An Unexpected Companion

When our dad died, it was in April. Our parents had been married for over 30 years and had known one another since the third grade. A year later, Aunt Jean would also die in April, also of lung cancer. A year after that, a family friend would also die from lung cancer, also in April. Mother would come to say that April was the prettiest and saddest month of the year.

While progress has been made, living with grief still has moments where those who love us do not really know what to say and just want it to be okay again. This can be isolating, and we can feel invisible.

I have learned from personal experience, and from being a witness to others' lives, that grief becomes our companion. While we miss those no longer available to us, it can feel intense and permanent. It gets softer. It becomes easier. 

I have come to learn that grief is a form of love. We had the gift of having those family and friends in our lives. The gift of their friendship. The gift of their personality. The memories we share. Those things are timeless.

I am currently facilitating a grief group in the Hickory Nut Gorge area in Western North Carolina, which was hammered by Hurricane Helene. As is often the case, the layers of grief are multiple, some shared, some not, themes universal, losses of many types, some often not considered. 

Like the loss of the life we thought we would have. How our identities are impacted. Early on, we started to identify ways we can take care of ourselves. It can be hard to remember to do this when the grief is fresh. 

That’s where the both/and comes in. 

It can both be true that our hearts are hurting, and we can choose to take care of ourselves. These can be small steps in directions that we know nourish us. A walk. Spending time with friends who do not need us to be any particular way. Reading a book we love.

We talk about being in the present moment, what we can change and what we cannot. We talk about love. While I have written before about what love looks like, I find myself noticing on purpose examples to tuck away to remember when I might be feeling low or lose sight of things due to any number of distractions.

What love looks like recently has included:

• Our eight year-old neighbor asked me to go for a walk. 

• That same neighbor and his younger sister brought me very kid-decorated, homemade cookies during our last big snowstorm (and the eight year-old told me he specifically made the chocolate one for me). 

• Recruiting the neighborhood children (and their parents) to record the children singing happy birthday to a friend who was on home hospice. 

• Children approach Bryan when he draws in museums. When we visited Paris in 2023, we had the privilege of going to the Louvre. While we were sitting and resting for a bit, Bryan drew and I  journaled. A mother and two little girls passed by, and one of the girls turned back and looked over Bryan’s shoulder for a while. She excitedly began speaking to him in French. He smiled and communicated that he did not speak French. She looked at him, looked at her mother, rapidly spoke to her mother and pointed back at him. Her mother walked over to Bryan, pointed to his drawing, smiled and said “good job” with a thumbs up. That made our day.

• Children often want to know what Bryan is working on when they see him drawing and then they want to share with him what they are working on (this is delicious - when a child wants to share with you their thoughts and their feelings - it is such a gift).

Mountain Xpress, a local paper, periodically hosts a kids’ edition. They ask a question that kids from all ages write in with stories. The most recent version asked something like what is the funniest thing or the wildest thing that has happened to you. What I noticed is how loving children are in the stories toward their families, toward an experience, toward themselves, toward a family pet. 

This makes me think of the opening of the movie Love Actually where the filmmaker has the camera trained on people greeting one another at the airport. Hugh Grant’s narration notes that the greetings are not necessarily dignified, but they are genuine. This is what love can look like.

Our mother was a prolific grower of roses. When I was in high school and she would be digging in the dirt outside, she would ask don’t you want to come out here and learn how to do this and I would say I think I have some homework.

Later, however, when her knees, as she might have said, “wouldn’t cooperate anymore,” I would go be her knees.  I learned from her how to garden. How to plant. What the process included. One day, one of the things we planted was butterfly bushes, and the butterflies immediately appeared. Mother had the delight of a child in response.

I wrote about that experience earlier in time, when she was still living. I would not know until later that this would be what I would read at her memorial service. 

Our loved ones live on in us. In our memories and in our stories. I told a story recently of how our mother would answer the phone on Easter Sunday and say He is Risen and expected the caller to say He is Risen Indeed before conversation took place. When I work in my yard now, I think of her, and I say things out loud to her. Like how Mr. Lincoln grows to be over 8 feet tall in our garden. This rose was a favorite of hers and mine.

Bryan‘s brother, Howard, died earlier this year, and Bryan, in the following weeks, would decide he wanted us to host a memorial at our house. Bryan did a beautiful job. The program included readings from The Gospel of Van Morrison, an excerpt from Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, an ancient version of a committal prayer from an Anglican Book of Common Prayer, to Bryan’s honest and loving remembrance. The gathering included family and friends at our house, those who were able to join by Zoom, spreading Howard’s ashes on our property, followed by pansies from my sister‘s yard. We then enjoyed refreshments and one another’s company. It was really lovely.

I provided seed packets of wildflowers to everyone who attended and mailed them to those who could not be in person to plant in Howard‘s memory. This is a hopeful act.

Just like planting a cherry tree for our friend Beth, who died a little over a year ago. It will soon blossom.

Just like for our friend Michele, who passed away last week. Her favorite color was green, and I have ordered a few varieties of hostas to plant for her. 

The yard tells a story of love.

I will remember our mother while on my knees digging in the dirt and all that she taught me, how to love gardening, and the hopeful act of what surfaces.

Grief becomes our companion. Anderson Cooper, who has a podcast devoted to grief, talks about this in an episode with Francis Weller.

Grief is not something to be feared. It can feel hard. It can double us over emotionally. But it is not there to punish us. It is what love can look like. 

Try this:

• Write a memory of someone from your life who has passed away.

• Write about how you take care of yourself even in the midst of hard things.

• Write about what grief has taught you.

I’d love to hear how it goes. You can send me an email at fsconsulting2013@gmail.com