Look Grief in the Eye

I wrote this because of the damage I see from unresolved grief.

To start with you have to shove the grief down, and you cannot help but wallow in sadness, because it is too overwhelming, and you really do need everyone’s help. However as a long term strategy none of these extremes are healthy. If you never face your grief it can come back at you in unexpected ways. If you remain focused on seeking sympathy several years after the event you will have no energy to rebuild your life.

There is a nice Buddhist meditation that encourages you to imagine your mind as a clear sky. Then to see your unhappy thoughts as dark clouds coming across the sky. You recognize each one of them, then you send them on their way, as if they have been blown away by the wind. This way you are neither denying nor wallowing in your feelings of grief.

Try finding a quite space to imagine this. I find that meditation acts at the level of my feelings rather than just my intellect. It’s subconscious and heartfelt, rather than analytical.

Sailing your own boat

It is 9 years today since my partner died. That’s a long time, and in some ways my life seems not to have gone very far, whilst in other ways it has changed a lot. We are still in the same house and I am still working from home doing design. On the other hand, my children are no longer children, I’m now interested in spirituality, I no longer take work too seriously, and the three of us have learned survive on our own. Along the way we have learnt how to sail.

My late partner Andy was a world class sailor. Our summer family holidays were mostly spent on the family keeler north of Auckland. My understanding of sailing was basic: I learned on a plastic dinghy on a lake in the UK, where I instructed kayaking for a couple of summers. My main role on these family holidays was provisioning, cooking, making sure the kids didn’t fall overboard, and being yelled at for not knowing what to do. It was glorious though, and I have particularly fond memories of spectacular cliff top walks with Andy and his father John, whilst Granny Leslie entertained our toddler on the beach.

When Andy died, and with John already gone, I wondered if we would ever get to go sailing again. I felt that my kids needed to learn to sail, so one of the first things I did was to send my eldest daughter to sea scouts. She loved every moment of it and was particularly thrilled to finally be allowed to get drenched at the bow without her parents ordering her back to the cockpit.

My own path to sailing was a bit more coincidental. About a year after Andy died, I decided to give internet dating a go. I was not really making sensible decisions yet and ended up with a llama farmer from way down South. He was hilariously funny and incredibly generous, but the children took exception to him, and after a while I realized he was a bit too eccentric, so I called it off. Not really wanting to take no for an answer, he decided that the disapproval of my eldest daughter must be the problem. He decided that if he learnt to sail, he’d be the man. He bought a couple of boats on Trade Me, but soon realized it wasn’t quite as easy as driving a tractor round the paddock. A few months later he called me out of the blue from Blenheim. ‘Can you see anything on your front lawn,’ he said. I couldn’t, but on further inspection discovered a 6m trailer sailer parked on the roadside! Holy Cow! Not really the sort of present you could hide under the bed, I thought. With the help of my bemused neighbours, we got it onto the front lawn, where it stayed for the next 3 months of equinoxial gales. Eventually, one fine summer afternoon, with the help of another neighbour, we got the boat rigged and out on the harbour. At the end of the day we didn’t feel much like dropping the mast and returning it to my lawn, so the obliging patrons of the yacht club bar found us a place in the trailer park and I joined the club.

My first few attempts at sailing her were totally haphazard. I got the keel stuck on the bottom. I got into a tangle of flaying sails and ropes with a novice crew. Then I managed to break the rope that wound the keel up.  It was all too much, and I was overwhelmed with being sole charge of my own family, my own business, and now my own boat.

I was considering giving up when a fellow scout parent kindly offered to help. He maintained ships for a living, and miraculously managed to get my boat on the hoist and fix it. Then he offered to help me sail it. Sadly, the one thing he couldn’t fix was his wife, who died a few months later. To cut a long story short, we had 4 years of sailing and companionship: a relationship that took backseat to our respective daughters. It was good while it lasted, but now it’s over. We are both on our feet a bit more and our differences were too many. But the happy result is that I’ve now learned to sail my own boat.

I feel like I’m entering a new phase of my journey now. Perhaps a step up from just getting along, towards becoming more of a leader.  Now that my girls are old enough to either accompany me, or be left at home, I am returning to the sort of outdoor adventures that Andy and I used to do together 20 years ago. My trips have not entirely gone to plan and I’m missing his quiet and competent leadership, but I’m learning. I’m learning to back trailers. I’m learning to negotiate hordes of bolshie boaters on the public ramp. I’m learning not to let other people take over my trips and turn them into a gut busting competition against nature. I’m learning to set a gentler pace, and that it’s ok to let others know that’s how it’s going to be. I’m learning to sail my own boat, in my own way.

What have you learned to do, in your own way, without the help of the person you lost?

Why Does Death Choose Us?

When we lose someone very close to us, we think, ‘Why did this happen to me and not someone else? Why did death choose us?’

The Mustard Seed is a beautiful story from Buddhism that helps us cope with this feeling. It goes something like this:

There was a young mother who lost her first baby to illness. Hysterical with grief she wandered the village desperately asking for medicine to bring him back to life. She was sent to Buddha who advised her to bring him back a few mustard seeds from a house that had not seen death. She knocked on the door of every house she could find, and while every house had mustard seeds, she could not find a single house where no-one had died. People had lost mothers, brothers, uncles, children, servants…Eventually she returned to Buddha with a new understanding: that our human life is impermanent, that we are all vulnerable to death at any time, and that the loss of a loved one is a universal human experience.

Death is very much less common in our contemporary Western culture, than it ever has been in the history of mankind. A few hundred years ago, war, famine and pandemic were normal. Children were not named until their christening, because many died first. Death was a part of everyday life, and the rituals that surrounded it were carried out by ordinary people.

After my partner Andy died, I was working on exhibitions about World War 1. I realized that my situation, of being a widow and solo mother struggling to work and raise children would have been commonplace then, and even more so in the influenza epidemic that followed.

We now expect that modern medicine will cure us of everything but very old age. We collectively pretend that death is never going to happen to us or our loved ones, and usually it doesn’t. The subject of death is taboo. No-one wants to talk about it, and when it happens few know what to say.

Nurses at Maori Hospital, Temuka, South Canterbury [1918] Christchurch City Libraries PhotoCD 15, IMG0033 The death rate of Māori in the 1918 epidemic was 42.3%. Hence the road blocks put in place in some rohe during the current Covid pandemic.

This makes us ill-prepared for death, and isolated in our grief. That is why I made the Art of Grief drawings, and why I am writing this blog: to open up this conversation, and to help those who are going through grief to know they don’t walk alone. It really helps if you can share your grief with with other grievers. My friends, family and community gave me a whole lot of loving and practical support. Without this I doubt I would have coped in the first few months. But it was sharing and discussing a lot of reading material with a friend who had lost his partner and a cousin who had lost his son, that helped me to process the grief over the next few years.

The current pandemic has returned us to a prescient awareness of death. What advice, from personal experience, would you give to someone facing grief or death? What books, talks, poems or websites would you recommend?

Control when our life feels out of control.

There is a lovely story from Buddhism. It talks about how we must walk over some rough ground in our lives. We can do one of two things to protect our bare feet: We can cure a lot of leather and keep laying it all around us, or we can cure two pieces of leather and make shoes to walk wherever we please. It means this: We can try to desperately control all events, people and things around us, or we can learn to control our own mind’s response to these things.

The restrictions of lockdown, the uncertainty of our future, and fear for our life, may make us feel we are no longer in control of our own lives. Our “control” is limited to handwashing and staying at home – not heroic individual action but a small component of collective action. This scary uncontrollable pandemic, like a sudden unexpected death, reveals that we never really were in control of life or death. We can only accept that we are still vulnerable to the pandemics that have plagued humans throughout the eons. This thing is bigger than any one of us.

A quite natural reaction to feeling out of control, is to try to control things more tightly. If we respond by trying to over-control the people in our confined space, we will only increase everyone’s stress. I know that I become controlling or niggly when I am afraid of something. I usually don’t realise what I’m doing until someone tells me to ease off or I lose my temper altogether. What I should do, but don’t always manage, is to find some quiet headspace, even and especially when under great stress to ask myself; “What am I really afraid of?” I’ve been bought up to suppress my fear and carry on with a good stiff upper lip. I now know it’s better to identify my fear and acknowledge my vulnerability. I may not be able to get rid of the source of my fear, but by seeing it, I have a much better chance of controlling my emotional reaction. If you yourself or someone else is behaving badly, try to understand that this may come from fear. Be forgiving.

Our foolish game: Place words in 3 bowls as follows: 1. doer + 2. doing + 3. place. Select one from each bowl without looking and make drawing according to what you picked e.g. slug + jumping + great wall of China

The best response to a crisis is to be kinder than ever to ourselves, and those around us. You can’t control this so why not relax? Enjoy what you do have, even if it’s less than what you are used to. Do whatever soothes your soul: conduct baking experiments, photograph insects, make stuff out of the stuff that’s in the recycling bin, write bad poetry, play foolish games, or if you want a really good laugh-teach your Mum poi. (I’m very good at hitting myself in the head).

Some people have managed to take their creativity a step further, to turn the fear on its head and laugh despite the situation, then to share this on social media so we can laugh too. That is the best of human spirit in the face of adversity. One remarkable old man called Captain Tom, has even managed to raise millions for the brave frontlines at the NHS by simply walking round and round his house. It’s amazing what you can give from your own back yard. What entertainments and distractions do you have to share with other people?

Kia mākoha. He waka eke noa.

Be kind. We are all in the same boat.

Grief upon grief in the pandemic

The worst that can happen in this pandemic is that we will lose someone very close to us, and if this is your situation my heart goes out to you. I hope that you may find some comfort on this website from Art of Grief words, images and booklets.

But the pandemic may also bring other types of grief.

Until my partner died, I thought that grief was only associated with death. The priest who conducted my partner’s funeral helped me to understand that grief was more complex and had many causes: That the initial cause of grief could bring secondary grief, such as the loss of an imagined future, or the loss of physical closeness: That people could grieve from divorce, or the loss of a limb, or shifting house.

The pandemic might mean we lose our job, and along with it our income, the companionship of workmates, and often our sense of purpose. Being in lockdown, without the distraction and busy-ness of work and other activities, may force us to face the loneliness or difficulties of our home life. We may also grieve for the loss of our imagined future: for the loss of financial security, for the disruption of job, education, retirement, holiday or relocation plans.

On top of our personal loss, there are the losses and fears that the whole world is facing together: The ongoing news reports of death and economic recession add to our personal grief.

The level of grief we each experience in this pandemic is likely to vary greatly. If you suffer grief upon grief it can be truly overwhelming. Whatever your situation, I hope that these coping strategies and perceptions that helped me in the thick of grief might help you too:

#1. Acceptance.

Perhaps the first thing to realise is that we are in a shitty situation. We cannot expect to carry on our normal happy productive lives, either individually or collectively. Life is not meant to be permanently rosy. Its no-one’s fault and there is nothing we can do about it. Humans have suffered pandemics for eons. It is perfectly ok and normal to feel afraid, sad, bewildered and unmotivated. So, cut yourself and those around you a bit of slack. Try to lower or change your expectations of “normal” and “achievement.” For the past 5 weeks I have longed to sail the empty harbour in my little boat, but then I remember to feel lucky that I can still walk around the hills. Lockdown is weird. The pandemic is scary. Its enough just to muddle through one day at a time.

Writing down my unique relationships to others reminded me I mattered to others, even though I had lost the person who cherished me daily. It was enough just to be me

#2. Thankfulness.

When life was very bleak, I started to write down the answer to these 2 questions at the end of each day:

1.     What unique contribution have I made to the world today?

2.    What has the world given me today?

The things I wrote were usually humble everyday things such as: “I took my father out”, or “I had a conversation with a friend” or “My daughter gave me a hug” or “It rained, so I don’t need to water the garden”. These small things helped remind me that I had a unique place in this world, such as being my father’s only daughter, and that not everything in my life was bad.

What are your answers to these questions today?

Some Feedback

I just received some lovely feedback from Rachel of Rotorua. Rachel is a nurse, and purchased some booklets for families. Her husband Neil uses the cards all the time in his work as a school counselor:

"I have a book on our coffee table and guests, friends, and family can all be found flicking through it, commenting, laughing, and going very quiet. Thank you. Each picture repeatedly speaks across the ages and grief journey experience.

My husband is a high school counselor and uses the cards with students and staff. The pictures give people silenced by grief a way to connect, understand and find hope. Thank you.

What experiences can you share that might help other grievers?

The artwork and words on this site are my way of helping other people through the grief process. Unfortunately I have experienced a lot of death in the last few years, but I am not a professional counsellor or a spiritual leader, just an ordinary citizen, who happens to have skills in communicating with words and images. Just an ordinary citizen, somewhat appalled to realize how ill prepared we are for death, as individuals and as a society.

So please, share your thoughts on grief, add your voice to mine, or send me your own artwork via juliet@intouchdesign, so that I can post it here...so that others can join the conversation, and benefit from your experience.

I found that writing and drawing helped me to process the grief. It might help you too.