence of our own lives. And so, the sight of a dead swan, lying half-submerged in a marsh, tugged at my heartstrings. But it was the response of the swan’s mate that really brought a lump to my throat. She (or possibly he) would not leave to join the other swans but swam for days in the vicinity of her mate. I could feel her sense of loss, of not being able to grasp exactly how her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

This incident, and the death of an eagle chick at a nest with a live webcam, triggered a debate among my bird-watching friends. Do birds mourn? Do they experience emotions of grief and loss? Or are we just projecting this? On the far side of the polemic are the people who are certain that birds and animals have the entire gamut of emotions humans do and maybe more. Way over on the other side are those who pronounce any attempt to ascribe human behavior or emotions to birds as anthropomorphizing. There is little understanding between the two groups. There are, however, attempts to find a middle way.

There was a shocking, or maybe touching, moment at the webcam when the mother eagle fed a bite of the flesh of the dead chick to the remaining chick. Then she removed the body from the nest. Was it a practical solution? Or a farewell ritual?

At the core of our experience of grief is the feeling that something that had formed us, has now vanished, leaving us unformed again. The partner we were building a life with is gone. Who are we if we are not in that life? The child we had nurtured is gone. Who can we nurture now? I can remember, when my mother passed after a long illness, I felt as if the glue that held me together was dissolving. I didn’t understand my reaction, she was old, very ill, and her death came as a welcome closure. The essence of my grief, of this dissolving, was incomprehensible.

When we try to understand our grief, we start creating stories around it. The stories help us soften the sense of loss so it doesn’t feel as raw. But in doing so, we go away from the grief. We don’t allow it to cleanse and heal us. Grief is a very important and very honest emotion.

And so I do think the swan felt the essence of grief. Her existence as a swan with a mate had changed in some terrible, inexplicable way and she was lost. Numbly swimming near her mate until the tug of biology would tempt her to rejoin the other swans and begin again. The biggest difference between birds and humans is that we build stories around our grief, trying to understand it and basically numbing ourselves to the devastating pain. Birds and animals undergo it, without understanding, and eventually move on.

Terror

When I try to imagine people so caught up in their sense of righteousness, so filled with intolerance and hatred of “the others”, that they are capable of murdering in cold blood for an ideal, it terrifies me.

And when I try to imagine how intolerance and hatred simply breeds more intolerance and hatred, keeping mankind imprisoned in a chain reaction, a spiral of violence and terror that seems to have no end, it terrifies me even more.

This evening a memory popped into my head: during a performance of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, my mother turned to me and whispered, “Can you hear the world crying?” During the past 24 hours I have heard the world crying.

I want to turn my face away, forget that it’s happening, hug my loved ones, and contemplate the beauty of a single flower in the early morning sunlight.

I think that many of us feel this way. It’s almost too much horror to take in. I can only feel anguish and despair… and this incredible terror… for the world.

Others react with anger. Powerless anger, blindly seeking an outlet. And there are those who do turn their faces away in helpless denial.

The only thing I can do is to allow myself to feel the anguish, allow myself to hear the world crying. As I close my eyes, I see people torn apart with grief and unbelief. I see fists clenched in rage and powerlessness. I see a mother weeping over her dead son, screaming out to her God, how could he allow this to happen? I see a father, bowed with grief, because he knows that his God does not want this, this terror that his son is a part of.

I breathe all this in, trying to take it into my heart, crying for the world. And I breathe out gentle compassion, sending loving kindness to all of us who need it. I repeat this over and over again. This is a Buddhist practice called tonglen. Is it sufficient to heal the world? Probably not. But it’s the only thing I can do that makes any sense to me.

The most important thing we can remember is to allow ourselves to feel the distress. Don't push it away or block it. Keep feeling.

Afraid of the dark

I had planned to write this blog during the holidays. The theme has been bouncing around in my head since the Winter Solstice. I kept postponing the moment to sit down and write: until after the cookies were baked, after the Christmas visits had been made, after my trip to France for the New Year’s celebration. Now it’s January and I’m only now sitting down to write.

A little nagging voice in my head keeps saying, “It’s always like this! You never keep your own promises to yourself. You postpone everything. You’re always messing things up!” I know this voice, it complains a lot. Like a tiresome parent or an grumpy lover. Telling me that I never do things the way I should and that I am, simply, insufficient.

I could deal with this voice in different ways. I could believe what the voice is saying and feel terrible about myself. I’m sure we all remember feeling guilty about ourselves because the little voice in our heads tells us that we should feel guilty.

I could turn away gently, ignoring what the voice is saying, knowing that it isn’t true. Aware that it is the nagging voice of a critical parent from my past, I could tell it to go away. It probably would... briefly. The fact is... it does keep coming back.

What I choose to do, is to sit down with the little nagging voice and listen to it. Let it have its say, let it rant and rave at me until it has said everything it needs to say and more. And then, simply, acknowledge it. “I hear you.” No discussions, no right or wrong, just let that part of me know that she has been heard.

Which brings me to the theme of the blog. We all are afraid of the dark, in so many ways. We exorcise our terror of the dark by building a fire, turning on the light, going into a lit room. But the dark doesn’t go away, it’s always out there somewhere. And we never learn to orient ourselves this way, never develop cat’s eyes to see where we’re going. We remain dependent on flashlights and fires to survive in the dark.

We exorcise our fear of our own dark places by telling ourselves that they aren’t true, we aren’t like that. And our dark places simply continue to pop up and bother us every time we’re tired or unprepared. The practice here is to befriend our dark places, our shadows, to acknowledge them. We don’t have to agree with them. But, just like grumpy lovers, if we take the time to listen to what they have to say, they eventually stop complaining.

The little nagging voice in my head is quiet now. Happy that I have finally written the blog but also happy that she was heard.