What I've Learned about Grief So Far

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1

“A river does not belong to this shore or that…it’s just a river flowing down,” Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, said. The river is the bardo. Bar means “between”; do means “tower,” or “island in a river.” Together, the words mean “the space between,” and refer to every present moment. We could be breathing, or between breaths; we may be treading water between life and death, or tumbling in the dirty surge, gulping salt, to stand on firm ground.

~ Gretel Ehrlich “Facing the Wave”

I am plummeting at high speeds towards the very depth of grief. I don’t know what it looks like or how I will survive the inevitable crashing onto its jagged shore, but what I do know is that it won’t be the first time. Or the last. What no one ever told me about grief is that it stays with you. For the rest of your life, it will always be swirling in your mind. Always lie submerged in your heart. You will ultimately stand up between the tsunamis and the torrential rains. Some days will begin to feel like the sun is peaking past the water-filled clouds and you can breathe again. But, make no mistake, it melds with the 70 percent of your body that is water. All you can do is learn when to paddle, when to lie back safely in the boat and grin at the undulations, when to swim furiously towards a faraway shore, and when to let go, let your battered body rest and float.

What I’ve learned about grief so far, and what no one ever confessed to me about the process, is that the waves of my anguish come as unpredictable as rain in the Pacific Northwest. Despite months of constant wetness, every day it rains in Western Washington is erratic. It is comical how the weather-watchers try to predict and describe each day with dubious, rotating words, as if they are bewildered by its constancy:

expect showery weather this morning A.M. rain; otherwise, cloudy

rain and drizzle possible some sun and a couple of showers expect precipitation tomorrow mostly cloudy, clear skies by nightfall a touch of afternoon rain

I find that days of grief are much more descriptive, despite their comparative constancy, and experienced with the exact imprecision as the differing days of rain in my Evergreen State. Grief waters are charged with the language of the heart:

Artist's Point @ Mount Baker, WA

an armored bud ball of sorrow flung into empty ponds a perpetual longing for shapeless lake shadows that quicken out of reach

a discordant landscape where stagnate pools in ditches are lined with regret

a migrating sand that ripples across the never-ending rain of thoughts of loss

a washed-out river of sadness that swells beyond the mundane

an ocean in the streams of memory, perplexed beyond belief

a fishing boat moored on the other side of reason

How do we face the perpetual wave? I used to believe that mourning can be siphoned from our pores. If we charge ourselves with courage and resilience, storing loss in a water-proof container, then it will no longer exist. What no one told me about grief is that it mixes with our liquid cells and lies heavy between our heartbeats. There is no quelling of the whitecaps. No dodging of the sprays. Just you and the relentless sea of storms that strike in the name of what is gone. An empty cave of silent saltwater. A No Trespassing sign across the road to a treasured waterfall. You sit in a pool of sorrow all your own.

What I've learned about grief is that there are no waterways noted on a map. There is only the hope that you will not drown beneath a rip current's grasp.