Grief :: Love Beyond Death

It is a heavy thing to sit down to write a post about death. This past year has been an amazing and life-changing year, for many reasons, and most recently, a heart-breakingly difficult month. There are certain events in life that serve as major monuments, visual and emotional markers for where life took a turn. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But for those monuments, life might be a little too comfortable, a pathway of complacency in our day to day choices, like driving along on autopilot.

This past year of my life has been full of some pretty major monuments. Beginning with meeting the love of my life last fall, and proceeding into the loss of my grandmother, a new marriage, multiple miscarriages and hospital stays and the grief that accompanies the loss of new life and repeated hopes gained and lost, and charging ever forward and headlong directly into the sudden and shocking death of my baby sister just over two weeks ago. Life sure has a way of rattling one's cage.

A friend recently told me "Grief is the ultimate expression of love." That phrase has stayed with me for days now, and as I grieve, I remember that it is an emotion born of love, and though grief at times feels dark and overwhelming and even so very lonely, it is after all rooted in love, which is an emotion of connection and warmth and strength. And I try to stay in that place and rest awhile. With mom's death, we had months to grieve ... months in advance to process, to remember, to actively love and be with mom. It did not make her death any easier, but it did give us a certain amount of time to become acquainted with Grief, become familiar with a knowing companion, a dark shadow that was always there, waiting, breathing with us.

When Grief arrives at your doorstep, a product of sudden tragedy, it is an entirely different kind of companion. Though in the end, Grief's arrival is never welcome, however it arrives.

And yet, the very thing that makes life so beautiful and precious is Grief. How else would we learn to cherish every single moment? How else do we train and retrain ourselves not to become lost in our days, cruising along on autopilot? Grief, like a drill sergeant, forces us to remember.

Because until we are actually bending over the lid of a handmade casket, writing a final message to our loved one, placing objects into the casket that will hold her remains in her final resting place, we have no way of experiencing that loss or the magnitude of the impact such an event will have on our lives: we have to experience actual Grief to understand, to remember, to change, to process just how precious each day should be to us.

Writing about death is really writing about life. In the absence of Grief, we should be living with the same appreciative and knowing steps with which we are reminded to proceed following loss and tragedy. (And yet, too often we don't). Knowing that life is really about today, not tomorrow, that life is about this very minute, not the next, and making decisions that are consistent with our values about how life should be lived right now. Because right now is really all we have. And though there are phrases and hallmark cards and a gazillion other seemingly trite ways to remind ourselves of this reality, there is truly nothing like Grief to make this reality known to us, and to leave a lasting imprint on our souls, our habits and our day to day lives moving forward.

The photograph directly above, more than any other, captures for me the reality of the depths of life, and the reality of a family of 8, who has lost two of its members - two magical, beautiful, young creatures full of energy, life and yes, magic. They brought people, including their family, together. They made friends into family, and enemies into friends. They led lives that continue to shine through all who knew them. Which is what makes having known them so amazingly joyful, and their loss so devastatingly difficult - so deep, and dark and incomprehensible at times.

It is perhaps not so ironic then that the things that tear our worlds apart are the very things that reveal the bonds that hold us all together. (Reminding me of Nick Bantock's quote, "pain and beauty, our constant bedfellows"). We can't have one without the other.

It is why, amidst the tremendous sorrow of Hailey's memorial, amongst small joys related to the love and support of an amazing group of people who loved Hailey and was present with our family, I felt such gratitude for the blessing of my 96-year old grandfather's attendance. From his nursing home bed, he had announced to my aunt that nothing would keep him from Hailey's memorial service - and that he needed "a new pair of pants, and some money for flowers" and that she could either provide him a ride or he would steal a motorcycle and go on his own. That he made the trip from Boise, Idaho, in spite of back pain and a wheel chair, and other ailments, to be there and show loving support to my Dad and to our family, and that we had time to talk and share in love for a few special moments, will be a memorable peak amidst a very deep valley.

It is a potent reminder that these peaks, these times of doing the important, the right, the very best thing right now, is what life is all about.