Grief

Coping mechanisms

Am I eleven and a half?

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( From ‘Wonder Walkers‘ by Micha Archer)

A father, on his daughter’s third death anniversary declared, “I am three today. I started my new life, three years ago. Now, I am a toddler. In a new world, I am learning its new language. Often, I make things up. Right now, I can only ride a bike with three wheels. I know only a few numbers. Some are etched on my memory. I can socialize but before long, must return to familiar spaces. There is so much I don’t know yet, and I am learning to be okay with all my unanswered, perhaps unanswerable questions.”

You cannot enter any world for which you do not have a language. I have been yearning for a better kind of language for as long as I can remember. I am creating my own in a new way. I simply make up words and sentences that I want to say and hear. They may sound silly to the world, but I am finding the balance between courage and fear, between confusion and clarity.

The violence within, frightens me. Sometimes I am very alone with it, and I wonder who I am. Who else can I be? This fear is a kind of intelligence I know but where does it live in me? What am I afraid of? How can I put a language to it? How can I create a friendship with it? And with the confusion, the unknown?

Saagar’s death will not become the primary definition of me, I say.

Does this happening seek my permission or has it already claimed its place?

Am I already eleven and a half?

Like cloud joining cloud.

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Loss Too Deep for Words

When all that seems real is lost,
where words blur and fail,
where intention cannot reach the depth,
where heart hungers
and soul starves.

Only the warmth in the heart of another
finds the pulse,
like cloud joining cloud,
a delicate meeting
before language.

Seeing and seen,
no grandeur, no pretence.

Not words.
Not healing.
Not intention.

Not reviving.
Not demanding.
Not offering.
Not outside, just there, stepped inside.
Rare.

Once isolated, unreachable,
now golden sun emerging, real.

Only that which is real
can touch that which is real.

Nothing survives
that is not love.

  • By Tony Bisson

(Tony is a bereaved father. He wrote this poem expressing what being in the Circle of Rememberance means to him.)

Hope?

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The old ones have not finished and today we have a new one. Yes. The world really needed another war. We, ordinary people needed to be shown the mirror again, as if we didn’t already bemoan our powerlessness. Impotent bystanders. Burning, yet totally ineffective. Quietly sitting, gazing at our phones, pretending to be immune to the bombs, the aggression, the assault on the Earth and its children.

This is not the first time, but it may be the last. History is revisiting, ringing the death knell, foreshadowing another erasure, another devastation. The imbalance of power in our world is showing us its ugly face again.

Vietnam. Cuba. Nicaragua. Libya. Syria. Panama. Iraq. Afghanistan. Venezuela. Now Iran.

I wonder which country starved, besieged and damaged generations across the world. The one that is quick to label others as a ‘Rogue state’.

Three years ago, Al Jazeera reported that 9 out of 10 Syrians were living under the poverty line. In a country that was once stable, diverse and culturally rich, many breadwinners were and still are unable to provide for their families. Young suicides are on the rise.

Abdul Hayy, a psychotherapist in Idlib says, “People in Northern Syria face conditions such as displacement, losing their homes, living in camps where they lose their privacy, as well as unemployment, poverty and an inability to adapt to the difficult conditions. This then leads to people losing hope and fearing the future, which appears as if it were getting worse.”

Humans are responsible for the extinction of many species. We might be next.

“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. I’m not sure about the universe.”

– Albert Einstein.

End of an era.

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Last night, sleep would not come. As I lay breathing in bed, with my eyes closed, a huge wave of thoughts flooded in, unfurling a surge of all kinds of feelings. Pride. Sadness. Joy. Nostalgia. Everything in between. I tried to focus on listening to the chirping crickets and the silence in between those sounds, the ruffle of the dogs, the incessant mosquito, the rustle of the leaves, Si’s breathing. I tried to recede into the stillness behind these thoughts and invite sleep in that way but that proved to be pointless. It did not want to come. Not yet. The jostling with thoughts went on for a while. It felt natural. It carried on non-stop for about three hours. Luckily, it did not turn into a flight and saved me a lot of energy. I let the body rest despite the mental acrobatics. Even though my heart was drumming in my ears, I lay still. Quiet.

This is possibly what they mean when they say about our final moments – ‘your whole life flashes past your eyes.’ It was not unpleasant. It was natural for it to happen, even though it was an utterly non-consequential happening. It was in anticipation of a big change.

Today, the sale of our UK home was completed. It was ours for twenty years.

No more dinner parties, parcel deliveries, Council tax, gas and electricity bills. No more local library, pub, cafe or cinema. No more knocks on the door by our friends, cleaner or neighbour. No more fire-engine sirens from the fire brigade down the road. No more parking in front of the blue door. No more waiting for Bus numbers 196 and 468.

No more heartache while walking past the GP surgery or the Train station.

The end of an era.

Another letting go.

Another lightness.

Another simplification.

Another freedom.

Love is …

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Her name is Devi. I see her every day. She works in the big house next door. We smile at each other when we meet accidentally. I see her in the garden, watering their plants, taking out rubbish bins, sweeping dead leaves. I see her in the courtyard, putting things out to dry in the sun – red chilies, black pepper and coffee beans. We have no common language except our smiles.

My neighbour says she was born in this village and has hardly ever left. She has been a house-help for decades. She doesn’t have a phone. She doesn’t like dogs. She doesn’t talk much. She has no teeth and loves drinking coffee. She takes Fridays off. Her husband died a long time ago. Her son moved to some big town some distance away. Her granddaughter goes to architecture school. That’s all I know.

She is a woman. A wife. A mother. Working. Making ends meet. She has suffered losses of various kinds and she smiles often, especially when someone smiles at her. She is looking after herself the best she can.

On a closer look, she is like me. We have a lot in common. While our bodies are materially different, we are nourished by the same air and the same Earth. The same sun and stars shine upon us, and we come from the same soil. We both wear green glass bangles.

My thoughts, feelings and stories are possibly different from hers, but we are both aware of our respective experiences. What is it that’s aware of all this? If my mind would journey back from the stuff of life to the source of its knowing, where would it find itself? In a field of awareness. We both have that field in common. Each of our minds shares the same awareness. The aspiration of the mind is to be relieved of all the limitations of its perception. That is why my heart is happy to see her in the mornings. While I respect our differences at a relative level, I hold a deep understanding that we are essentially, the same infinite being.

The experience of love is that intuition of our shared being with all Beings! No two. Only one. If each one of us could take this understanding into every situation, I wonder what kind of place our world would be.

(Inspired by the Advaita, or Non-Duality teachings of Rupert Spira)