43. great grief

We are living in a time of Great Grief. 

I do not feel consumed by it now, but I know it can be consuming, and part of our Earth-bound duties are to remember, with some part of our consciousness, some intelligence of our souls, that the Great Grief can always come for us. 

When it does, we must hope that we have some Earth angels (in the form of human, animal, tree, plant, or even elemental kin) to help hold our lifeline, the thread of awareness which remembers the possibility of goodness, joy, beauty, and hope.

Last winter, one of my dearest friends in the world entered into a Great Grief after their most beloved sibling died. As an Earth angel for them, I felt the magnitude of their loss ripple into my being, and I knew that I could not travel with them where they were going. 

When we go into the Great Grief, we go alone. Even when two or more inhabit a Great Grief which is partially shared (for they’ve felt the same harm, suffered the same loss, or know the same pain), in grief there is always a part of the walk that belongs solely to the journeyer. 

When someone we love falls into the sea of Great Grief, or begins a long trek through their dark night of the soul, and we cannot accompany them, we must find a way instead to wing alongside, tracking them in our hearts, holding a tether of their lifeline in one hand, and stretching the other to hold onto our own anchors of goodness, faith, and expectant hope. 

If you’ve ever watched a great white pelican skim across the horizon over a vast blue ocean or scanned the skies during a lavender dusk and seen a black bird flying north, and instead of averting your eyes, you held fast, you may have seen moments later their angel winging along behind them. You might have not known it was their angel, because it just looked like another bird, but if you knew what was in the second bird’s heart, you would know they were stretching their very being towards their fore-flown friend, attuning to their movements, giving them space, but tracing their travels toward an unknown destination and trusting that they would make it.

It is our bodies of Earth that hold this intelligence, this sensing, attuning, stretching way of knowing how to hold lifelines for each other. It is the way of Trees who share nutrients through their root systems to care for a family member when they are sick. It is the way of Mushroom, whose rhizomatic mycelial nature holds the memories of all Earth kin, and graciously offers them back to us if we seek communion. It is the generous wisdom of Flowers, who offer beauty, fragrance, and healing balm through the simple act of blossoming.

What I mean is, we know how to hold the lifeline, even when we think we don’t. We might track from a distance and keep a watchful eye on their movements, ready to swoop in if they grow too weary to continue, or mindfully tend our own nourishment, so we have enough to share when their energy fails. Perhaps we comb through our memory banks, drawing forth dusty but lovingly held stories of different times, of days and ways of being before or beyond the Great Grief. Maybe we offer them to our loved ones as a bedtime story, a forgotten fable or a fairy tale, inviting a curious exploration of otherworld enchantment, of pathways of possibility that existed ‘once upon a time.’ Maybe we simply honor and allow our own continued blossoming to unfold, trusting that to do so is to trust Life itself, and perhaps pollinate the world with that gift. 

Grief is an ocean, sometimes wild and stormy, other times blanketed in white-out fog where we can’t see an inch in any direction and so must feel our way, floating and lost, surrendered to a current beyond our ken to carry us wherever it is flowing. Sometimes, the sun comes out, and it seems shore is in sight, but while mustering the courage to swim towards it, swell looms on the horizon, bringing huge, barreling, monstrous waves that slam us down to the bottom and hold us there until breath is scarce and vision fades, only to surrender us to the sunny surface again, where we merely float again, too disoriented and tired to reattempt our efforts towards shore. 

I spoke with two different friends and two different faces of grief today; one in grief but choosing life’s motion, another in grief and treading close to madness. In both cases, I have no power to change their situation. I cannot force cessation of the violent bigotry of the world, of domination and alienation, nor can I stretch my rainbow love through the deep ancestral wounds of an orphaned child and provide a panacea for their soul-deep angst. 

I cannot change the Great Grief for the people I love, and perhaps that’s not my job.

To wing alongside is not to fix, solve, repair, or save. To hold the tether is not to wrestle darkness to light or change the movements of the stars. 

To be an Earth angel is sometimes to not do much at all, except pick up the phone and call, listen, offer a snack, or tell a story. 

Sometimes it's simply waiting to hear them breathe and trusting my soul flower to, just for this breath of theirs, keep blooming.