{"id":7472,"date":"2020-04-03T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/?p=7472"},"modified":"2020-04-03T05:00:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T12:00:07","slug":"feeling-feeling-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/feeling-feeling-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"This Feeling We’re Feeling Is Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you need more emotional and spiritual support in these days? Please contact me at <\/span><\/i>magic@thewayoftheriver.com<\/span><\/i><\/a> to see whether working together seems like it might help. I want to be there for you.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My dears \u2013\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a<\/span>n edition of<\/span> Reflections<\/span><\/i> half-written \u2013 and promised to those of you on the <\/span>Facebook Community Group<\/span><\/a> \u2013 about the deadly allure of productivity. And maybe I\u2019ll write about that next week. After all, the refrain I keep hearing after I ask how people are, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not being very productive, but\u2026\u201d is disturbing me.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But that is not what is with me today. <\/span>Today I am watching my garden wake up, as I have been for the last few weeks, perhaps even more attentive than I would have been a year ago, because today, like every day this month, I will be staying home. <\/span>Today I am writing about what is settling over the planet, and certainly over the United States residents I know: grief.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I first recognized it when I realized a set of familiar feelings and sensations. I was moving through molasses. The fog in my head made thinking hard. Everything felt overwhelming. I wasn\u2019t able to get work done in the ways I wanted to.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And honestly, not much of that has gone away. I\u2019m feeling much better than I was before the active mental health crisis I was in passed, but I\u2019m still noticing those other feelings. And I\u2019ve remembered the last time I felt them, which was when my father died.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was blessed to spend the day my father died with my family, gathered around his body, spending time in tears and conversation, doing a fair amount of drinking, and going through the motions of a day. I remember so clearly when <\/span>Julie\u2019s and my nephew, Sacha, started crying and squirming on my brother\u2019s lap because he\u2019d never, in all his wise three years, seen his father burst into tears.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We went to lunch. We picked at the food we ordered. Julie, the grounded, clear-headed, helpful daughter- and sister-in-law, took Sacha outside when he got antsy. And the rest of us continued to sink into what we new was a deep grief.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The grief would stay with us. It\u2019s still with us sometimes in little moments, here and there, but it was its most powerful that day. <\/span>At his memorial service,<\/span> I read \u201cIn Blackwater Woods,\u201d with its <\/span>wrenching last lines, \u201cTo live in this world, \/ you must be to do three things. \/ To love what is mortal, \/ to hold it against your bones knowing \/ your own life depends on it, \/ and when the time comes to let it go, \/ to let it go.\u201d But even the grief of that day\u2014even reading those lines with a voice broken by tears, surrounded by colleagues, friends, and relatives\u2014didn\u2019t hold a candle to that first day, that day of his death.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of us have already felt the most pointed talons of COVID-19 grasp our hearts; some of us have already had someone die from it. The mother-in-law of a dear friend of mine has died. Her family cannot have a funeral. They cannot gather in the comfort of the arms of the outward rings of friends and family.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three friends of mine have had it and recovered.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And we, our whole culture\u2014I suspect, the whole world\u2014are moving through grief. And nothing is going to stop it or its phases of denial, \u201cThis can\u2019t be happening,\u201d bargaining, \u201cIf I just do these things I won\u2019t have to feel this terrible feeling,\u201d anger, \u201cGod DAMN it, why is this happening,\u201d and acceptance, \u201cThis is happening and will be happening for some time to come.\u201d We will pass through these times in variations of these conditions for some time, spinning through them in chaotic order, <\/span>with seemingly no reason for being in one place once and another place later on. We don\u2019t stop at acceptance. After all, I still have my, \u201cIf <\/span>only I had\u2026\u201d about the loss of my father, ten years after his own deaths. They come and go. But they come.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So<\/span> we move through the molasses. We do our best to think clearly. We feel the paralysis. We are rational and make plans, stay home, spray surfaces, wash our hands, wash our hands some more. And some of us cry and find ourselves crying again. Crying with fear. Crying with anger. Crying with loss.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the conditions of grief, my friends. And there is, as my friends and comrades, Revs. Tracy Springberry and Matthew Cockrum remind us, \u201cThe price of a good life is to feel it.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing for it, friends. We just have to feel it. Feel it and try to make what we can of it. There doesn\u2019t have to be a silver lining to this mess we find ourselves in. We don\u2019t have to make meaning of it, not now, and maybe not ever.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I love you, and I am grieving with you.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

~Catharine~<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you need more emotional and spiritual support in these days? Please contact me at magic@thewayoftheriver.com to see whether working together seems like it might help. I want to be there for you.\u00a0 My dears \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 I had an edition of Reflections half-written \u2013 and promised to those of you on the Facebook Community Group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewayoftheriver.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}