Grief

It’s been a week since my sister-in-law died. Grief comes in waves. I function, laugh, take walks, and then wham!

On Saturday, I had bustled around, doing errands and chores. No problem. That night I could not sleep. When I did begin to doze, odd creatures threatened the edges of my consciousness. My legs cramped. I got up and rubbed them with an analgesic lotion. Still no sleep. I found a book but couldn’t read. Finally, I ran a warm bath then tried sleeping on the guest bed. That worked for a while.

But I slept Sunday night. So far today, I’ve only been overwhelmed by sorrow a couple of times. Yard work in the sunshine helped.

It’s interesting to notice what does help. Cheese helps. For five days in a row, I had scrambled eggs with cheese for dinner. [I knew carbohydrates were comforting. Cholesterol is new information.] Going back to church, talking about Jayne’s death to people in my community helped. Crying a little helped.

And cats. Guinness and I play in the morning sunshine as he ‘helps’ me make my bed. And they both cuddle and purr.

Television, even DVD movies don’t help. Perhaps tonight. Oddly, reading helps – perhaps because more focus is required.

And of course friends help. One of them connected me to a sermon by Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed who had delivered it to Unity Temple, the Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois. The sermon centered on a poem by Elder Olson:

"Nothing is lost; the universe is honest,

Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end,

But only in its own way, on its own conditions:

Empires as grains of sand, forests as coal,

Mountains as pebbles. Be still, be still, I say;

You were never the water, only a wave;

Not substance, but a form substance assumed."

The sermon and the poem reminded me of a phrase by Thich Nhat Hahn that I have read and heard and which inevitably blows me out of my egocentricity: “Enlightenment comes to the wave when it realizes it is part of the ocean.”

Still, the loss is overwhelming – even when part of me knows it is not really a loss.

I miss her.