Anniversary Blues… or not
As I write this it is a day or two away from my son’s birthday. He would have been 38. Coming up within 2 weeks are my late husband’s death day and birthday. At these dates, I have a heightened sense of my loved ones, as if, in their orbit, they have come closer to earth. I’m not sure how it is for anyone else but for me:
a) It’s important to mark these dates however quietly.
That often involves cake – the making and the eating – sometimes a little ritual, like scattering rose petals in the river and sometimes too, visiting places that were special for us.
b) How I feel is unpredictable and therefore ‘unplannable’.
Some years the dark clouds gather ominously up ahead, threatening a deluge, only to dissipate when the day arrives in a welcome anti-climax. Other years I’m on an even keel, “It will be fine”, I think and at the last minute I am brought down by an unseen attacker and find myself on the floor, licking my gaping wounds – again.
I have yet to figure out the determining factor(s). I suppose the truth is, grief just is unpredictable. It doesn’t operate in straight lines or conform to logic. In his blessing, ‘For Grief’, in the beautiful book, ‘Benedictus’, John O’Donohue writes,
There are days when you wake up happy
Again inside the fulness of life
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss
And you know, I realise I’m glad it is unpredictable. Imagine if grief – and love, its bright, other self – were under the control or our logic. Wouldn’t we avoid being taken off guard by that song, that scent, that photo? But wouldn’t that also mean we’d not be caught off guard by the wild fox crossing our path in the wood, by the innocent eyes of a baby, by a field of ephemeral dew in early morning sunlight?
That has just reminded me of my favourite Haiku, written by 19th century Japanese Buddhist poet, Issa Kobayashi. He knew a thing or two about grief having lost five children, two wives and his house.
This world of dew
Is yes, a world of dew
And yet…
But I digress.
My point is that logic doesn’t understand how we can feel when tears have irrigated our internal ‘field’; nor the cathartic effect of a furious fire ripping through our being. It doesn’t compute, in other words, the transformative potential of change of any sort, and especially that of coming to terms with loss.
No, grief and love are not, fortunately, under the dominion of the mind. It is our hearts which are touched by love and pain, both exquisitely and agonisingly present in the same moment. To open is to break, to break is to open. Yin and yang, grief and love.
Perhaps it is in the acceptance of uncertainty that we can find some ground – though honestly, maybe it would be truer to use the metaphor of the changeable sea than terra firma (and I for one get very easily seasick). But this is the journey and what can we do but follow as the way unfolds – or resist and suffer? As John O’Donohue continues in the same blessing, For Grief,
More than you it knows its way
For my part, I still think that I will batten down the hatches over these weeks and anyone who knows me well, will know it’s useless to invite me to anything sociable at this time. Except that last year I went to a dear friend’s 60th birthday party, slap bang in the midst of all these anniversaries. I baked her birthday cake, wore a new dress, talked to old friends, made new ones, had a boogie, and had a thoroughly lovely time. You just never can tell!
With love
Nickie
New Events Page
Specific events planned for the coming months – including an in-person as well as an online Wise Women’s Circle, an in-person 6 week course – Walking with Loss, Together – with Emma Capper, and a non-residential retreat in Somerset with Charles Kemp, facing the final taboos of dying and grieving.
In memoriam
Karen Hughes 1973 – 2023
This is a picture of my dear friend Karen Hughes and me one Beltane (first day of summer). In 2012 I moved to Findhorn to run a lodge in the community there. The first person I met was Karen, we became friends immediately and ever since. She helped me in the lodge and I gave her the garden from which she grew in confidence to set up in business growing and supplying vegetables.
She died on Saturday. Here is a poem I wrote in my shock and sadness. It is a bit rough, raw and personal but just as it emerged.
For Karen
Died.... My dear, dear friend, how can that be? I spoke to you just recently and you so full of life with soil beneath your finger nails again, thinking now that maybe you were well, the hell of treatment relegated into history. Dear love, too late now to hug you one more time, my email yesterday too late for you to know my love, my gratitude for you. Everything too late, too soon. You left too soon for parents waiting home for you, who never got to say goodbye, who watched your sister die, a child. Unimaginable to step into their shoes and lose you both while they remain. Memories return, 10 years ago of birthday cake and fizz, of gardening parties where we lived, of moonlit rituals by the shore and conversations on the stairs you hoovered, flower garlands on our heads, laughter and tears and changing beds, together. “The best boss I've ever known”, you said, and when I left, I gave you Elephant, special to us both, in hope he'd comfort and remind.. Where is he now? Farewell, my friend, now out of reach, now lighter than feathers flying free and unencumbered in an atmosphere of peace, deep peace. When my garden grows and I have soil beneath my nails I'll remember you, the blessing you have been to me to many, and ask the flowers to let you know, I love you. Nickie Aven 23.04.23