We’re told, more often than we’re not, that we’re doing it wrong.
It doesn’t matter what it is. Someone, somewhere, will tell us we’re not doing it right, that we’re eating wrong, sleeping wrong, exercising wrong. We’re told we aren’t paying attention to the right things, too much attention to the distractions. We’re told, with little regard to the what, the when, the how, that our reactions could be better, they could be more appropriate, they could be more balanced.
So often, though they may mean well, this comes when it’s about grief, and when that grief is not theirs, but ours.
A few months ago, one of you beautiful readers left a comment on this Signal Fire, a single line in a stream-of-consciousness response to the prompt I presented you with. It stuck out to me, it hit me like bricks, and it in turn prompted this entire post. She said, after saying other words before it that I need not share,
“…reminding me of all that still remains and all that I’ll one day miss even more poignantly.”
I responded with what I hoped was helpful, what I believed in my soul. I said:
“It's so hard focusing on what remains when something has gone, it's the work of life I think, the work we're here to do, but still. I hope you stay gentle with yourself if it feels too much sometimes, if you need to slip. It's ok to.”
It’s the work of life, the work we’re here to do. We’re here to focus on what remains, at least we are told we are.
When loss comes, as loss always will, a shortage will never be found of those that both reach to console, and seek to soothe. To remedy. Grief is heavy, and though only truly carried by those who endure it, is also rare in that the witnessing of this labor passes this burden, psychically it may only be, onto those that watch.
We don’t want others to grieve, we want them to be ok. We want them to come back to how they were, who they were, before the grief knocked on their doors some lonely, haunted night. Before they opened, before the creaking of the hinges and the thin sliver of moonlight that grows wider and wider until Death’s shadow obscures it.
Don’t we rush grief’s passing? Don’t we offer our condolences as salve to the wounds they incur?
Don’t they mean well when they tell us, when they remind us, when they attempt to teach us with whatever wisdom they feel their grief has entitled them to, that we should instead focus on what remains? What we still have, what we’ve not yet lost.
“Count your blessings,” say those and mean well in their speaking. “Try to be thankful for all you still have.” So we do, so we try. This is the work of life, I think, this is the toil the conditions of this existence have pressed upon us.
We are here to love, but we are here to lose. They start immediately, the slow passing of all familiar, all treasured, all dear. The lessons begin, though the dates are different for all, and they do not stop until we do. Until we become the lesson for those we leave behind, until we test them with the weights we have learned to carry in our time here. Our magic, magic time.
This is a week we’re told is for being thankful here, here in this strange country divided. This is a week built around an excess, built around a lie that was told to cover the grief of others, the grief we grew too weary to watch be carried and so brushed it away. This is a week with a day called Thanksgiving to so many who couldn’t watch any longer, a day called the National Day of Mourning, to all others who still had to carry it, and this is poignant to me.
Thankful for what remains, say they, and I think of our humanity. I think of the fallacy in telling those of stolen land to be appreciative for the scraps they were given, not of the oceans of grassland, the mountains, the forests they called home and then lost. Thankful for what remains, say they, and I think of those who lose loved ones suddenly, without warning. I think of those trying so desperately to bail the water from the ships they swear are sinking, I think of trying to tell them to be thankful they have a pail in their hand.
This is a week we’re told to be thankful, but I wish to tell you otherwise, too. I wish to remind you to be gentle with yourself, that being grateful is not a guarantee. It’s not even a choice, sometimes, it’s just hard, and it’s just time that affords the space to rename it anything else.
This is the work of life, I think, the balancing act we never stop attempting. This is the tight rope we put one foot in front of the other to cross slowly from birth ‘til we begin again. This is our arms stretched out in the great blue sky, this is our fingertips grasping for grace hidden inside some equilibrium.
Find your gratitude, surely try, but find more the patience in yourself to not always see it first, second, third, or even at all from time to time. Find the ability to afford yourself the grace for focusing on what’s been lost, even if you should try to find the appreciation for what still remains. Find thankfulness for the whole of this human condition, for being of a species built to hold multitudes, for being able to see when sometimes it’s just hard. Sometimes, it’s too much.
This is the work of life, I think. This is the work we’re here to do.
Know this, remember it well when your arms feel heavy and your spirits weak:
I will not look away from your grief, I will not rush you through it. I will lean in, I will offer my hands to the stone of your sorrow, and I will do all I can to help you carry it.
The work of this life
is to find the gratitude
for all that remains.
Song of the Week
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