grief jane "But you can grieve," Ruth said, anxiously studying his face. "Jason! Grief is the most powerful emotion a man or child or animal can feel. It's a good feeling." "In what fucking way?" he said harshly. "Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can't feel grief unless you've had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it's love lost. You do understand; I know you do. But you just don't want to think about it. It's the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Jason, grief is awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. That's what death is, the great loneliness. I remember once when I first smoked pot from a waterpipe rather than a joint. It, the smoke, was cool, and I didn't realize how much I had inhaled. All of a sudden I died. For a little instant, but several seconds long. The world, every sensation, including even the awareness of my own body, of even having a body, faded out. And it didn't like leave me in isolation in the usual sense because when you're alone in the usual sense you still have sense data coming in even if it's only from your own body. But even the darkness went away. Everything just ceased. Silence. Nothing. Alone." "They must have soaked it in one of those toxic shit things. That used to burn out so many people back then." "Yes, I'm lucky I ever got my head back. A freak thing - I had smoked pot a lot of times before and that never happened. That's why I do tobacco, now, after that. Anyhow, it wasn't like fainting; I didn't feel I was going to fall, because I had nothing to fall with, no body ... and there was no down to fall toward. Everything, including myself, just" - she gestured - expired. Like the last drop out of a bottle. And then, presently, they rolled the film again. The feature we call reality." She paused, puffing on her tobacco cigarette. "I never told anyone about it before." "Were you frightened about it?" She nodded. "Consciousness of unconsciousness, if you dig what I mean. When we do die we won't feel it because that's what dying is, the loss of all that. So, for example, I'm not at all scared of dying anymore, not after that pot bad trip. But to grieve; it's to die and be alive at the same time. The most absolute, overpowering experience you can feel, therefore. Sometimes I swear we weren't constructed to go through such a thing; it's too much - your body damn near self-destructs with all that heaving and surging. But I want to feel grief. To have tears." "Why?" He couldn't grasp it; to him it was something to be avoided. When you felt that you got the hell out fast. Ruth said, "Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. In some fashion you split with yourself and accompany it, go part of the way with it on its journey, You follow it as far as you can go. I remember one time when I had this dog I loved. I was roughly seventeen or eighteen - just around the age of consent, that's how I remember. The dog got sick and we took him to the vet's. They said he had eaten rat poison and was nothing more than a sack of blood inside and the next twenty- four hours would determine if he'd survive. I went home and waited and then around eleven P.M. I crashed. The vet was going to phone me in the morning when he got there to tell me if Hank had lived through the night. I got up at eight-thirty and tried to get it all together in my head, waiting for the call. I went into the bathroom- I wanted to brush my teeth - and I saw Hank, at the bottom left part of the room; he was slowly in a very measured dignified fashion climbing invisible stairs. I watched him go upward diagonally as he trudged and then at the top right margin of the bathroom he disappeared, still climbing. He didn't look back once. I knew he had died. And then the phone rang and the vet told me that Hank was dead. But I saw him going upward. And of course I felt terrible overwhelming grief, and as I did so, I lost myself and followed along with him, up the fucking stairs." Both of them stayed silent for a time. "But finally," Ruth said, clearing her throat, "the grief goes away and you phase back into this world. Without him." "And you can accept that." "What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him - a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A nick out of it. A cut that never heals. And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you." [Philip K. Dick] [Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said] 101112 ... unhinged (flow my tears is a beautiful lute song from the middle ages; there is also an arrangement of it for five violin_like instruments that i studied in college that is equally beautiful) 101112 ... unhinged olga every march 28th i stop to remember the_day_you_died ; last year i took purple iris to lake michigan and threw them in. because of my bad arm, my girlie throwing abilities, they almost immediately washed up onto the sand. the futility of the gesture was not lost on me and eleven years later, i sat on the cold stones in a cold spring near a cold lake and started to cry. i still miss you. every time the sun shines through the stained glass when i am working at church, i think of you. most often, i get teary eyed there. i still miss you. 101112 ... amy adaptive my therapist tells me i'm grieving. i'm free now, free to read. & sometimes i still can't do it. 130529 ... Risen I had a long conversation with my therapist today. WE discussed the different stages of grief, and how I have been progressing through them. It's wonderful to have someone validate your feelings. To say that they are normal responses. Plus, someone to help me deal with my toxic thoughts. That's important. I had this big one - that if the woman I love had ever cared about me at all, she wouldn't have left me alone to suffer in this way, knowing that it is my definition of torture. My therapist thinks that it is possible to love someone and be unable to face the pain you've put them through. I can relate to that. I can understand it. Besides which, although I've come up with a great story in my head which is terribly convincing, that doesn't make it the truth. Grief does strange things to you. It's so hard to be going through life, happy and content and looking forward to things, and then have it all change in an instant. To have the person you love ripped away from you, and be powerless to stop it. It's traumatic. It's painful. It's hard to process. I think I think too much. Maybe Blather isn't useful. Maybe I need to get out of my own head. 140310 ... Bizzar is a stranger to no one and everyone. it can be a slow burn, never gaining intensity, but never fading with time the way it should - leaving you instead with pins and needles. it can sneak up quietly, trick you into thinking you'll get by, only to rip out your insides when you aren't looking. it can bury you in it, mound after mound, fill your lungs with it until you can only exhale dust. it can fill you up to bleed you dry. and you never know which one you'll get. this loss... i feel it in my bones. it aches the way i imagine a lost limb would. his life, a blurry shadow now forever just out of reach. distortion. teasing me with the familiarity of memories. the faded aftertaste of comfort food. the imprint of your body on a mattress. how is it that the world is still spinning. how is it that i subconsciously continue to fill my lungs with air. how is everyone else just fine, while i feel like my all of my cells are desperately trying to rip apart. *he's not gone* *he's not gone* *he's not gone* 220221 ... tree I didn't know her. I didn't love her until she was dead. I pore over words, searching through snippets to find the soul of her killer. I turn the puzzle pieces over and over, trying to find the configuration to make people see, to make them care, to have them howl at the loss of such a shining soul. This is the fairy tale we all feared. The wolf we knew was coming. The shoe finally dropped. We knew that someday he would come, and he would shoot, and this time he would hit, but we didn't know which he, which march, which day. I see callousness from the people who caused her death. They make noises about "gun violence" with the same mouths that talked about how protesters were violent, how they should "hurt a little". I hear their small, conniving, killing words, and I feel the warmth of hers that I know through others. It's not that I want them to hurt. It's that I want them to FEEL. But they won't. Not ever. And I won't ever stop feeling. And round and round the earth spins, and cares not a shit for either of us. 220221 ... Bizzar your photo hangs on my wall at work. it brings pangs of sorrow at every glance. with you went so much of me. 220222 ... kerry i met her at musette. she arrived dressed as always in yellow and black. decaf cappuccino for her, regular drip coffee and avocado toast for me. i was still a little sweaty from running for the 32 bus, which only comes every 20 minutes. i don’t go to musette often but i’ve been there enough to develop a crush on one of the baristas. the one with turquoise eyes, the one who looks like the person who has been slowly and steadily breaking paloma’s heart for months now. it is an innocent crush—he’s probably ten years younger than me. in this neighborhood there are trees and window boxes overflowing with flowers and white pumpkins on the ancient marble stoops, bright red letter boxes and doors newly painted and shining like candy. there are little dogs and big dogs and pairs of women like us sipping their coffee and the streets are steep and it could be spring. after our cups and plates are empty and blank we walked to her house so i could see lola. in her living room an l-shaped couch was placed beneath the front window, low and gray and piled with pillows, and there were plants on stools and tables and shelves, and a framed pollock print hanging on the pale gray wall. lola reared onto her hind legs and scraped me with her too-long nails but i didn’t mind. she is white with golden freckles on her ears and her head is shaped like rosie’s was, and when i held her head in my hands and looked at the swirls of fur on her back the way fur tends to thicken and twist as dogs age i missed rosie. lola dropped a stuffed lamb at my feet. i picked it up and said “thank you!” and she plucked it from my hand and trotted away. we walked in the sun past the art museum where they’ve been protesting for weeks and we talked about grief, the unique shades and forms grief takes for different people, and how long should a person grieve when they can see the past so clearly now, that their love had been withering for months, that what had looked like a relationship was really a beautiful picture she had been painting in her mind. a picture of what they could look like, together, a picture he refused to see. 221014 ... raze it_comes_in_waves. i don't think the hurt ever really goes away. you just learn to live with it. maybe time lets you cover some of the pain with a sad sort of gratitude. but sometimes smiling instead of crying feels like a form of betrayal. because how can the world keep moving when something that beautiful isn't in it anymore? 221014 ... Lycanthrope Everyone brings you batches of muffins. 45 batches of muffins armed against the destruction of your soul and hope. Grief is a party where everyone brings chips and no one brings dip. But maybe that's the most honest approach, a futility of grief muffins admitting the unreachable depths of feeling. Conquering the hunger pangs that drew focus. If that can be fixed maybe it's a start. 230106 ... tender_square my mother strung up mosquito netting around the gazebo, her back to me. "you were doing so well up until recently; what happened?" "i entered a new stage," i offered. i sat on the patio couch. watching my mother made me tireder. "it's just anger." "do you think it means you have regrets?" "no. this is how grief is. you think you've moved past something and another phrase comes in. it's not linear; grief is a wave." i used my hands to indicate the undulations. 230522 ... tender_square "when does the grief end?" my mother asked. she is mourning her mother, her siblings, her husband, her daughters. "i'm where you are," i said quietly. "i don't think it ever does." 230709 ... epitome of incomprehensibility It's been three weeks since an almost five-year relationship came to an unexpected end. Maybe Dad's right about this being a kind of grief. I mean, I can put it in a box called grief if I don't label it "sadness because someone dies." He says the physical symptom makes sense, which is being more tired than usual. Not to an alarming level, but still noticeable. The day after - the Sunday and Monday after Saturday, Oct. 5 - I was lucky to have a place to retreat to: parents' + uncle's cottage. I saw fall leaves. Took pictures. Didn't press any leaves to keep. Wasn't so pressed down that I couldn't take pleasure in a memory from second grade: Mrs. Stewart (Stuart?) asking for colours of fall leaves and me hogging the answering. Red! Green! Yellow! Orange! Brown! (The green had to be there too, because some were still green.) Not knowing what to call yellow-brown. Then mixing paint. Something different: it was perhaps two days after Grandpa died when I walked through the baking aisle of the grocery store with a parent - which one, I forget. As I looked at the sprinkles and frosting, I remembered what had just happened and it felt unreal. Or maybe the tubes of bright colours felt unreal. So this time I could appreciate colours sooner. Caveat: ones that are closer to nature, whatever nature is. Grounded colours. Closer-to-home leaves blew across the ground as I walked Shiloh today, refreshing the sight-and-soundscape. But I didn't set out to write about healing in nature. The theme just came from my impulse to make a contained or cyclic story, to marble the colours like paints. An attempt to pattern, to fight against fatigue making me dumb in both senses. Stupid quiet. Sight and sound. 241027 what's it to you? who go blather from