Coming Home to Story

At the turn of the year, I began to think that the darkest days of my bereavement were behind me. I was feeling good and looking forward to the next chapter in my life, whatever that would be. Since then, I’ve experienced symptoms of delayed shock from the trauma of Chris’s illness and death. My body is letting me know that far from being out of the woods, I’m still caught in a dense thicket of grief.

“It’s early days,” friends tell me. “What do you expect?”

They are right, of course. It’s scarcely 18 months since Chris died and I’m learning that however consciously and creatively one mourns a loss, it takes a long time to adjust at a molecular level. As my heart and soul struggle to re-arrange themselves, my body signals their distress with a variety of uncomfortable symptoms.

The precise meaning of the message is hard to read but it is clear that I need to slow down a bit, work less and rest more. In mid-July I’ll take up a two-week writing residency at Hawkwood College, Stroud. I’ve decided to use the time to see if I can shape the material from these blogs and other sources into some sort of book on bereavement. Maybe this process will help me slow down long enough to catch up with myself.

In the meantime, I need to remember that grief takes its own course and its own time. Perhaps it never ends, just changes character as the months and years pass. I’ve only been on this journey for a little over 500 days, and right now, much as I long for spring, I have to accept that figuratively speaking, I’m somewhere in the middle of a long, dark winter.

Half a thousand days
Since you left
My side.

Half a thousand days
Yearning for light
To return.

Arctic bears hibernate
In the deep drifts
Of my heart,

Calling out your name
Again and again
In the dark.

Half a thousand nights
Searching for you
In my dreams.

Half a thousand more
Before the dawn
Of a new sun.